Freestanding suburban or rural homes were more likely to stand alone in undeveloped lots instead of planned tracts that were set aside by federal and state governments and/or builders that had uniformity in mind. However, in La Porte, we've also found five examples* of houses that look like a great match for the No. 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. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . 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. 159 has two full stories on that non-porch side of the house. 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. Had the. In a second blog post, I'll show the several probable kit houses that we've found in LaPorte, Indiana, from other companies. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. 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. 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. Enjoy! Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? 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. So, they are likely from Sears. 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. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. Sears houses can be identified or authenticated using the following methods. We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. The truth is out there, and I think you've found it! HBM (. Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes, We started looking around La Porte, Indiana, in 2015. 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. , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? national database of sears homes. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. 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. My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. Public records: From 1911 to 1933, Sears offered home mortgages and Sears company officials or the Sears, Roebuck corporation may be named on the mortgage or deed associated with the property where the home was constructed. While these features werent in every single Sears home, they still set the stage for home builders to realize what people wanted in their new digs because of how much their quality of life was improved. Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; Originally marketed as the. Because lets get real: those adorable and affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans and their families. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. All these years later it is still a fortress.. Compare that to about 330 million people today. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. 181, and the early version of the. 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. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. The American Lumberman article referred to this area where the houses were being built, as the Fairview neighborhood. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. That is unique to Sears. A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. 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. 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. [1] Sears Modern Homes were purchased primarily by customers in East Coast and Midwest states, but have been located as far south as Florida, as far west as California, and as far north as Alaska and Canada. Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. 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. 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 house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. 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. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. 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. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. 02, 2023 : History: Catalogs: Homes: Products: Brands: Stores: People Historic Homes : . She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. ", "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? Images are available Several Sears Modern Homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Hi, Lauren! 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. We cannot be absolutely certain, but the numbers do not support it. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. 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 could keep manufacturing costs down compared to standard builders and competing catalogs because they had their own manufacturing facilities by then and were able to mass-produce wood, asphalt, insulation material, hardware, and everything else needed to produce a home that wasnt a Habitat for Humanity hut. 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. They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. Photo from Realtor site. 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 know of several other models in McCandless. 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. 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). In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. Chabot said while Sears wasnt the first or only company to sell mail-order homes, they were unique among the competition. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The ability to mass-produce the materials used in Sears homes reduced manufacturing costs, which allowed Sears to pass along the savings in lower prices for customers. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma Its not like nowadays where you move, wait for your stuff to arrive, and if youre a work-at-home like me, youre pretty much unable to work while you wait for a technician to ensure you have Internet access. Marie's great-grandfather, Freeman Pretzinger, built this Sears. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. Another old model found predominantly in that Lakeview area, was the. ", "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. Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly S 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. 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. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Did materials and labor really get that much more expensive between now and then? 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. [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. Contains merger trees and halo . 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. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. Asbury Methodist Village Communications Dept. Click to visit. [5] The method was originally named in the sense that the structure was light and could be lifted away like a balloon. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. On another block of W 11th Street, there is an example of the Sears Modern Home No. So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. Click here. I see you posted about the origins of Hollywood three years ago! The larger Victorian-style houses that were already there and scant in number were out of reach for working class first-time home buyers. 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. 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. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? 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 . Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. 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. The multi-million-dollar home has been red-tagged while two other Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. Construction of the houses took nine months which were completed in 1919. 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. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? Damn, it was like Stardew Valley! Honor Bilt homes used the best quality materials that Sears could source and they were designed with what was then state of the art heating, plumbing, and electricity. The bulk order is the largest known order for Sears Modern Homes and led to Sears, Roebuck naming their "Carlin" model after the city. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). 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. But, in the case of the early, non pre-cut houses, when we know that a large number of houses were bought by a company (or offered up on spec, by Sears), we sometimes see that special versions were created for these neighborhoods, specifically. 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). Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. 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. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. You'll also notice that the No. Im looking at this cute little. [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]. A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. 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. 264B155. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. . Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. Wonderful, Malissa! 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. We found and listed about three houses, I think but didn't really focus on La Porte much more than that day in 2015. Lg Refrigerator Temperature Min Max, Cardinal Health 2017 Annual Report, How To Cook Lettuce Indian Style, Friday Brushed Canvas Extra Slipcovers, Pacinos Italian Family Restaurant Menu, Thekkady Tourist Places In Tamil, How To Get A Job At Target, , Cardinal Health 2017 Annual Report, How To Cook Lettuce Indian Style, Friday Brushed Canvas Extra 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. 5 Jun. Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. This Sears mail-order house named The Crescent was built in Munhall in 1920, according to owner Molly Harbst. And it led me to dig a little deeper into the history of my community.. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. Many of these post 1940 homes were based on models from the 1940 and earlier Sears catalogs but not all were, leading to debate over whether these homes qualify as "Sears Modern Homes". Click to visit. . 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. These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. 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. You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . 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's why we love seeking them out! Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. 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). ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. I'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. 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. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? 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. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. 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. 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. In many cases, we may be able to tell you of homes in your town, that have actually been authenticated as Sears homes, and, in some cases, we may be able to tell you that the house in question is a kit house from another company (consider, , All photos in these blog posts are the property of the author of this blog- link to this blog. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. New York state is 4th, with 1,679 houses found. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. 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. 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?).
