Marie gives the perfect explanation of our Sears House hunt, in this. national database of sears homes. 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. , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. "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. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. 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. Damn, it was like Stardew Valley! 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. Wonderful, Malissa! 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. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. 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. 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. Orders were placed by mail, the See more 5,581 people like this 5,890 people follow this https://www.searshouses.com/ cyn.catanzaro@gmail.com Asbury Methodist Village Communications Dept. Simple theme. There havent been any major structural changes, she said. 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 it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. The rest of these models are singletons, from the mid 1920s to early 1930s. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was. 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. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? 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. In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. Park, MD. 1232 click. I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. 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. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. 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. That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home national database of sears homes. 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. 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 national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. We found and listed about three houses, I think but didn't really focus on La Porte much more than that day in 2015. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. 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). The most popular models appeared in the catalog for multiple years. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Another key figure in the original research into Sears kit houses, was a woman named Beatrice Lask. 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. 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". I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. Please contact me if you would like a free Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? The truth is out there, and I think you've found it! 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. 5008". Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. catalogs for all central and satellite halos down to 10^06 MSun. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? Click here. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. Welcome to Sears Homes! In other cases, the home followed the general design of a Sears house without being an exact duplicate. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. Ha! 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. The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. Sales peaked in 1929, just before the Great Depression. That's what happens Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. So, they are likely from Sears. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. Other models only appeared for one year. Simple theme. My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. Chabot focuses her research on scouring mortgages and deed records, old newspaper articles and other sources to identify kit homes sold by Sears. 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". Because lets get real: those adorable and affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans and their families. [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. 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 . That, still, is only helpful if we can find a plat map online for a subdivision called Tanglewood Estates! 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. 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. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. 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. 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) 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. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. 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. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. Its not like nowadays where you move, wait for your stuff to arrive, and if youre a. like me, youre pretty much unable to work while you wait for a technician to ensure you have Internet access. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Whitehouse. 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. 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. 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. 175, 1911/12 catalog image for the Sears Modern Home No. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. I learn all kinds of interesting stuff here; thanks! 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. Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. Lets find out! 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. Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! An open floor plan with sensible . One of the early Sears House researchers that our group still relies on for her expertise in the D.C. housing market, is D.C. realtor Catarina Bannier (Bannier & Sandalow). Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. 172, later marketed as the. 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. Capture from Google Streetview. The Greenview/No. 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. 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. Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. Michigan, Indiana, and New Jersey have large overall numbers, as well. Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. The multi-million-dollar home has been red-tagged while two other If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. 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. 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. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! Later, Sears constructed a second mill in Port Newark, New Jersey and purchased the Norwood Sash and Door Company in Norwood, Ohio. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. 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). Marie's great-grandfather, Freeman Pretzinger, built this Sears. 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. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? 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. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. 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. We cannot be absolutely certain, but the numbers do not support it. But Matthew has a way of pulling everything together and spitting out a coherent comparative analysis with visuals that helps us see what we hadn't noticed previously. HBM (. Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? presentation, nows your chance! We have just over 200 Sears houses on our list, that came from Rebecca's research project in Elgin (it also included kit houses from other companies, that she was able to identify -- we've added those to our lists for those companies, as well). My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. | 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.? 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. Thank you for visiting! Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. 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. Among those are: Sears Modern Homes can also be found in historic districts listed in the National Register of Historic Places: According to Carolyn Fraser's Pulitzer-winning book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the house that Rose Wilder Lane built for her parents, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder, at Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri was from a Sears kit. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. 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. Although it is sometimes claimed that no Sears kit homes were built after 1940, Sears continued to offer pre-cut kit homes through 1941 and into early 1942. 1232, later marketed as the No. I'm not surprised that the Argyle is likely the best seller; it had a long run and was as good-looking as it was practical. I have the Farnum in New Brighton PA. 1929. 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. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. 159 was available with either clipped gables or peak gables, for the roof. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. 126 and a Sears No. 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. They had. 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. Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 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. 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.
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