national database of sears homes

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). Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. 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. These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Whitehouse. . [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. Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. 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. Here is one of the eleven examples in La Porte: This early version of the No. Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. 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. 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. 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". 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. catalogs for all central and satellite halos down to 10^06 MSun. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. [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. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! The Greenview/No. ", "Sears Houses of Massapequa Park, New York", "Made to Order: Many American Dreams Came Out of the Sears Catalog, Including Do-It-Yourself Houses", "Yesterday's kit houses are today's sought-after properties", "The Story on Sears: Houses by rail and mail", "Syracuse house, which came from a Sears catalog, is one of only seven of its kind in U.S.", "The House Is in the Mail: 'Kit homes' from Sears and others were an affordable housing option", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sears_Modern_Homes&oldid=1142882633, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. 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. Without authentication, however, we can't be 100% certain that this house was ordered from Sears, as numerous kit and non-kit companies offered a very similar model, and these kinds of stories that are passed down over time, often turn out to be mistaken (with the house actually being a model from a different kit company, or simply resembling a model offered by Sears). [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. While the bathroom and kitchen of this 1920 Sears mail-order house in Munhall called The Crescent have been updated, most of the homes original features remain unchanged, said owner Molly Harbst, who learned it was among the first homes built in her Homestead Park neighborhood. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. I don't feel comfortable making that assumption. Please contact me if you would like a free And it led me to dig a little deeper into the history of my community.. Other times, the legal description refers to a house being on "a road leading from York to Millville", and maybe the lot bordering "the land of Joseph Craws" usually, that road, if we can figure out which one it is, is miles and miles long, and there's no way to find "the land of Joseph Craws", so that's of no help at all. In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. The Sears Tower is nearly finished. Price: $179,900. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! 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. Residential construction was drastically down nationwide due to the Great Depression. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. The Rossville/No. Click here. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that about 70% of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. to share their names with others who might be interested in ", "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? And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. 306 Highland, Madison, WI. This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. I didn't have very many leads for Kevin Riordan, for the NJ suburbs but, for the PA side of the Philadelphia suburbs that's a different matter, indeed! 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. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. [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. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. 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. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had 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. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. 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. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. 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. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. Action in the Community Through Service Homeless Shelter. Also, homes in southern Ohio may have financing documents through the "Norwood Sash and Door Company" of Norwood, Ohio. 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. [35] Another homeowner, Erskine Hogue Stanberry, states that his Saratoga model was the "first house in Chelsea to have electric lights" and that they "are using the original plumbing and wiring".[35]. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. Lg Refrigerator Temperature Min Max, Cardinal Health 2017 Annual Report, How To Cook Lettuce Indian Style, Friday Brushed Canvas Extra Slipcovers, Pacinos Italian Family Restaurant Menu, Thekkady Tourist Places In Tamil, How To Get A Job At Target, , Cardinal Health 2017 Annual Report, How To Cook Lettuce Indian Style, Friday Brushed Canvas Extra Thank you for visiting! There havent been any major structural changes, she said. 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. 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. 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. The bulk order is the largest known order for Sears Modern Homes and led to Sears, Roebuck naming their "Carlin" model after the city. 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. national database of sears homes. I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. Square . 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. Local building requirements sometimes dictated that certain elements of the house construction be done professionally and varied depending on where the house was constructed. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 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. I know of several other models in McCandless. In areas where the land is already mostly developed and zoned, its not that simple. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. We found and listed about three houses, I think but didn't really focus on La Porte much more than that day in 2015. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati Where Are The Rest Of The Sears Houses In The U.S.? 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. Here are a few: Andrew just today noticed this brick house with the Sears curlicue decorative iron strapping (only offered by Sears, and the only style of iron strapping ever offered by Sears). Originally marketed as the. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. It looks almost like a Sears, And, finally, we have this pretty rare model, the Sears. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. 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. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. 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). Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. You'll also notice that the No. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Other models only appeared for one year. I think that we had only a handful of houses already on the list a few. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. easier. 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. Melissa Steel of Patterson Heights in Beaver County said the story about the Sears house in McCandless sparked fond memories of the family next door who lived in one for many years. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. [5] The method was originally named in the sense that the structure was light and could be lifted away like a balloon. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. 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. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. 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. In some cases, homeowners used plans from original Sears homes to recreate a modern version of a Sears home. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. 2) Look for shipping labels. Wonderful, Malissa! 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. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. 126 and a Sears No. Los Angeles Modern Stilt Home Featured in Heat (Listed for $1.599 Million), International House Flipper Alex Camacho Makes $80k Profit on One House Flip, Bugsy Siegel Murder Mansion in Beverly Hills Flats (Listed for $17 Million), Zsa Zsa Gabors Pink Palm Springs Palace (Listed for $3.8 Million), 35 Kitchen Breakfast Bars The Latest In Casual Kitchen Dining. We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. 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). Or did we just go wrong somewhere when someone decided the house you live in should be treated like a bank? Please contact me if you would like a free 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. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. 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. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. 1232, later marketed as the No. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 181, Sears No. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. This is the Lakeview area where we found most of the examples of the 115, 171, and 159, as well as a number of examples of the No. I'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. Tucker/Crossroads Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? 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 case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. 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. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears 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. . 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. 171 examples in La Porte. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). Open to the public. What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home.

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