How did Sears Modern Homes come to be? You roughed it until you found a new place and if you wanted a FOREVER home, you stayed put until it was done being built. Andrew is responsible for adding hundreds (and hundreds) of Sears houses to our database, especially in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., in numerous counties in Michigan, and a gold mine of houses in Westchester County, New York, especially in Yonkers. Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. The windows, the kitchen and the bathroom were updated over the years, but it is still very much the house it was when it was built.. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. Basic cross-gabled two-story farmhouses are to be found almost everywhere in towns and cities as well as many rural areas throughout the United States. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. One key set of homes that we are fortunate to have on our list, comes from the research of noted Architectural Historian, Rebecca L. Hunter. Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. Los Angeles Modern Stilt Home Featured in Heat (Listed for $1.599 Million), International House Flipper Alex Camacho Makes $80k Profit on One House Flip, Bugsy Siegel Murder Mansion in Beverly Hills Flats (Listed for $17 Million), Zsa Zsa Gabors Pink Palm Springs Palace (Listed for $3.8 Million), 35 Kitchen Breakfast Bars The Latest In Casual Kitchen Dining. After all, future generations became more transient out of circumstance or in light of the digital nomad movement and taking advantage of technology in general, more mobile by choice. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. [6] Plumbing, electrical fixtures, and heating systems were options that could be ordered at additional cost; they were many families' first steps to modern HVAC systems, kitchens, and bathrooms. However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. Please contact me if you would like a free During the later era of pre-cut houses, we don't usually put homes on our list, if they have these kinds of design differences. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). Originally marketed as the. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update It's also possible that some local builder just put together a similar design, to compete with the Sears houses being built in town, but, some of these examples are on blocks of streets that are lined with Sears houses from this early spec offering by Sears. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. Given the more disposable nature of shipping container homes and the portability granted by some tiny houses, its kind of sad in a way that this current crop of Internet-order homes is not only not as simple or affordable as it was yesteryear, but also carries less permanence compared to these mail-order houses. Price: $179,900. By the time of the 1914 catalog, the model had been tweaked, to add the peak gable, closed pediment pop-up dormer over the upper bay windows. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. We are a team of about 10 researchers who work together to hunt around the U.S. for Sears kit houses built during the era of the Sears Modern Homes program (1908-1942). So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. They came in all sizes and price points before buying a ready-made house or building kit of your choosing became relegated to the tiny house movement if you dont have the resources to buy a plot of land and build from there. See that curled element at the hinge edge? Other times, the legal description refers to a house being on "a road leading from York to Millville", and maybe the lot bordering "the land of Joseph Craws" usually, that road, if we can figure out which one it is, is miles and miles long, and there's no way to find "the land of Joseph Craws", so that's of no help at all. I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". We've seen this in Carlinville, Illinois, and we've seen this with large orders of homes bought from Aladdin and from Gordon-Van Tine. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. This is the Lakeview area where we found most of the examples of the 115, 171, and 159, as well as a number of examples of the No. Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home The next housing boom came after World War II so that veterans could have affordable housing for their families and suburbs could accommodate the massive amount of white flight taking place. A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. The HMS data portal is a collection of models, simulations and synthetic observations of the Sun. It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. Most of us have a small collection of physical catalogs, or PDF catalogs, but we rely heavily on resources provided, especially, by our friend at AntiqueHome.org, and Daily Bungalow. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. Its not like nowadays where you move, wait for your stuff to arrive, and if youre a. like me, youre pretty much unable to work while you wait for a technician to ensure you have Internet access. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. presentation, nows your chance! Rosemary Thornton 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. Boxabl is selling shipping container homes for about $50,000 a pop and Amazon is also selling prefab tiny houses at a variety of sizes and price points. Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. 159 examples that have a closed pediment in the gable (and a porch style difference). Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Excuse me while I openly weep thinking about how many vacation cottages today probably cost the same or even more than, Sears also offered mortgages to home buyers and was pretty liberal with their lending terms, which made them an attractive option for widows, the self-employed, and people in marginalized groups who otherwise had trouble qualifying for traditional bank loansa problem that still persists today. Text information is available through RareFind 5 and provides essential information about special status species and occurrences. Stevenson, Katherine Cole, and Jandl, H. Ward, (1995), Davis, Michael W.R. and Schweitzer, Robert (1990), This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 21:18. Sears Modern Homes built in the 1930s may have a small circled "SR" cast into the bathtub in the lower corner (furthest from the tub spout and near the floor) and on the underside of the kitchen or bathroom sink. There are many very close lookalikes to this model, so we aren't always confident that they are from Sears, when we spy them in the wild, but this house has Sears curlicues on the hinge end of the decorative iron strapping. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. Compare house designs to original catalog images. Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; Your comment will appear after it has been previewed and approved by the blog author. Because these homes were constructed using pre-cut lumber and plans provided by Sears, these homes can be considered to be "Sears Modern Homes". They came in all sizes and price points before buying a ready-made house or building kit of your choosing became relegated to the tiny house movement if you dont have the resources to, Sears Wasnt an Innovator, but They Knew Quality and Efficiency. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. Owners of these houses along the years may have, however, found paper shipping labels affixed to the back of trim pieces around doors or windows, or decorative moulding pieces. The article mentioned Sears having sold 50 houses in La Porte, Indiana but, interestingly, Sears had actually provided the funding and the houses, knowing that the area was in need of housing right away, and offered to have the houses paid for on time. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Powered by, This September 2017 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this short video story by the Washington Post. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! Sometimes researchers get lucky and find facts and figures in old company newsletters, personal papers of Sears managers and executives, historical newspapers, and archival interviews conducted with people who worked in the department in the 1930's and 1940's. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. rebeccahunter1216@gmail.com. The two-story schoolhouse was priced at $11,500 and its design included six classrooms, a library, an auditorium, and a superintendent's office. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. Park, MD. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. If you don't know what that means, look at these two examples, and note where the orange arrow points that little extra strip of roofing that makes a sort of closed triangle. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. Square . Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Moreover, it was just more feasible to plunk down a house somewhere because there just werent as many homes on account of a smaller population. The ability to mass-produce the materials used in Sears homes reduced manufacturing costs, which allowed Sears to pass along the savings in lower prices for customers. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. Its as sturdy as a house as Ive ever seen. She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. In a second blog post, I'll show the several probable kit houses that we've found in LaPorte, Indiana, from other companies. is selling shipping container homes for about $50,000 a pop and Amazon is also selling prefab tiny houses at a variety of sizes and price points. Another key figure in the original research into Sears kit houses, was a woman named Beatrice Lask. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. It was built in 1917. Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. I think that maybe Google maps Streetview wasn't great quality on many of the streets. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. Government spending was dedicated to housing in an unprecedented manner as the mantra was driven home that the ideal was a nuclear family in a 3-bedroom suburban house with a car in every driveway. 118 In Columbia, Where are the Sears Houses - February 2023 Edition, The Strange Case of the Wandering Bungalow, DC House Cat Chiming In - Historic Mail-Order Homes, Same Name, Different House Part 2 - From Aurora to the Elmwood, 1926 Sears Special Supplement from AntiqueHome.org. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. Ohio resident Marie Vore reached out to us one day, on our Sears Modern Homes Facebook page, with a question about a possible Sears house that she had run across in a real estate listing. by . I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. [37] Similiar references are made to boyhood homes of Richard Nixon and Warren Buffett. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. Simply put, life was rougher. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes, We started looking around La Porte, Indiana, in 2015. Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. Then, we always get a chuckle when the legal description includes things like, "by a large Elm tree" or "100 feet past a stone marker". Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. You roughed it until you found a new place and if you wanted a FOREVER home, you stayed put until it was done being built. Author, researcher and lecturer Rebecca Hunter became fascinated with the phenomenon of mail order homes in 1996, and is currently engaged in the study of kit homes and agricultural buildings marketed from 1906-1982 by nine different companies. [5] The method was originally named in the sense that the structure was light and could be lifted away like a balloon. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. I think the reason the Sears house is so interesting is that most people associate them with the Wish Book catalog that came in the mail at Christmas. 1232 click. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. 5008". Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? We just love the Walton model! Capture from Google Streetview. , there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. Documented Sears houses have been found across the United States and in a few locations in Canada. Through those two resources, we can see not only kit-house catalogs, but also lumber-yard plan books, which offered house plans to those who were building their homes, in the 19-teens through 1930s, in the traditional method, of hiring a contractor, and buying the building resources locally. city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. Wonderful, Malissa! And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. 181, and the early version of the. Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. 1. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). Public records: From 1911 to 1933, Sears offered home mortgages and Sears company officials or the Sears, Roebuck corporation may be named on the mortgage or deed associated with the property where the home was constructed. Identifying Sears Homes has become a pastime among history enthusiasts because of their sturdy structure, the do-it-yourself nature of construction, and the popular architectural design concepts. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. 171 examples in La Porte. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. One final note about our list: as I've mentioned, our list includes, for the most part, homes that we have located, ourselves, but also those that we have learned about from other people. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? She said she didnt know the house was built from a kit ordered from a catalog until after she bought it. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. There was one snippet in the press release that only a couple newspapers reprinted: "Following twelve years of usefulness, one old design was removed from the home catalogue in 1928, as antiquated after having been constructed more than 1700 times, which probably constitutes the world's record for any construction duplication from a single house plan, he [Betcone] says.". The bulk order is the largest known order for Sears Modern Homes and led to Sears, Roebuck naming their "Carlin" model after the city. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,500 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is No. . This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. In 1908, Sears issued its first specialty catalog for houses, Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans, featuring 44 house styles ranging in price from US $360$2,890. They werent all the 3-bedroom Craftsman ranch style you see throughout Los Angeles or the compact Levittowners in Pennsylvania and Long Island to the east: the, models were probably the great-grandaddy of the modern McMansion, with the, model being its odd little cousin that sits in the potato salad at the family reunion, what with the odd arrangement of, True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. ", "Sears Houses of Massapequa Park, New York", "Made to Order: Many American Dreams Came Out of the Sears Catalog, Including Do-It-Yourself Houses", "Yesterday's kit houses are today's sought-after properties", "The Story on Sears: Houses by rail and mail", "Syracuse house, which came from a Sears catalog, is one of only seven of its kind in U.S.", "The House Is in the Mail: 'Kit homes' from Sears and others were an affordable housing option", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sears_Modern_Homes&oldid=1142882633, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. In some cases, homeowners used plans from original Sears homes to recreate a modern version of a Sears home. Where Are The Rest Of The Sears Houses In The U.S.? According to a review written by Mary Ann O'Boyle of Takoma Park, Maryland, her Sears home feels "unabashedly American, the kind of house you see in movies about the good old days" and "allows me to connect with the past". Although it is sometimes claimed that no Sears kit homes were built after 1940, Sears continued to offer pre-cut kit homes through 1941 and into early 1942. During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. Damn, it was like. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. 171 often has a full front porch that ends up extending all the way to the left side of the house. , such as stamped lumber in the basement or attic, shipping labels on the baseboards and other millwork, or even looking up your deed and records pertaining to the actual home purchase. One of the biggest questions that researchers have been wanting to answer is: What is the Top-Selling Sears House of All Time? She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. From 1908 to 1940, the Sears Modern Homes Program offered complete mail-order houses to the would-be homeowner what would come to be called "kit homes." Customers could select from dozens of different models in Sears Modern Homes Catalog, order blueprints, send in a check, and a few weeks later everything they needed would arrive in a train car, its door secured with a small red wax .