Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. : Ohio is the state with the largest number, Pennsylvania is the third- highest-ranking state, Prince George's County, MD & Montgomery County, MD. small-town America even into the 1940 census). Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. This one, too, looks pretty much like just a taller version of the Greenview/115 and the Rossville/171, from the front and porch side of the house so, it was another mystery, as to what to look for on the other side of the house. 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! Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. Harbst said it wasnt until after she bought the house that she learned homes were once sold through mail-order catalogs. That's what happens 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. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. Sales peaked in 1929, just before the Great Depression. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. In some cases, homeowners used plans from original Sears homes to recreate a modern version of a Sears home. How did Sears Modern Homes come to be? Is My House a Sears House? The Nine Easy Signs. - Sears Modern Homes 5008". There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . Park, MD. There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. 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 Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. 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. 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. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 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. One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. Complete List of Sears Homes | Aurora, IL The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. An open floor plan with sensible . 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. Sears Modern Homes built in the 1930s may have a small circled "SR" cast into the bathtub in the lower corner (furthest from the tub spout and near the floor) and on the underside of the kitchen or bathroom sink. Homes Index Sears Modern Homes The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. In addition to home building costs being up to 40% lower than traditional building, you also had the option to bring your own blueprints to Sears to get them modified for far less than itd comparatively cost to go to a builder or architect today. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. . At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Jud Yoho may also have been the designer behind the popular Sears model called the Hollywood. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? Natural Resources DataBase - NRDB 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. 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. BMO, LAFC, and Angel City FC leaders were joined by special guests Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Mia Hamm for the . And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. While these features werent in every single Sears home, they still set the stage for home builders to realize what people wanted in their new digs because of how much their quality of life was improved. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. ", "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. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. 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). Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. 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". This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. The two-story schoolhouse was priced at $11,500 and its design included six classrooms, a library, an auditorium, and a superintendent's office. 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. 1232 click. If you don't know what that means, look at these two examples, and note where the orange arrow points that little extra strip of roofing that makes a sort of closed triangle. The 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). If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. You'll also notice that the No. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. 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. 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. Our list, by the way, began in the early years of our research group. To drum up business, Sears issued a press release to newspapers across the United States. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. 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. national database of sears homes - nyomkovetes-blog.hu 1232, later marketed as the No. Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. 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). But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. Data Portal - NASA 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). In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. 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). [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. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. 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. Click here. sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears homes.