national database of sears homes

Text information is available through RareFind 5 and provides essential information about special status species and occurrences. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Open to the public. Its as sturdy as a house as Ive ever seen. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. small-town America, 1920! Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. 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. , there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. 1232 / No. In this case, the problem was that we couldn't see the left side of these models, just by looking at the catalog and the floor plans. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Residential construction was drastically down nationwide due to the Great Depression. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,600 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is #3 in U.S. states with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes found. Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. 02, 2023 : History: Catalogs: Homes: Products: Brands: Stores: People Historic Homes : . The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. Park, MD. 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". Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". 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. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. Square . Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 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. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. An open floor plan with sensible . 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. 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. The rest of these models are singletons, from the mid 1920s to early 1930s. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. As I detailed in the account of the rise and fall of the Sears empire, this literally led them to become the largest retailer in America because they had so many burners going at onceand their Modern Homes kits, and even the home buying process itself, were part of that in addition to catalog and retail sales. 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. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. Later, Sears constructed a second mill in Port Newark, New Jersey and purchased the Norwood Sash and Door Company in Norwood, Ohio. . Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. I just loved the look of it, she said. While researching the property, Harbst learned it was among the first homes built in the boroughs Homestead Park neighborhood. The best guidebook to the basic history of the Sears Modern Homes program, is the book, Houses By Mail, put out by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and written by Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl. Original paperwork for the house including blueprints and letters of correspondence from Sears. This is the Lakeview area where we found most of the examples of the 115, 171, and 159, as well as a number of examples of the No. I learn all kinds of interesting stuff here; thanks! Local Sears house enthusiast Karen DeJeet, who owns a Hamilton model in Forest Hills and is a member of the Sears House Finder team, has already done much of the work identifying the mail-order homes still standing in the region. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. 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. 171 often has a full front porch that ends up extending all the way to the left side of the house. That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. That's what happens 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?). 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. 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. In a second blog post, I'll show the several probable kit houses that we've found in LaPorte, Indiana, from other companies. easier. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. Your comment will appear after it has been previewed and approved by the blog author. On another block of W 11th Street, there is an example of the Sears Modern Home No. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. The. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. 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 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. 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. national database of sears homes. 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. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. 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'll notice that most are in states east of the Mississippi River, with highest overall state totals in Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York. During the later era of pre-cut houses, we don't usually put homes on our list, if they have these kinds of design differences. 172, later marketed as the. But, as of this date in 2021, here are leading areas in the U.S. with high numbers of Sears houses. Hi, Lauren! Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. Our list, by the way, began in the early years of our research group. Thanks! 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. 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. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. 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. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. Park, MD. 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. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. Open to the public. Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; 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. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. 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. 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. New York state is 4th, with 1,679 houses found. hennessy privilege limited edition / what is mc hammer doing now 2020 / national database of sears homes. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . 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. When the. The American Lumberman article referred to this area where the houses were being built, as the Fairview neighborhood. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). We just can't say, because we can't access those records. 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. 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. 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. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. 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. 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. 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. This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. We also find street names that have changed (without our knowing that), or, especially for folks who bought their house in 1930-32 (the waning years of the mortgage program), we find that folks lost their homes during the depression, so we can't pin them down using the 1930 or 1940 census records. 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 think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. None of these houses are authenticated through mortgage or deed research, but they are spot-on matches for the models, and we feel certain enough of their origin, to add them to our database. While Sears no longer has records of where each of the nearly 75,000 mail-order homes it sold were built, it does main an extensive archive of the models that were available as well as the history of its Modern Homes division. 1. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. 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. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. Sears would be listed as the architect, and because they often gave out mortgages, you can find out if the previous owner(s) had a Sears mortgage or not. 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. I don't feel comfortable making that assumption. 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. 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. Marie's great-grandfather, Freeman Pretzinger, built this Sears. 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. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. 159, except for a closed pediment up in the front and side gable. presentation, nows your chance! Im looking at this cute little. Because lets get real: those adorable and affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans and their families. We just love the Walton model! 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. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. 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. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. 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. The HMS data portal is a collection of models, simulations and synthetic observations of the Sun. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. June 1, 2022. by etc north vernon covid testing. 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. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. After several years, Sears also began assigning names to the various models. Welcome to Sears Homes! Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. 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. 06/16/2022 . Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all Please contact me if you would like a free The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. The Rossville/No. Sears Modern Homes built in the 1930s may have a small circled "SR" cast into the bathtub in the lower corner (furthest from the tub spout and near the floor) and on the underside of the kitchen or bathroom sink. [email protected]. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. [4] Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. . 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. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Photo from Realtor site. [5] The method was originally named in the sense that the structure was light and could be lifted away like a balloon. 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. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. The truth is out there, and I think you've found it! 306 Highland, Madison, WI. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. 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. Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. 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. Camden County would be a great place to search, because we know that there are Sears houses in Collingswood, Haddon Township, Haddonfield, and Haddon Heights but, how many? It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. Having just covered the Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores, something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. , 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. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: [email protected]. I know of several other models in McCandless. I was intrigued by the concept of people picking out a house from a catalog, she said. Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. Had the. 181 (264P181) in the 1914 Sears Modern Homes catalog, This image is from the 1913 Sears Modern Homes catalog re-print, available, 374 Hawthorne Street, La Porte, Indiana Sears Modern Home No. 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. 5 Jun. Originally marketed as the. The Sears Tower is nearly finished. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Betcone spoke of how housing styles were drastically changing and how many customers wanted more efficient, streamlined designs. 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.. Search. 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, Sears No 137 In Mendham, New Jersey, Morris County. Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. small-town America even into the 1940 census). But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. . You can clearly see a major difference on this side of the houses. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. Andrew is responsible for adding hundreds (and hundreds) of Sears houses to our database, especially in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., in numerous counties in Michigan, and a gold mine of houses in Westchester County, New York, especially in Yonkers. Im looking at this cute little Cape Cod that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. One key set of homes that we are fortunate to have on our list, comes from the research of noted Architectural Historian, Rebecca L. Hunter. Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. 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. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. 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). 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. 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. One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. Here is one of the eleven examples in La Porte: This early version of the No. 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. Kmart History | Search Archives | Sears Holdings Alumni | sears.com | kmart.com : Thursday, Mar. I see you posted about the origins of Hollywood three years ago! As some areas begin to see population booms, such as the tech triangle region of Raleigh, Durham, and Cary as more companies and tech talent make exodus from California and New York based on what I hear from taxi drivers and my university contacts in the region at games conferences every year? The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Sales peaked in 1929, just before the Great Depression. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. 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. 159 has two full stories on that non-porch side of the house.

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