This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. The wild pursuit began with an a I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. Andrew spotted these two houses right next to each other, on W 11th Street: a No. Powered by, This September 2017 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this short video story by the Washington Post. Really, they couldn't find any space in there for the Modern Homes records? Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. Tailor the data to your community to help preserve your local assets or explore national data to better understand the need for affordable housing and the dynamics of the publicly supported housing market. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. The Greenview/No. New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. Simple theme. 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. However, in La Porte, we've also found five examples* of houses that look like a great match for the No. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. Rosemary Thornton HBM (. This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). national database of sears homes. 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. to share their names with others who might be interested in
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. sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears homes. We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. Later, Sears constructed a second mill in Port Newark, New Jersey and purchased the Norwood Sash and Door Company in Norwood, Ohio. I think that maybe Google maps Streetview wasn't great quality on many of the streets. 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all 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. 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. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. 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. [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. Damn, it was like Stardew Valley! 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. 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. 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. 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. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? 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. Wonderful, Malissa! 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. 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". The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. 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 financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. Sears houses can be identified or authenticated using the following methods. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. 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. Without authentication, however, we can't be 100% certain that this house was ordered from Sears, as numerous kit and non-kit companies offered a very similar model, and these kinds of stories that are passed down over time, often turn out to be mistaken (with the house actually being a model from a different kit company, or simply resembling a model offered by Sears). 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. Balloon frames could be built faster and generally only required one carpenter. And, shortly after me, came Karen DeJeet, a Pittsburgh resident who learned of Sears houses when she found out that she lived in one (the. Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. 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. She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. Not all Sears houses became private residences. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. 2) Look for shipping labels. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. 1232 click. Depending on where you live, the thought of just building a small or medium sized house can sound totally bizarre or perhaps totally doable if youve got miles and miles of wide open space to work with. Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. 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. 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. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. 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. Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. 159 has two full stories on that non-porch side of the house. The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. I-79 restrictions begin Wednesday night in Allegheny County, West Deer firefighters respond to bedroom fire, heavy smoke at Poplar Street home, Man shot dead in McKeesport the 4th slaying this week and 5th in a month, Medical examiner IDs man killed in McKeesport shooting, Report on Allegheny County Jail deaths finds no 'trends or common factors' that led to them, Historic Hempfield cemetery seeks volunteers, donors to help care for grounds, 2nd annual 'Restaurant Ramble' features 10 downtown New Kensington eateries, Tom Sizemore, Saving Private Ryan actor, dies after brain aneurysm, TV Talk: Mel Brooks History of the World, Part II belatedly arrives on Hulu, Western Pennsylvania's trusted news source, story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless, number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. 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. Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. We just can't say, because we can't access those records. 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. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! 181, and the early version of the. 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. That's what happens national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) 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. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. Argyles also tend to get messed up and hard to recognize like this one at 6818 N. Oriole, Chicago or this one at 1302 Edgewood, Lake Forest. For this week's listing of the week, we decided to find seven charming Sears Catalog homes you can actually buy today. In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. 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. Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? 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. Another old model found predominantly in that Lakeview area, was the. Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. 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. We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. 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. All these years later it is still a fortress.. One of the biggest questions that researchers have been wanting to answer is: What is the Top-Selling Sears House of All Time? A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. Because the various kit home companies often copied plan elements or designs from each other, there are a number of catalog and kit models from different manufacturers that look similar or identical to models offered by Sears. I see you posted about the origins of Hollywood three years ago! . . Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. 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. Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. 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. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. Catarina is quite well informed about Sears houses in the D.C. area, but also has researched the origins of many of the Lewis Homes kit homes in the area. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). Thanks for your interest! In 1908, Sears issued its first specialty catalog for houses, Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans, featuring 44 house styles ranging in price from US $360$2,890. 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). "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. 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. 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. 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. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 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. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the The group has identified nearly 540 of the estimated 1,000 Sears mail-order homes that are believed to have been constructed in the region. 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. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears No. 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. That's why we love seeking them out! Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. Washington D.C. and its nearby suburbs have an unusually rich cache of kit houses stashed away in some of the leafy, well-tended neighborhoods where 1920s houses still shine. However, we are pretty much limited to counties which have online accessible historic records, and to counties which we are able to physically visit to search in person this means that there are some counties out there with lots of undiscovered Sears houses, because we can't get to the records. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. rebeccahunter1216@gmail.com. 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. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . 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. easier. Whitehouse. Did materials and labor really get that much more expensive between now and then? Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? This table provides a Streetview link for each house (or, occasionally, a real estate listing link), and, for houses I've shown, but not provided a catalog image of, you'll find a link to a catalog image, as well. Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. In fact, the No. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. 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. Enjoy! The last Sears Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940. CNDDB Maps and Data. 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. I don't know the model, but it was a 2 story - 6 room house - 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, living room, dining room, and very small galley type kitchen. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. 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. marlon brando children; pete the cat and his four groovy buttons comprehension questions; nolin lake conditions; dan majerle hall of fame; dayton floor drill press,belt Images are available houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had 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 . when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all It mightve been easier to get a job or start a business off the bat compared to the hoops and bureaucracy we have for both these days, but there was no U-Haul or Pods to make moving easier. 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. We thought it might be of interest to those readers to point out some more of the history of Sears houses in the greater Pittsburgh area, said Chabot, whose family still owns a Sears Silverdale model home in Northampton, Mass., that was built by her great-grandparents in 1911. 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. 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. Given the more disposable nature of shipping container homes and the portability granted by some tiny houses, its kind of sad in a way that this current crop of Internet-order homes is not only not as simple or affordable as it was yesteryear, but also carries less permanence compared to these mail-order houses. 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. 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 mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. Walker O. Lewis (primarily before early 1930), William C. Reed (primarily from 1922 - 1929), Nicholas Wieland (sometimes spelled Weiland), Shipping labels: Often found on the back of. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. The rest of these models are singletons, from the mid 1920s to early 1930s. The HMS data portal is a collection of models, simulations and synthetic observations of the Sun. 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. 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. Simply put, life was rougher. I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. 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. [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. 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. It was built in 1917. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Marie gives the perfect explanation of our Sears House hunt, in this. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Had the. 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. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". Welcome to Sears Homes! 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. So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. Hi, Lauren! This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. Welcome to the New NSCAA. Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. 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. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. Jud Yoho may also have been the designer behind the popular Sears model called the Hollywood. 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. Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. 159, but it's likely especially because we have found interior views of a couple, and we think we see Sears staircase balusters and newel.