, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. Is My House a Sears House? The Nine Easy Signs. - Sears Modern Homes Betcone spoke of how housing styles were drastically changing and how many customers wanted more efficient, streamlined designs. Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. Had the. 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. They had. That, still, is only helpful if we can find a plat map online for a subdivision called Tanglewood Estates! I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. 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. 171 examples in La Porte. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. national database of sears homes. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. 02, 2023 : History: Catalogs: Homes: Products: Brands: Stores: People Historic Homes : . 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. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. 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. But who knows, maybe well see tiny shipping container homes in a museum someday after we take back the rest of the real estate after the revolution. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. 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. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. "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. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. 7 Charming Sears Catalog Homes You Can Buy Today 159, except for a closed pediment up in the front and side gable. 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. A recent Tribune-Review story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless that has most of its original features intact drew scores of letters and comments from Pittsburgh area residents interested in learning more about the unique role these houses played in U.S. history. Sears Homes Enthusiasts One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. Text information is available through RareFind 5 and provides essential information about special status species and occurrences. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Our list, by the way, began in the early years of our research group. 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 don't feel comfortable making that assumption. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. 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. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. 306 Highland, Madison, WI. 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) 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. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. Marie's great-grandfather, Freeman Pretzinger, built this Sears. 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. small-town America, 1920! 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". You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). 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. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. Related: Floating Chairs and Texas McMansions | McMansions vs Really Big Houses | Strange Mansion in Carmel, Indiana | What is a Mansion. You'll also notice that the No. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. Capture from Google Streetview. 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. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. 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". Because these homes were constructed using pre-cut lumber and plans provided by Sears, these homes can be considered to be "Sears Modern Homes". In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. Complete List of Sears Homes | Aurora, IL rebeccahunter1216@gmail.com. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Whitehouse. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" the case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. national database of sears homes - nyomkovetes-blog.hu You can clearly see a major difference on this side of the houses. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. Powered by, This September 2017 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this short video story by the Washington Post. 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. ", "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? So, they are likely from Sears. 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. Sears Houses In the U.S. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears homes. presentation, nows your chance! From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. An open floor plan with sensible . 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. 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. 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. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. Park, MD. 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. 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. 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. She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. HBM (. None of these houses are authenticated through mortgage or deed research, but they are spot-on matches for the models, and we feel certain enough of their origin, to add them to our database. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . June 1, 2022. by etc north vernon covid testing. 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. Jud Yoho may also have been the designer behind the popular Sears model called the Hollywood. 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears 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. 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. 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. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update The new owner was a Sears House fan - even produced a short doc film about the house and how she updated it. 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. 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. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. However, in La Porte, we've also found five examples* of houses that look like a great match for the No. 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. Price: $179,900. Also, homes in southern Ohio may have financing documents through the "Norwood Sash and Door Company" of Norwood, Ohio. Sears Lewiston: A Sears Model Home in New Jersey - Sears House Seeker Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. Other Sears houses were found dotting other areas of La Porte, but the biggest concentration of the early models, probably all from 1912, were in that Lakeview area. A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. 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 group has identified nearly 540 of the estimated 1,000 Sears mail-order homes that are believed to have been constructed in the region. by . 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? But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! The House that Came in the Mail - 99% Invisible We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. BMO, LAFC, and Angel City FC leaders were joined by special guests Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Mia Hamm for the . 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. 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. My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. 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. 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. I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 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. Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. to share their names with others who might be interested in Teen hikers rescued after days stuck in California snowstorm I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. muhammad ali i am the greatest speech transcript . [17] Later on in the Modern Homes timeline, Sears had in-office designers but titled them as "experts" rather than actual architects.[17]. [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. 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. At one point, I realized that I needed to organize a list of online catalog resources, so I put together this blog post, which has links to catalogs not only from Daily Bungalow and AntiqueHome, but to the many catalogs uploaded on another key resource, Archive.org (have you donated lately?). In areas where the land is already mostly developed and zoned, its not that simple. 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. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. Photo from Realtor site. 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. Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. 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. Lets find out! Additionally, at this point in the Sears Modern Homes program, the homes were sold/packaged only with standard-length wood, so none of the framing lumber would have been pre-cut (and, therefore, there would be no alpha-numeric stamps on the wood pieces in the house). 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. 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. CNDDB Maps and Data. Welcome to the New NSCAA. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. Modern Home 264B110 - Farmhouse style - 1916 Sears House Plans If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! | Sears Modern Homes", "Sears Houses in Arlington Virginia: A Comprehensive List", "How Sears built an entire local neighborhood", "Historic Structures Crystal Lake Historical Society", "Sears Houses in Elgin Illinois arranged according to model name", "Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes in the Philly Suburbs and Sears House Hunters", "Where are the rest of the Sears houses in the U.S.? 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. But, as of this date in 2021, here are leading areas in the U.S. with high numbers of Sears houses. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. Fabricated houses sold primarily through mail order, Column detail from a Sears Vallonia house, pictured alongside its appearance in the catalog, Modern interpretations of Sears Modern Homes, "Did Sears, Roebuck Sell Homes in Canada? 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. Those kinds of topics are cleared up, in this blog post: When I chatted with Kevin Riordan, I also sent him a list of several nice Sears houses that he could consider photographing for his article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. 06/16/2022 . 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. 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. Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. The CNDDB is comprised of two data components: Text information and spatial information. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. 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. Images are available Sears Homes 1908-1914 Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. The most popular models appeared in the catalog for multiple years. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. Thanks to the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the NRDB will continue to be updated and available at least through 2023, and in some form, beyond that. Welcome to Sears Homes! Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . [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. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. 2) Look for shipping labels. Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. Residential construction was drastically down nationwide due to the Great Depression. 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 . A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". 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. 172, later marketed as the. 5008". All these years later it is still a fortress.. In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. 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. Sarah is especially interested in searching the kit homes of Western New York State, and has found us some beautiful Sears houses, but she is especially revered by all of us for her extensive knowledge of kits from the Ray H. Bennett kit homes company, which was based out of North Tonawanda. Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly S 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. 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 is unknown whether any were purchased or built. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. national database of sears homes - dowdcreative.com PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. Images are available Photo from Lake County Assessor. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago.
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