Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. 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. Your comment will appear after it has been previewed and approved by the blog author. That's what happens That's what happens The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. 2) Look for shipping labels. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. 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. So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was. 171 examples in La Porte. Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes. The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update ", "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? 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. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? 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. 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. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. 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. 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. Between 1908 and 1940, Sears Roebuck and Co. published specialty catalogs offering house plans and building materials. Many of the homes original features remain intact. 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. 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. 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. [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. Hi, Lauren! 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. However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. 168/Matoka, 301 Weller Avenue, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears Modern Home No. 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. Ohio resident Marie Vore reached out to us one day, on our Sears Modern Homes Facebook page, with a question about a possible Sears house that she had run across in a real estate listing. the case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. 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. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. 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. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had The American Lumberman article referred to this area where the houses were being built, as the Fairview neighborhood. Open to the public. 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. 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.. I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. 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. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) Many of these post 1940 homes were based on models from the 1940 and earlier Sears catalogs but not all were, leading to debate over whether these homes qualify as "Sears Modern Homes". 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. Wonderful, Malissa! At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. 5008". Other models only appeared for one year. This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. 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 . Photo from Realtor site. Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. I think that maybe Google maps Streetview wasn't great quality on many of the streets. Where Are The Rest Of The Sears Houses In The U.S.? 175, 1911/12 catalog image for the Sears Modern Home No. Andrew spotted these two houses right next to each other, on W 11th Street: a No. However, these stamps were not used on lumber shipped before 1916, when Sears first started offering pre-cut lumber. Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. Price: $179,900. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. The rest of these models are singletons, from the mid 1920s to early 1930s. 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 So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. to share their names with others who might be interested in Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. 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. 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. 172, later marketed as the. The Rossville/No. 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. 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 kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. 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. Photo from Realtor site. 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. 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. One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. 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. 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. Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. The builder was W.L. "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. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. 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). [5] The method was originally named in the sense that the structure was light and could be lifted away like a balloon. Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. 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. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. 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. 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. I've always seen this one in the catalogs, and thought it was kind of ungainly in proportions, but we hadn't found one before this one this is a pretty good match, though not perfect, but, in the days before pre-cut, we are more likely to see some modifications to the models. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. 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. 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. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. I'm currently working my way through the Burlington County records, but they are limited, and set up in a way that makes the process very time consuming.
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