In a second blog post, I'll show the several probable kit houses that we've found in LaPorte, Indiana, from other companies. 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. [37] Similiar references are made to boyhood homes of Richard Nixon and Warren Buffett. The article mentioned Sears having sold 50 houses in La Porte, Indiana but, interestingly, Sears had actually provided the funding and the houses, knowing that the area was in need of housing right away, and offered to have the houses paid for on time. 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. I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. We also find street names that have changed (without our knowing that), or, especially for folks who bought their house in 1930-32 (the waning years of the mortgage program), we find that folks lost their homes during the depression, so we can't pin them down using the 1930 or 1940 census records. [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. 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. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. Sears also offered a plasterboard product similar to modern drywall as an alternative to the plaster and lath wall-building techniques which required skilled carpenters and plasterers. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. 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. 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. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. I know of several other models in McCandless. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. 171's porch roof (when it is a partial porch) connects to the house far to the right side of that upper window and then has a wedge-shape side part to that roof, so that both models end the porch just to the edge of the front door, but with a very different treatment to the shape of the porch roof there. Homes Index Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,600 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is #3 in U.S. states with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes found. 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. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. 1232, later marketed as the No. So, I'll just post a nice selection here. 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. 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. Thanks for your interest! Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. Please contact me if you would like a free easier. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. 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). That's what happens Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. 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. : Ohio is the state with the largest number, Pennsylvania is the third- highest-ranking state, Prince George's County, MD & Montgomery County, MD. 159 examples that have a closed pediment in the gable (and a porch style difference). [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. 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. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. 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). Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. Sears House Seeker 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). See that curled element at the hinge edge? I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. Remember when Sears sold houses? See some of Ann Arbor's kit homes - mlive My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! We just love the Walton model! presentation, nows your chance! by . Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. 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. Price: $179,900. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. That's why we love seeking them out! You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. 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. Residential construction was drastically down nationwide due to the Great Depression. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 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. 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. CNDDB Maps and Data. 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. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. 171 examples in La Porte. On another block of W 11th Street, there is an example of the Sears Modern Home No. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. 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. Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. Compare house designs to original catalog images. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. 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. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. It looks almost like a Sears, And, finally, we have this pretty rare model, the Sears. Lets find out! Sears could keep manufacturing costs down compared to standard builders and competing catalogs because they had their own manufacturing facilities by then and were able to mass-produce wood, asphalt, insulation material, hardware, and everything else needed to produce a home that wasnt a Habitat for Humanity hut. 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. Im looking at this cute little. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. How did Sears Modern Homes come to be? 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. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. The larger Victorian-style houses that were already there and scant in number were out of reach for working class first-time home buyers. [5] Early balloon structures were very basic, to enable home buyers to assemble them independently and also because designers had yet to see the implications the method held.[5]. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. 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?). Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. "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. ", "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? Sears Is Crumbling, but These 9 Sears Catalog Homes Stand Tall 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. Another key figure in the original research into Sears kit houses, was a woman named Beatrice Lask. city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. Simply put, life was rougher. 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. Damn, it was like. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. 159 was available with either clipped gables or peak gables, for the roof. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. Welcome to Sears Homes! Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. Local building requirements sometimes dictated that certain elements of the house construction be done professionally and varied depending on where the house was constructed. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. 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. Not all Sears houses became private residences. 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. A high-speed chase involving an armed carjacking suspect ended in Los Angeles Friday afternoon when the suspect crashed into a police vehicle, and then into a pole. national database of sears homes - nyomkovetes-blog.hu national database of sears homes. Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. 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. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. 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. New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. 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. Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Many of the famous designs were commandeered from other sources and/or purchased from architects but given just enough change to be advertised as their own. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? 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. 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. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. 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. Chabot said while Sears wasnt the first or only company to sell mail-order homes, they were unique among the competition. 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. 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. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. 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. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. 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. I don't know the model, but it was a 2 story - 6 room house - 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, living room, dining room, and very small galley type kitchen. The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma R.L. Hunter Press: Mail Order House Research Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). Tailor the data to your community to help preserve your local assets or explore national data to better understand the need for affordable housing and the dynamics of the publicly supported housing market. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. 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. The rest of these models are singletons, from the mid 1920s to early 1930s. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. In 1908, Sears issued its first specialty catalog for houses, Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans, featuring 44 house styles ranging in price from US $360$2,890. June 1, 2022. by etc north vernon covid testing. 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. Thanks to Ancestry.com, we are often able to get a street name from a census record, but we run into problems there, when we find a town that has no street names (yes! 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. 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. 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. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. 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). Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears homes. 172, later marketed as the. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect.
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