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. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. 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. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. presentation, nows your chance! As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. 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. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! 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. The truth is out there, and I think you've found it! After several years, Sears also began assigning names to the various models. The Greenview/No. Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. 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. 181 (264P181) in the 1914 Sears Modern Homes catalog, This image is from the 1913 Sears Modern Homes catalog re-print, available, 374 Hawthorne Street, La Porte, Indiana Sears Modern Home No. 1232 click. And, shortly after me, came Karen DeJeet, a Pittsburgh resident who learned of Sears houses when she found out that she lived in one (the. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. Click to visit. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and it's currently estimated that about 70% of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. Knowing the limitations of a newspaper article, I know that he will only be able to show one or two house photos, so I thought that I would highlight a few that we have found, through our research. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. 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. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. Orders were placed by mail, the See more 5,581 people like this 5,890 people follow this https://www.searshouses.com/ cyn.catanzaro@gmail.com 171 examples in La Porte. Square . the case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. 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 There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . One of the early Sears House researchers that our group still relies on for her expertise in the D.C. housing market, is D.C. realtor Catarina Bannier (Bannier & Sandalow). We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. My uncle mentioned that he had found some shipping labels from Sears in the house and when we asked my grandmother about it, she said: Oh, yes, we ordered it from the Sears catalog, Chabot said. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. 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. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. 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. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. This is just the top of the blog page you'll find dozens of links to online catalogs here, a link to the excellent Pinterest resource made for us by Sears-house owner Dale Haynes, and a list of hard-copy book resources that are both interesting and informative. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. 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. 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. Cindy's research in Delaware County, coupled with my research in Montgomery County, netted at least 200 hundred authenticated houses, but that research was preceded by many hours of searching the streets of Willow Grove, Glenside, and other suburbs, by Karen, Nigel, Sarah, Marie, and Andrew. As I detailed in the account of the rise and fall of the Sears empire, this literally led them to become the largest retailer in America because they had so many burners going at onceand their Modern Homes kits, and even the home buying process itself, were part of that in addition to catalog and retail sales. Images are available 181, and the early version of the. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. That's why we love seeking them out! 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. 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). If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? 06/16/2022 . Car culture hadnt yet arrived, but trains and trolleys began extending to these greener areas that were still pretty empty so you could visit or work in the city. that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. Chabot focuses her research on scouring mortgages and deed records, old newspaper articles and other sources to identify kit homes sold by Sears. 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). I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. The builder was W.L. Without authentication, however, we can't be 100% certain that this house was ordered from Sears, as numerous kit and non-kit companies offered a very similar model, and these kinds of stories that are passed down over time, often turn out to be mistaken (with the house actually being a model from a different kit company, or simply resembling a model offered by Sears). Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. This one, too, looks pretty much like just a taller version of the Greenview/115 and the Rossville/171, from the front and porch side of the house so, it was another mystery, as to what to look for on the other side of the house. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? Open to the public. Capture from Google Streetview. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? 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. BMO, LAFC, and Angel City FC leaders were joined by special guests Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Mia Hamm for the . 217 (early Starlight), Sears Modern Home No, 126, on the left, at 808 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana, On the right, Sears Modern Home No. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? of "Where are the Sears Houses?" [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. At one point, I realized that I needed to organize a list of online catalog resources, so I put together this blog post, which has links to catalogs not only from Daily Bungalow and AntiqueHome, but to the many catalogs uploaded on another key resource, Archive.org (have you donated lately?). 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. Many of the homes original features remain intact. Sears also offered a plasterboard product similar to modern drywall as an alternative to the plaster and lath wall-building techniques which required skilled carpenters and plasterers. The last Sears Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940. Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. 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. Buyers could hire a contractor to assemble their home or build it themselves following the detailed instructions that were included. There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. Catalogs Online: Sears, Radford, Gordon-Van Tine, Sears Starlight (Sears Homes of Chicagoland), Sears Door Hardware: La Tosca, Shefton, Rhythmic, ONLINE CATALOGS on Archive.org: Sears, GVT, Radford +more. 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. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. Im looking at this cute little Cape Cod that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. [5] Early balloon structures were very basic, to enable home buyers to assemble them independently and also because designers had yet to see the implications the method held.[5]. But, as of this date in 2021, here are leading areas in the U.S. with high numbers of Sears houses. 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? 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. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. Historic Homes Images of Sears Homes Click on the associated link for a collection of images and photographs of almost all 447 house designs sold through the Sears Modern Homes program. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. | Sears Modern Homes", "Sears Houses in Arlington Virginia: A Comprehensive List", "How Sears built an entire local neighborhood", "Historic Structures Crystal Lake Historical Society", "Sears Houses in Elgin Illinois arranged according to model name", "Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes in the Philly Suburbs and Sears House Hunters", "Where are the rest of the Sears houses in the U.S.? But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. 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. 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. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. How did Sears Modern Homes come to be? 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. Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. 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. 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. We have just over 200 Sears houses on our list, that came from Rebecca's research project in Elgin (it also included kit houses from other companies, that she was able to identify -- we've added those to our lists for those companies, as well). small-town America, 1920! Search. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. Thanks! In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati . "The Sears Homes of Illinois" has more than 200 color photos of the most popular designs that Sears offered and can be very helpful in identifying Sears Homes. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! I didn't have very many leads for Kevin Riordan, for the NJ suburbs but, for the PA side of the Philadelphia suburbs that's a different matter, indeed! Depending on where you live, the thought of just building a small or medium sized house can sound totally bizarre or perhaps totally doable if youve got miles and miles of wide open space to work with. I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. 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. It mightve been easier to get a job or start a business off the bat compared to the hoops and bureaucracy we have for both these days, but there was no U-Haul or Pods to make moving easier. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. [35] Another homeowner, Erskine Hogue Stanberry, states that his Saratoga model was the "first house in Chelsea to have electric lights" and that they "are using the original plumbing and wiring".[35]. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the 172, later marketed as the. A recent Tribune-Review story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless that has most of its original features intact drew scores of letters and comments from Pittsburgh area residents interested in learning more about the unique role these houses played in U.S. history. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? Welcome to the New NSCAA. Simple theme. Shipped by railroad boxcar, and then usually trucked to a home site, the average Sears Modern Home kit had about 25 tons of materials, with more than 30,000 parts. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. This Sears mail-order house named The Crescent was built in Munhall in 1920, according to owner Molly Harbst. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. . 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.. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Please contact me if you would like a free Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. 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. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. 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. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. 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.