national database of sears homes

Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. I think the reason the Sears house is so interesting is that most people associate them with the Wish Book catalog that came in the mail at Christmas. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. Andrew is our number-cruncher, and his blog, I joined the team shortly after Lara, Cindy and Andrew began, in earnest, to log the homes that they were finding. Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. 06/16/2022 . The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. 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. 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears No. There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. HBM (. 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. Originally marketed as the. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. That's why we love seeking them out! 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. One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. 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. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. 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. I think teardowns are the reason that Argyles are not positioned higher in our national database of Sears homes (the Argyle comes in at number 20). In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. 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. 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. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma 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. 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 Im looking at this cute little Cape Cod that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. 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. When the. national database of sears homes. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? 5008". Moreover, it was just more feasible to plunk down a house somewhere because there just werent as many homes on account of a smaller population. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. 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. , there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. We found and listed about three houses, I think but didn't really focus on La Porte much more than that day in 2015. It looks almost like a Sears, And, finally, we have this pretty rare model, the Sears. Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. Balloon frames could be built faster and generally only required one carpenter. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. 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. So, they are likely from Sears. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. ", "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? Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. 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 . 159, except for a closed pediment up in the front and side gable. Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. Tucker/Crossroads True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. 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. national database of sears homes. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! 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. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all 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. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. 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? 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. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for, 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. The last Sears Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940. Andrew spotted these two houses right next to each other, on W 11th Street: a No. Thank you for visiting! ", "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. 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. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Shipped by railroad boxcar, and then usually trucked to a home site, the average Sears Modern Home kit had about 25 tons of materials, with more than 30,000 parts. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. Here are a few: Andrew just today noticed this brick house with the Sears curlicue decorative iron strapping (only offered by Sears, and the only style of iron strapping ever offered by Sears). Also, considering that the article was published in April of 1912, all of these models would have been marketed only with their number, as no word names were given to the models until 1916. You can find catalog images for these models, in the links on the table at the end of this blog post: Also on W Johnson Road, we have new information from Nancy, who contacted me to let me know that she grew up in the Sears house shown below, a Sears. 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. 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. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. Boxabl 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. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. Also, homes in southern Ohio may have financing documents through the "Norwood Sash and Door Company" of Norwood, Ohio. Our team did some traveling around streets inside Philadelphia, in neighborhoods like Oxford Circle, Rhawnhurst, and Roxborough, to name a few, and added about 43 houses to our list, from these neighborhoods. 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. The. Where Are The Rest Of The Sears Houses In The U.S.? 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. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. The wild pursuit began with an a 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. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. 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. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? It was just recently sold again earlier this year. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". 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. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. Click to visit. 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. Photo from Realtor site. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. Through those two resources, we can see not only kit-house catalogs, but also lumber-yard plan books, which offered house plans to those who were building their homes, in the 19-teens through 1930s, in the traditional method, of hiring a contractor, and buying the building resources locally. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. 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). But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. The bulk order is the largest known order for Sears Modern Homes and led to Sears, Roebuck naming their "Carlin" model after the city. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the easier. 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. 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. In late 1930, sales of Searshomes were starting to tank. 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. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. The builder was W.L. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. 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). A kick-off celebration was held March 3, 2023, for the newly renamed BMO Stadium. On another block of W 11th Street, there is an example of the Sears Modern Home No. However, many houses described as Sears Homes are not true Sears Homes, being either the product of another kit home manufacturer or not a kit home at all. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. Marie's great-grandfather, Freeman Pretzinger, built this Sears. The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? 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. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. . 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. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). 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. They had. While researching the property, Harbst learned it was among the first homes built in the boroughs Homestead Park neighborhood. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd.