Identifying Sears Homes | Sears Modern Homes Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. 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. They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. Harbst said it wasnt until after she bought the house that she learned homes were once sold through mail-order catalogs. She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. Compare house designs to original catalog images. Because lets get real: those adorable and affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans and their families. 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. Referred to as a gable-front-and-wing, it was a national folk style that owed much of its heritage to the earlier Greek Revival style. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. Natural Resources DataBase - NRDB Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. presentation, nows your chance! Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. 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! 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. 126 and a Sears No. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. CNDDB Maps and Data - California Department of Fish and Wildlife Welcome to Sears Homes! New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home 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). Please contact me if you would like a free I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. The truth is out there, and I think you've found it! 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. Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. Images are available Let's take a look at a comparison of that side, for these two models: Also, the front view shows us how the front porch roof connects to the house differently, across these two models. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? You had the flexibility to swap out certain elements without causing the whole thing to collapse like one of those Instagrammable burgers thats way too tall. 306 Highland, Madison, WI. 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. Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Residential construction was drastically down nationwide due to the Great Depression. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. 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). And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears 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.. 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. 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Our goal is always to authenticate these houses through mortgage and deed research, or other primary sources, but, when that is not possible, we apply a careful, team approach to analyzing each house that goes on our national list. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. 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. Not all Sears houses became private residences. 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. Another key figure in the original research into Sears kit houses, was a woman named Beatrice Lask. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. 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. Originally marketed as the. In a second blog post, I'll show the several probable kit houses that we've found in LaPorte, Indiana, from other companies. [17] Later on in the Modern Homes timeline, Sears had in-office designers but titled them as "experts" rather than actual architects.[17]. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. 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. Sears House Seeker 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. Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. 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. So, each house that we find through these records, represents a great deal of digging, and lots of amassed knowledge in how to attack the task because each county's records system is a little different than others. 1. 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. 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. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. I'm currently working my way through the Burlington County records, but they are limited, and set up in a way that makes the process very time consuming. 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. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. Argyles also tend to get messed up and hard to recognize like this one at 6818 N. Oriole, Chicago or this one at 1302 Edgewood, Lake Forest. That's why we love seeking them out! . 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. Builders that already have both the funds and the skilled professionals in architecture, construction, and land use make it easier for the average person who only wants to worry about their career, move, and family. We thought it might be of interest to those readers to point out some more of the history of Sears houses in the greater Pittsburgh area, said Chabot, whose family still owns a Sears Silverdale model home in Northampton, Mass., that was built by her great-grandparents in 1911. Photo from Lake County Assessor. For this week's listing of the week, we decided to find seven charming Sears Catalog homes you can actually buy today. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. Kushel is credited with suggesting to Richard Sears that the company assemble kits of all the parts needed and sell entire houses through mail order. Text information is available through RareFind 5 and provides essential information about special status species and occurrences. 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. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. 168/Matoka, 301 Weller Avenue, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears Modern Home No. Thanks for your interest! Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. Images of Sears Homes BMO Celebrates Kickoff of the 2023 Soccer Season at 'BMO Stadium' in Simple theme. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). Sears Is Crumbling, but These 9 Sears Catalog Homes Stand Tall If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? catalogs for all central and satellite halos down to 10^06 MSun. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. This Sears mail-order house named The Crescent was built in Munhall in 1920, according to owner Molly Harbst. Click to visit. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. In areas where the land is already mostly developed and zoned, its not that simple. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for, 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. 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. I know of several other models in McCandless. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. 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 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. . homes for rent in laplace 70068. national database of sears homes. Our list, by the way, began in the early years of our research group. 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). 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. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. More information, in this blog post of mine, documented through historic mortgage research, by Andrew Mutch, Philadelphia Inquirer article by Kevin Riordan, 418 Woodlawn Ave, Collingswood, NJ 08108, USA, 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. contacting them by clicking on their name. Our list, in fact, began with 345 Sears houses that Mrs. Lask had found in the Cincinnati area, as part of a Masters Degree thesis project at the University of Cincinnati. 181, and the early version of the. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. 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. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. That's what happens Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. They had. Cities with large numbers of documented Sears Modern Homes include: The Carlinville, Illinois, concentration consists of houses bought in bulk by the Standard Oil Company in 1918 to house its mineworkers at a total cost of about US $1 million. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. [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.