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. You can see that La Porte, Indiana is mentioned as one of the "built at" locations: We found four examples of what we believe to be the model No. Hi, Lauren! The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Chabot can help people identify if their home was built from a Sears kit if they provide her with an address of the property through the House Seekers website, which also has links to catalogs produced by the company and other sellers. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 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. to share their names with others who might be interested in One of the things that Marie has done for us, is to perfectly describe our search for Sears houses, as a "badass hobby" that is akin to a "huge historical treasure hunt". 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. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Natural Resources DataBase - NRDB The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. [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]. Simple theme. From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. Simply put, life was rougher. . Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. Sears mail-order homes prove plentiful in Western Pennsylvania 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). 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. Click here. We love her for giving us this to quote over and over again and for the many Sears houses that she has added to our list. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! 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. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? . 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. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. 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. Compare that to about 330 million people today. Images of Sears Homes Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan. 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. Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? 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. You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . Sears Modern Homes - Wikipedia catalogs for all central and satellite halos down to 10^06 MSun. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. 159, except for a closed pediment up in the front and side gable. Several Sears Modern Homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. Thank you for visiting! Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. 1232, later marketed as the No. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. Thanks for your interest! Capture from Google Streetview. 264B155. A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. The CNDDB is comprised of two data components: Text information and spatial information. 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. Other Sears houses were found dotting other areas of La Porte, but the biggest concentration of the early models, probably all from 1912, were in that Lakeview area. 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. Not all Sears houses became private residences. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. Enjoy! Chuck Holtzen has joined up with Lara to do research in Illinois, and has been helpful in adding a number of authenticated houses to our list. Click to visit. 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. Owners of these houses along the years may have, however, found paper shipping labels affixed to the back of trim pieces around doors or windows, or decorative moulding pieces. 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. 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). 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. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. [37] Similiar references are made to boyhood homes of Richard Nixon and Warren Buffett. Sarah is especially interested in searching the kit homes of Western New York State, and has found us some beautiful Sears houses, but she is especially revered by all of us for her extensive knowledge of kits from the Ray H. Bennett kit homes company, which was based out of North Tonawanda. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. The Top-Selling Sears Kit House - Sears Homes 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. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. easier. ", "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? My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). Newport Beach home dangling on edge after cliff collapses some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. 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. 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. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Mrs. Lask had been a well-respected and well-known docent at the Cincinnati Historical Society, who led interesting bus tours and lectures about Cincinnati architectural history, when she embarked on this project in the 1990s (which she did while in her 70s-- a testament to the concept of life-long learning). The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. Other models only appeared for one year. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. 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. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. small-town America even into the 1940 census). [4] Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. 7 Charming Sears Catalog Homes You Can Buy Today national database of sears homes - nyomkovetes-blog.hu 171 examples in La Porte. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. 1232 / No. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. | 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.? [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had There was one snippet in the press release that only a couple newspapers reprinted: "Following twelve years of usefulness, one old design was removed from the home catalogue in 1928, as antiquated after having been constructed more than 1700 times, which probably constitutes the world's record for any construction duplication from a single house plan, he [Betcone] says.". Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. Tucker/Crossroads [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. Fabricated houses sold primarily through mail order, Column detail from a Sears Vallonia house, pictured alongside its appearance in the catalog, Modern interpretations of Sears Modern Homes, "Did Sears, Roebuck Sell Homes in Canada? When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. 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. 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. Chabot said while Sears wasnt the first or only company to sell mail-order homes, they were unique among the competition. Sears Is Crumbling, but These 9 Sears Catalog Homes Stand Tall 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. 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?). 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. national database of sears homes - speedpackages.com Damn, it was like Stardew Valley! Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. 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. Action in the Community Through Service Homeless Shelter. 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. Home - National Housing Preservation Database (NHPD) 5008". 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). On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. Sears Houses In the U.S. Open to the public. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. 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. Kmart History | Search Archives | Sears Holdings Alumni | sears.com | kmart.com : Thursday, Mar. As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them. 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. 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. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. The House that Came in the Mail - 99% Invisible You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. All these years later it is still a fortress.. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. 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. This phrase is trademarked and cannot be used without permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. Thats cheaper than many tiny houses and with space to actually breathe and have more than one person live with you without wanting to kill each other. 126 and a Sears No. 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. 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. 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. Please contact me if you would like a free In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! 181, and the early version of the. 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. If you don't know what that means, look at these two examples, and note where the orange arrow points that little extra strip of roofing that makes a sort of closed triangle. 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. small-town America, 1920! Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. People need move-in ready housing and they need it fast, whether single professionals are seeking apartments and luxury condos or families need affordable freestanding houses. Thousands of developments in cities, suburbs, and exurbs have sprung up since with a seemingly endless amount of homes that were built between World War II and today. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. Images are available And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. I think that we had only a handful of houses already on the list a few. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Looks like Yoho probably bought plan #466 from H. L. Wilson, the actual designer. You can clearly see a major difference on this side of the houses. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. 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. Photo from Realtor site. Simply put, life was rougher. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. 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. 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. Many of the famous designs were commandeered from other sources and/or purchased from architects but given just enough change to be advertised as their own. Welcome to Sears Homes! Jud Yoho may also have been the designer behind the popular Sears model called the Hollywood. The Sears Tower is nearly finished. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. The Greenview/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 new owner was a Sears House fan - even produced a short doc film about the house and how she updated it. 1232 click. 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. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. ", "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. Documented Sears houses have been found across the United States and in a few locations in Canada. homes for rent in laplace 70068. national database of sears homes. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Modern Home 264B155 - Two-story Craftsman-style Bungalow - 1916 Sears Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly Suburbs and Sears The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. For more information on who we are, and what we do, visit our website: All photos in these blog posts are the property of the author of this blog- link to this blog. 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. 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". Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. national database of sears homes. 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. I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. the case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. There havent been any major structural changes, she said. 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. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. 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. While seeing a bunch of Sears homes jammed together in a cookie cutter suburb wasnt a very common sight in the 1930s and 40s, they still got knocked together like IKEA furniture compared to building a home from scratch. 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. Basic cross-gabled two-story farmhouses are to be found almost everywhere in towns and cities as well as many rural areas throughout the United States. She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. I was intrigued by the concept of people picking out a house from a catalog, she said. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. 2) Look for shipping labels. A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? 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.

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