national database of sears homes national database of sears homes

We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. 159, except for a closed pediment up in the front and side gable. 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. Between 1908 and 1940, Sears Roebuck and Co. published specialty catalogs offering house plans and building materials. 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. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. 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. 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. 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. 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. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. 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. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. See that curled element at the hinge edge? 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. Rosemary Thornton When the. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. . It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. 159 examples that have a closed pediment in the gable (and a porch style difference). 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. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. But before all this, having to get your own home built was more common instead of getting on a waitlist for a HUD-subsidized tract home or buying one secondhand from the current occupant. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. Ohio and Illinois are still leading, though, with 2700+ and 2300+, respectively. 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. The Sears Tower is nearly finished. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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). Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . The most popular models appeared in the catalog for multiple years. 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. Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. 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. 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. 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 articles are so scattered by time, date and location that it is difficult to realize the scope and number of Sears homes here in the Pittsburgh area.. 1232 click. 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. 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. "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. 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. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. Park, MD. Owners of these houses along the years may have, however, found paper shipping labels affixed to the back of trim pieces around doors or windows, or decorative moulding pieces. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. The Greenview/No. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Thousands of developments in cities, suburbs, and exurbs have sprung up since with a seemingly endless amount of homes that were built between World War II and today. Tucker/Crossroads Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears 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. The larger Victorian-style houses that were already there and scant in number were out of reach for working class first-time home buyers. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. People need move-in ready housing and they need it fast, whether single professionals are seeking apartments and luxury condos or families need affordable freestanding houses. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". Simply put, life was rougher. Really, they couldn't find any space in there for the Modern Homes records? Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati Whitehouse. 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 Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. Click to visit. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. Researchers Cindy Catanzaro and Andrew Mutch, and the late Donna Bakke, put together a document explaining Bea's work, and listing 345 of the houses that she found, which you can see. 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. 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. 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. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. 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. Kmart History | Search Archives | Sears Holdings Alumni | sears.com | kmart.com : Thursday, Mar. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. 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. As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? 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?). Ha! We are a team of about 10 researchers who work together to hunt around the U.S. for Sears kit houses built during the era of the Sears Modern Homes program (1908-1942). They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. 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. 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. A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Once delivered, many of these houses were assembled by the new homeowner, relatives, friends and neighbors, in a fashion similar to the traditional barn-raisings of farming families. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. Historic Homes Images of Sears Homes Click on the associated link for a collection of images and photographs of almost all 447 house designs sold through the Sears Modern Homes program. Square . That's what happens You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. While the vast majority of models were for single-family house designs, Sears offered some duplex house designs and even a few larger multiple-family buildings. 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. 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? Enjoy! Sure, your Wabash or Verona model 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. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. 06/16/2022 . 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. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. 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. The bulk order is the largest known order for Sears Modern Homes and led to Sears, Roebuck naming their "Carlin" model after the city. 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. 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. One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. 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. Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. [4] Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. small-town America, 1920! We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. Marie's great-grandfather, Freeman Pretzinger, built this Sears. 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. 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 Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the 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. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". to share their names with others who might be interested in The new owner was a Sears House fan - even produced a short doc film about the house and how she updated it. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update Where Are The Rest Of The Sears Houses In The U.S.? 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. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. 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 . 115 cuts off abruptly, right in the middle of the front facade, even with the left side of the upper window, and it then has a straight slope porch roof jutting out. If yours is not one of those, please let us know :) We are confident about all three being Sears houses, but have not been able to authenticate any of them (with mortgage or deed records, blueprints, shipping labels, letters from Sears, or marked lumber). So, they are likely from Sears. I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. | 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.? Keep in mind, however, that even though we have found well over 200 Sears houses in the PA and NJ suburbs of Philadelphia, those are densely populated areas. An open floor plan with sensible . 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. 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. Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. A kick-off celebration was held March 3, 2023, for the newly renamed BMO Stadium. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. [1] Sears Modern Homes were purchased primarily by customers in East Coast and Midwest states, but have been located as far south as Florida, as far west as California, and as far north as Alaska and Canada. 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. Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. ", "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? 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. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. Please contact me if you would like a free Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. 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. 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 Atlanta and Chateau models were probably the great-grandaddy of the modern McMansion, with the Malden model being its odd little cousin that sits in the potato salad at the family reunion, what with the odd arrangement of dormer windows although they arent fake. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. We love her for giving us this to quote over and over again and for the many Sears houses that she has added to our list. 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. 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. easier. . However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. [38][39], One well-known replica of a Sears house is at the "Farm at Prophetstown" museum in Battle Ground, Indiana, which features a replica of a Hillrose model. 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. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. Harbst said it wasnt until after she bought the house that she learned homes were once sold through mail-order catalogs. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. 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. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. 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, Sears Wasnt an Innovator, but They Knew Quality and Efficiency. Your comment will appear after it has been previewed and approved by the blog author. Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. The CNDDB is comprised of two data components: Text information and spatial information. 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. [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. Simple theme. 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. Related: Floating Chairs and Texas McMansions | McMansions vs Really Big Houses | Strange Mansion in Carmel, Indiana | What is a Mansion. Several Sears Modern Homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Thousands of developments in cities, suburbs, and exurbs have sprung up since with a seemingly endless amount of homes that were built between World War II and today. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern 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). 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. Not all Sears houses became private residences. Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. 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. Other models only appeared for one year. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. 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.