Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. "The Sears Homes of Illinois" has more than 200 color photos of the most popular designs that Sears offered and can be very helpful in identifying Sears Homes. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. Catarina is quite well informed about Sears houses in the D.C. area, but also has researched the origins of many of the Lewis Homes kit homes in the area. 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. The Rossville/No. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. Simply put, life was rougher. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. Welcome to Sears Homes! Lets find out! [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. 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. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. small-town America even into the 1940 census). 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. True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. 181, and the early version of the. 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). Government spending was dedicated to housing in an unprecedented manner as the mantra was driven home that the ideal was a nuclear family in a 3-bedroom suburban house with a car in every driveway. Local Sears house enthusiast Karen DeJeet, who owns a Hamilton model in Forest Hills and is a member of the Sears House Finder team, has already done much of the work identifying the mail-order homes still standing in the region. 175 (in 1913). There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . national database of sears homes. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. 5 Jun. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! 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). within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma Hi, Lauren! Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. . that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. 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. Contains merger trees and halo . Boxabl 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. Click to visit. Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. 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). national database of sears homes. However, in La Porte, we've also found five examples* of houses that look like a great match for the No. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. So, I put together a list, but I decided to provide some clarifying background information in that blog post, too-- it's especially intended to help those who might hear the term Craftsman, and think it means Sears House, or who see a 1920s bungalow and wonder if that means that the street is lined with Sears houses, or who find marked lumber in their house, but can't seem to find a match to a Sears model. I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. So, I'll just post a nice selection here. easier. Original paperwork for the house including blueprints and letters of correspondence from Sears. 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). Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! small-town America, 1920! Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. 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. 5008". 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. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. Architecturally, I'm really surprised by the two versions of the Cedars floor plan -- they are completely different, though only two feet were added to make the larger one. 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?). As some areas begin to see population booms, such as the tech triangle region of Raleigh, Durham, and Cary as more companies and tech talent make exodus from California and New York based on what I hear from taxi drivers and my university contacts in the region at games conferences every year? Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. Here is one of the eleven examples in La Porte: This early version of the No. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? If you are a Historical Society interested in awarding plaques for specific homes understood to be Sears houses, please feel free to contact us to verify for you that the house does match a model offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. 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. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! It's also possible that some local builder just put together a similar design, to compete with the Sears houses being built in town, but, some of these examples are on blocks of streets that are lined with Sears houses from this early spec offering by Sears. Local building requirements sometimes dictated that certain elements of the house construction be done professionally and varied depending on where the house was constructed. 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). The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. Between 1908 and 1940, Sears Roebuck and Co. published specialty catalogs offering house plans and building materials. The builder was W.L. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. 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. Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. In areas where the land is already mostly developed and zoned, its not that simple. Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". 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. Text information is available through RareFind 5 and provides essential information about special status species and occurrences. Another old model found predominantly in that Lakeview area, was the. 264B155. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. 2) Look for shipping labels. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. 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. 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. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. 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. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). 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. Catalogs Online: Sears, Radford, Gordon-Van Tine, Sears Starlight (Sears Homes of Chicagoland), Sears Door Hardware: La Tosca, Shefton, Rhythmic, ONLINE CATALOGS on Archive.org: Sears, GVT, Radford +more. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. ", "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? Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. 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. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the 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. See that curled element at the hinge edge? Argyles also tend to get messed up and hard to recognize like this one at 6818 N. Oriole, Chicago or this one at 1302 Edgewood, Lake Forest. presentation, nows your chance! The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40].