Images are available You can find catalog images for these models, in the links on the table at the end of this blog post: Also on W Johnson Road, we have new information from Nancy, who contacted me to let me know that she grew up in the Sears house shown below, a Sears. This is what these two models look like, in the catalogs (these are from the 1911/1912 catalog): Up until this point, we weren't really sure what the difference was between these two models. But before all this, having to get your own home built was more common instead of getting on a waitlist for a HUD-subsidized tract home or buying one secondhand from the current occupant. Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes, We started looking around La Porte, Indiana, in 2015. I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. , 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. Also, considering that the article was published in April of 1912, all of these models would have been marketed only with their number, as no word names were given to the models until 1916. Their blueprints were based on what was popular at the time and while they werent the first or only company to do mail-order houses, theyre among the most memorable because you could buy damn near anything in their 500+ page catalogs. sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears homes. Because lets get real: affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans, 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. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". 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. Beginning in 1916, the catalogs showed an additional floor plan that did have a bathroom: The rest of the examples of Sears houses in La Porte, that we have found to date, are one-off examples, so were probably individual purchases by the original homeowner, or a few spec houses by the realty company mentioned in the American Lumberman article. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home I see you posted about the origins of Hollywood three years ago! However, based on what the experts said in that Atlas Obscura piece, youre most likely to find Sears homes in places where railroad stations once stood (or are lucky to still have) and where Sears factories had a major role on the local economy, like Cincinnati. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. 306 Highland, Madison, WI. I think that we had only a handful of houses already on the list a few. Sears would be listed as the architect, and because they often gave out mortgages, you can find out if the previous owner(s) had a Sears mortgage or not. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. Tucker/Crossroads When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. 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. Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. 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 . Excuse me while I openly weep thinking about how many vacation cottages today probably cost the same or even more than house houses in many parts of the country. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. But Matthew has a way of pulling everything together and spitting out a coherent comparative analysis with visuals that helps us see what we hadn't noticed previously. Those kinds of topics are cleared up, in this blog post: When I chatted with Kevin Riordan, I also sent him a list of several nice Sears houses that he could consider photographing for his article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Andrew Mutch ran across that same article in the American Lumberman, and posted in our group, asking if anyone was interested in looking for some of the old models that might be around. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. 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. Additionally, at this point in the Sears Modern Homes program, the homes were sold/packaged only with standard-length wood, so none of the framing lumber would have been pre-cut (and, therefore, there would be no alpha-numeric stamps on the wood pieces in the house). In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 175 (in 1913). Marie gives the perfect explanation of our Sears House hunt, in this. . They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. 126 and a Sears No. 199 (the predecessor to the Sears, We've put eleven houses on our list that we are pretty confident are the early version of the. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! "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. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. This phrase is trademarked and cannot be used without permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. marlon brando children; pete the cat and his four groovy buttons comprehension questions; nolin lake conditions; dan majerle hall of fame; dayton floor drill press,belt They had. Compare house designs to original catalog images. None of these houses are authenticated through mortgage or deed research, but they are spot-on matches for the models, and we feel certain enough of their origin, to add them to our database. Among those are: Sears Modern Homes can also be found in historic districts listed in the National Register of Historic Places: According to Carolyn Fraser's Pulitzer-winning book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the house that Rose Wilder Lane built for her parents, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder, at Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri was from a Sears kit. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. presentation, nows your chance! of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". [38][39], One well-known replica of a Sears house is at the "Farm at Prophetstown" museum in Battle Ground, Indiana, which features a replica of a Hillrose model. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. However, many houses described as Sears Homes are not true Sears Homes, being either the product of another kit home manufacturer or not a kit home at all. Balloon frames could be built faster and generally only required one carpenter. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. Photo from Realtor site. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. 171's porch roof (when it is a partial porch) connects to the house far to the right side of that upper window and then has a wedge-shape side part to that roof, so that both models end the porch just to the edge of the front door, but with a very different treatment to the shape of the porch roof there. Park, MD. No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. Did materials and labor really get that much more expensive between now and then? The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. Buyers could hire a contractor to assemble their home or build it themselves following the detailed instructions that were included. Sure, your Wabash or Verona model built in New Jersey could look just like the same one ordered in Texas and built there, but it wasnt designed to look exactly like the other homes on the block. I don't know the model, but it was a 2 story - 6 room house - 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, living room, dining room, and very small galley type kitchen. Click here. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . Your comment will appear after it has been previewed and approved by the blog author. Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. Thank you for visiting! New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. However, in La Porte, we've also found five examples* of houses that look like a great match for the No. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your Camden County would be a great place to search, because we know that there are Sears houses in Collingswood, Haddon Township, Haddonfield, and Haddon Heights but, how many? [17] Later on in the Modern Homes timeline, Sears had in-office designers but titled them as "experts" rather than actual architects.[17]. Sears Houses in Elgin, Illinois (Rebecca L. Hunter), BOOK:Houses By Mail -- published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, BOOK: History and Field Guide to Wardway Homes, Rosemary Thornton's Sears Modern Homes website (use to search for models), Beatrice Lask Thesis: Summary list (Cincinnati Sears Homes). That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. The most popular models appeared in the catalog for multiple years. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! 172, later marketed as the. See that curled element at the hinge edge? New York state is 4th, with 1,679 houses found. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? 159 was available with either clipped gables or peak gables, for the roof. 5008". We scour real estate listings, we "drive" around streets (using Google maps Streetview) in towns with a concentration of homes of the era, and we especially love researching, using primary sources such as historic newspapers and the old mortgage and deed resources held in each town's Register of Deeds office, looking for houses that were financed through Sears. This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. 168/Matoka, 301 Weller Avenue, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears Modern Home No. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. Between 1908 and 1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold nearly 75,000 kit homes through its Modern Homes program, which featured 447 styles of houses, ranging from large multistory dwellings to tiny summer cottages with an optional outhouse. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. Thanks to the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the NRDB will continue to be updated and available at least through 2023, and in some form, beyond that. Because lets get real: those adorable and affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans and their families. If yours is not one of those, please let us know :) We are confident about all three being Sears houses, but have not been able to authenticate any of them (with mortgage or deed records, blueprints, shipping labels, letters from Sears, or marked lumber). So, they are likely from Sears. Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. However, the streets that are lined with these farmhouse models (and many other houses), are actually in the Lakeview neighborhood so, we imagine that was a mistake in the article. Search. The article explained that Sears had already sold five houses that were in the midst of construction, and these first houses were all of three different models, and at least 50 more would be built with the possibility that a total of 200 might find their way to the streets of La Porte (it doesn't look like that happened). Action in the Community Through Service Homeless Shelter. 1232 / No. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! We found and listed about three houses, I think but didn't really focus on La Porte much more than that day in 2015. I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. They produced three different product lines based on budget: the high-end Honor Bilt homes, Standard Built homes that were popular with young families, and Simplex Sectional low-budget homes that were mostly used as vacation cottages. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. 115 cuts off abruptly, right in the middle of the front facade, even with the left side of the upper window, and it then has a straight slope porch roof jutting out. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. Our team did some traveling around streets inside Philadelphia, in neighborhoods like Oxford Circle, Rhawnhurst, and Roxborough, to name a few, and added about 43 houses to our list, from these neighborhoods. I don't feel comfortable making that assumption. Or did we just go wrong somewhere when someone decided the house you live in should be treated like a bank? 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. Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. easier. So, I put together a list, but I decided to provide some clarifying background information in that blog post, too-- it's especially intended to help those who might hear the term Craftsman, and think it means Sears House, or who see a 1920s bungalow and wonder if that means that the street is lined with Sears houses, or who find marked lumber in their house, but can't seem to find a match to a Sears model. Sales peaked in 1929, just before the Great Depression. This table provides a Streetview link for each house (or, occasionally, a real estate listing link), and, for houses I've shown, but not provided a catalog image of, you'll find a link to a catalog image, as well. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. But who knows, maybe well see tiny shipping container homes in a museum someday after we take back the rest of the real estate after the revolution. I've always seen this one in the catalogs, and thought it was kind of ungainly in proportions, but we hadn't found one before this one this is a pretty good match, though not perfect, but, in the days before pre-cut, we are more likely to see some modifications to the models. 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 Atlanta and Chateau models were probably the great-grandaddy of the modern McMansion, with the Malden model being its odd little cousin that sits in the potato salad at the family reunion, what with the odd arrangement of dormer windows although they arent fake. The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. Melissa Steel of Patterson Heights in Beaver County said the story about the Sears house in McCandless sparked fond memories of the family next door who lived in one for many years. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. Not all Sears houses became private residences. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. All these years later it is still a fortress.. I know of several other models in McCandless. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati [18] National and regional competitors in the catalog and kit home market included Aladdin, Bennett, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Brothers, Lewis, Pacific Ready Cut Homes, Sterling and Montgomery Ward (Wardway) Homes. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. In addition to home building costs being up to 40% lower than traditional building, you also had the option to bring your own blueprints to Sears to get them modified for far less than itd comparatively cost to go to a builder or architect today. The new owner was a Sears House fan - even produced a short doc film about the house and how she updated it. While the vast majority of models were for single-family house designs, Sears offered some duplex house designs and even a few larger multiple-family buildings. Many included the latest technology available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, telephone, and electricity .
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