Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. 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. 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. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. CNDDB Maps and Data. presentation, nows your chance! Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; 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. 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. 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. How did Sears Modern Homes come to be? Action in the Community Through Service Homeless Shelter. Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. Construction of the houses took nine months which were completed in 1919. HBM (. 159 has two full stories on that non-porch side of the house. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. A kick-off celebration was held March 3, 2023, for the newly renamed BMO Stadium. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. Among those chiming in about the article was Judith Chabot of St. Louis, Mo., who runs SearsHouseSeekers.com, which serves as a depository for information gathered by Sears home enthusiasts across the country. We cannot be absolutely certain, but the numbers do not support it. You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . hennessy privilege limited edition / what is mc hammer doing now 2020 / national database of sears homes. Architecturally, I'm really surprised by the two versions of the Cedars floor plan -- they are completely different, though only two feet were added to make the larger one. 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. 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). 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! We soon realized that she had a keen eye for Sears houses (and a keen love for them, as her great-grandfather had built a Sears Martha Washington in Oakwood, Ohio), and she joined our research group. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! Price: $179,900. This phrase is trademarked and cannot be used without permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc. We just can't say, because we can't access those records. 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. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. Wonderful, Malissa! Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. 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. Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". 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. 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. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. 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. 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. 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. In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. 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. Catarina is quite well informed about Sears houses in the D.C. area, but also has researched the origins of many of the Lewis Homes kit homes in the area. 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. But articles are so scattered by time, date and location that it is difficult to realize the scope and number of Sears homes here in the Pittsburgh area.. 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'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. 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. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! Because the various kit home companies often copied plan elements or designs from each other, there are a number of catalog and kit models from different manufacturers that look similar or identical to models offered by Sears. Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes, We started looking around La Porte, Indiana, in 2015. ", "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? The wild pursuit began with an a A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. Photo from Realtor site. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. 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. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). 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. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 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. 5008". Search crews have rescued Californians stranded for days in multiple feet of snow after back-to-back storms plastered the state's mountain communities and trapped many in their homes. As sales grew, Sears expanded its production, shipping, and sales offices to locations across the U.S. To provide the materials needed for the Modern Homes division, Sears operated a lumber mill in Cairo, Illinois. One of the biggest questions that researchers have been wanting to answer is: What is the Top-Selling Sears House of All Time? 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. We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your
One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had I-79 restrictions begin Wednesday night in Allegheny County, West Deer firefighters respond to bedroom fire, heavy smoke at Poplar Street home, Man shot dead in McKeesport the 4th slaying this week and 5th in a month, Medical examiner IDs man killed in McKeesport shooting, Report on Allegheny County Jail deaths finds no 'trends or common factors' that led to them, Historic Hempfield cemetery seeks volunteers, donors to help care for grounds, 2nd annual 'Restaurant Ramble' features 10 downtown New Kensington eateries, Tom Sizemore, Saving Private Ryan actor, dies after brain aneurysm, TV Talk: Mel Brooks History of the World, Part II belatedly arrives on Hulu, Western Pennsylvania's trusted news source, story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless, number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. . The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. I'm not surprised that the Argyle is likely the best seller; it had a long run and was as good-looking as it was practical. . Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Please contact me if you would like a free Square . 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. Not all Sears houses became private residences. Not all Sears houses were mortgaged through Sears, but many were, so it's a great help for us to be able to access those records. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. 5 Jun. Many of the homes original features remain intact. Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. Betcone spoke of how housing styles were drastically changing and how many customers wanted more efficient, streamlined designs. Once delivered, many of these houses were assembled by the new homeowner, relatives, friends and neighbors, in a fashion similar to the traditional barn-raisings of farming families. 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. Lets find out! There were less people, but quality housing that could get built easily was a must for the quickly-growing population as World War I veterans came home and started families, and an immigration boom was taking place. Welcome to the New NSCAA. A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). Open to the public. Welcome to Sears Homes! 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. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. Contains merger trees and halo . 159, but it's likely especially because we have found interior views of a couple, and we think we see Sears staircase balusters and newel. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. I just loved the look of it, she said. 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. Thank you for visiting! The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. 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. 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. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. 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. 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. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? "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. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. The most popular models appeared in the catalog for multiple years. June 1, 2022. by etc north vernon covid testing. 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. The group has identified nearly 540 of the estimated 1,000 Sears mail-order homes that are believed to have been constructed in the region. 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. 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. 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. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. to share their names with others who might be interested in
And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. 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. It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. While the bathroom and kitchen of this 1920 Sears mail-order house in Munhall called The Crescent have been updated, most of the homes original features remain unchanged, said owner Molly Harbst, who learned it was among the first homes built in her Homestead Park neighborhood. ", "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. 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. They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. 172, later marketed as the. 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. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. Simply put, life was rougher. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. 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. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? The multi-million-dollar home has been red-tagged while two other Also, homes in southern Ohio may have financing documents through the "Norwood Sash and Door Company" of Norwood, Ohio. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. 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. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. 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. 181, and the early version of the. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. Its as sturdy as a house as Ive ever seen. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. The builder was W.L. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". In fact, the No. Thanks for your interest! 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. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. rebeccahunter1216@gmail.com. Keep in mind, however, that even though we have found well over 200 Sears houses in the PA and NJ suburbs of Philadelphia, those are densely populated areas. 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. 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. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. 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. Researchers Cindy Catanzaro and Andrew Mutch, and the late Donna Bakke, put together a document explaining Bea's work, and listing 345 of the houses that she found, which you can see. 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. She said she didnt know the house was built from a kit ordered from a catalog until after she bought it. , there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. 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. Built around 1917 home resembles the Hazelton Model C2025,l 1915-1920 and the Vallonia Model P13049A or P13049B, 1927-1932. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. 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.
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