national database of sears homes national database of sears homes

Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! "The Sears Homes of Illinois" has more than 200 color photos of the most popular designs that Sears offered and can be very helpful in identifying Sears Homes. , there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. 181, and the early version of the. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. Thank you for visiting! Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. It looks almost like a Sears, And, finally, we have this pretty rare model, the Sears. 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. 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. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. 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. 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. 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. 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. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. 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. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. 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. 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 We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. You'll also notice that the No. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. I was intrigued by the concept of people picking out a house from a catalog, she said. Did materials and labor really get that much more expensive between now and then? 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. Simple theme. [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]. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Because lets get real: affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans, 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. 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. Sears Modern Homes - Wikipedia In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. national database of sears homes You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. 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. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? Price: $179,900. Sears mail-order homes prove plentiful in Western Pennsylvania Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". It was built in 1917. 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. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. Data Portal - NASA According to a review written by Mary Ann O'Boyle of Takoma Park, Maryland, her Sears home feels "unabashedly American, the kind of house you see in movies about the good old days" and "allows me to connect with the past". 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.". On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. 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. 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. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. In some cases, homeowners used plans from original Sears homes to recreate a modern version of a Sears home. From 1908 to 1940, the Sears Modern Homes Program offered complete mail-order houses to the would-be homeowner what would come to be called "kit homes." Customers could select from dozens of different models in Sears Modern Homes Catalog, order blueprints, send in a check, and a few weeks later everything they needed would arrive in a train car, its door secured with a small red wax . She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. 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. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. 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. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the 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. I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. So, I'll just post a nice selection here. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. 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. But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. Hi, Lauren! Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? 181, Sears No. The article mentioned Sears having sold 50 houses in La Porte, Indiana but, interestingly, Sears had actually provided the funding and the houses, knowing that the area was in need of housing right away, and offered to have the houses paid for on time. Sears Homes 1908-1914 muhammad ali i am the greatest speech transcript . Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. 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. The Sears Tower is nearly finished. Im looking at this cute little. I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. 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 . 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. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. Square . We found and listed about three houses, I think but didn't really focus on La Porte much more than that day in 2015. 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. Open to the public. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. 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. Enjoy! Rosemary Thornton Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. I just loved the look of it, she said. 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. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. Thanks for your interest! We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. 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. So, they are likely from Sears. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. I learn all kinds of interesting stuff here; thanks! 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. 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. 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. contacting them by clicking on their name. 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. ", "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? 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. easier. presentation, nows your chance! Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. Identifying Sears Homes has become a pastime among history enthusiasts because of their sturdy structure, the do-it-yourself nature of construction, and the popular architectural design concepts. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma 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. One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. Tucker/Crossroads 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. In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. I'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. Another old model found predominantly in that Lakeview area, was the. 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. Images of Sears Homes I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. You can clearly see a major difference on this side of the houses. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. 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. This is what these two models look like, in the catalogs (these are from the 1911/1912 catalog): Up until this point, we weren't really sure what the difference was between these two models. national database of sears homes - thenscaa.com The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. national database of sears homes - onehundredeggs.com Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears No. 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. The last Sears Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940. 06/16/2022 . She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. 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. I think that we had only a handful of houses already on the list a few. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. 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. Looks like Yoho probably bought plan #466 from H. L. Wilson, the actual designer. 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 Rossville/No. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. 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 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. Open to the public. Jud Yoho may also have been the designer behind the popular Sears model called the Hollywood. Where Are The Rest Of The Sears Houses In The U.S.? 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. small-town America even into the 1940 census). 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). The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. Originally marketed as the. 159. 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. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. Harbst said it wasnt until after she bought the house that she learned homes were once sold through mail-order catalogs. [6] Plumbing, electrical fixtures, and heating systems were options that could be ordered at additional cost; they were many families' first steps to modern HVAC systems, kitchens, and bathrooms. 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. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. 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. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. 175, 1911/12 catalog image for the Sears Modern Home No. Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. Homes Index ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? That is unique to Sears. Michigan, Indiana, and New Jersey have large overall numbers, as well. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. CNDDB Maps and Data - California Department of Fish and Wildlife But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. Other models only appeared for one year. [5] The method was originally named in the sense that the structure was light and could be lifted away like a balloon. The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update 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. I know of several other models in McCandless. 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. 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. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" An open floor plan with sensible . Photo from Realtor site. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. 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. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. For this week's listing of the week, we decided to find seven charming Sears Catalog homes you can actually buy today. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed to share their names with others who might be interested in contacting them by clicking on their name. Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. Modern Home 264B110 - Farmhouse style - 1916 Sears House Plans 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. 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. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Your comment will appear after it has been previewed and approved by the blog author. by . . They had. There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 159 examples that have a closed pediment in the gable (and a porch style difference). We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. 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. 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.