Simply put, life was rougher. 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. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. The most popular models appeared in the catalog for multiple years. Enjoy! national database of sears homes Natural Resources DataBase - NRDB 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. Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. 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). Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? 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. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? 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. 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. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! I know of several other models in McCandless. 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". 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. Our list, in fact, began with 345 Sears houses that Mrs. Lask had found in the Cincinnati area, as part of a Masters Degree thesis project at the University of Cincinnati. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. . Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. 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 Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. Because lets get real: those adorable and affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans and their families. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. 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? Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly Suburbs and Sears Balloon frames could be built faster and generally only required one carpenter. Documented Sears houses have been found across the United States and in a few locations in Canada. The House that Came in the Mail - 99% Invisible Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? 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. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. 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. Finally, if you really want to understand the basics of what a Sears Modern Homes kit house is, and what it is not, you might find this blog post of mine to be helpful and informative. Hi, Lauren! 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [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. Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. Chabot focuses her research on scouring mortgages and deed records, old newspaper articles and other sources to identify kit homes sold by Sears. 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 buy a plot of land and build from there. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. The American Lumberman article referred to this area where the houses were being built, as the Fairview neighborhood. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all 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. 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update homes for rent in laplace 70068. national database of sears homes. Open to the public. national database of sears homes. Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes, We started looking around La Porte, Indiana, in 2015. 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. 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. 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. We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. 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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. 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. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. 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. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. small-town America even into the 1940 census). 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. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. There havent been any major structural changes, she said. I didn't have very many leads for Kevin Riordan, for the NJ suburbs but, for the PA side of the Philadelphia suburbs that's a different matter, indeed! From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). Because these homes were constructed using pre-cut lumber and plans provided by Sears, these homes can be considered to be "Sears Modern Homes". If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. While researching the property, Harbst learned it was among the first homes built in the boroughs Homestead Park neighborhood. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. I think that maybe Google maps Streetview wasn't great quality on many of the streets. 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. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. 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. 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. So, I'll just post a nice selection here. 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. Photo from Realtor site. Sometimes researchers get lucky and find facts and figures in old company newsletters, personal papers of Sears managers and executives, historical newspapers, and archival interviews conducted with people who worked in the department in the 1930's and 1940's. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. Compare house designs to original catalog images. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. 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. Mrs. Lask had been a well-respected and well-known docent at the Cincinnati Historical Society, who led interesting bus tours and lectures about Cincinnati architectural history, when she embarked on this project in the 1990s (which she did while in her 70s-- a testament to the concept of life-long learning). 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. small-town America, 1920! . People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. Images are available Price: $179,900. The multi-million-dollar home has been red-tagged while two other Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that about 70% of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. 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. There are many very close lookalikes to this model, so we aren't always confident that they are from Sears, when we spy them in the wild, but this house has Sears curlicues on the hinge end of the decorative iron strapping. 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.. Square . 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. [17] Later on in the Modern Homes timeline, Sears had in-office designers but titled them as "experts" rather than actual architects.[17]. Thanks! In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. 171 examples in La Porte. So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. Not all Sears houses became private residences. 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. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. Did materials and labor really get that much more expensive between now and then? 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. So, each house that we find through these records, represents a great deal of digging, and lots of amassed knowledge in how to attack the task because each county's records system is a little different than others. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. [18] National and regional competitors in the catalog and kit home market included Aladdin, Bennett, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Brothers, Lewis, Pacific Ready Cut Homes, Sterling and Montgomery Ward (Wardway) Homes. 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.