Enjoy! 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. That's what happens 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. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update In this case, the problem was that we couldn't see the left side of these models, just by looking at the catalog and the floor plans. : Ohio is the state with the largest number, Pennsylvania is the third- highest-ranking state, Prince George's County, MD & Montgomery County, MD. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. Our research would not be possible, without online resources for Sears Modern Homes catalogs, and the catalogs for other kit-house companies, such as Gordon-Van Tine, Wardway, Aladdin, Sterling, Lewis, and Bennett. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. So, they are likely from Sears. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. 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. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. I just loved the look of it, she said. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. Lets find out! Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. 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 to you on Flickr or Pinterest. This phrase is trademarked and cannot be used without permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. Ha! National Database: Sears Homes in the U.S. SHORT VIDEO: What It's Like to Live in a Sears Catalog Home, SHORT VIDEO: NBC Nightly News visits Andrew & Wendy Mutch. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. Simply put, life was rougher. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. 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. The. I think that we had only a handful of houses already on the list a few. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. A high-speed chase involving an armed carjacking suspect ended in Los Angeles Friday afternoon when the suspect crashed into a police vehicle, and then into a pole. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,600 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is #3 in U.S. states with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes found. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". That's what happens 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. Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. [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. 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. 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". Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Welcome to the New NSCAA. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. If you are a Historical Society interested in awarding plaques for specific homes understood to be Sears houses, please feel free to contact us to verify for you that the house does match a model offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. 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. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. Contains merger trees and halo . by . Residential construction was drastically down nationwide due to the Great Depression. See that curled element at the hinge edge? 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. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . 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. Original paperwork for the house including blueprints and letters of correspondence from Sears. In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. You'll notice that most are in states east of the Mississippi River, with highest overall state totals in Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. Simply put, life was rougher. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. 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). 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. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. Park, MD. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. Sears Lewiston: A Sears Model Home in New Jersey Authenticated Sears Lewiston 261 N. Jackson St., North Plainfield, NJ 1929 This great-looking Sears Lewiston was built in 1929, and used as a model home for Sears after it was built by Anthony P. Raffaniello, and his wife, Helena. She said she didnt know the house was built from a kit ordered from a catalog until after she bought it. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. The wild pursuit began with an a 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. Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. After several years, Sears also began assigning names to the various models. 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. I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. Simple theme. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Or did we just go wrong somewhere when someone decided the house you live in should be treated like a bank? No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. 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. that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. ", "Bill of Materials for Sears Modern Home", "Two Italian Families and their Neighboring Sears Houses", "New Homes in Cranford for $4,000!Biggest development evolved in Sunny Acres", "Yes, Virginia, Sears Homes Were Built After 1940", "The Top Four Most Popular Sears Homes--Have You Seen These? 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. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. 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. Another key figure in the original research into Sears kit houses, was a woman named Beatrice Lask. 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. Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. 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. Chabot said while Sears wasnt the first or only company to sell mail-order homes, they were unique among the competition.
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