The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update 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. Another key figure in the original research into Sears kit houses, was a woman named Beatrice Lask. 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. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. 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). 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. 159, except for a closed pediment up in the front and side gable. 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. Photo from Realtor site. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. 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. From 1908 to 1940, the Sears Modern Homes Program offered complete mail-order houses to the would-be homeowner what would come to be called "kit homes." Customers could select from dozens of different models in Sears Modern Homes Catalog, order blueprints, send in a check, and a few weeks later everything they needed would arrive in a train car, its door secured with a small red wax . . [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. 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. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? Its as sturdy as a house as Ive ever seen. 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. The. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. 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. 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! 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). Buyers could hire a contractor to assemble their home or build it themselves following the detailed instructions that were included. 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. to share their names with others who might be interested in Thanks for your interest! 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. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. Welcome to the New NSCAA. 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. 1232 click. I'm currently working my way through the Burlington County records, but they are limited, and set up in a way that makes the process very time consuming. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. Basic cross-gabled two-story farmhouses are to be found almost everywhere in towns and cities as well as many rural areas throughout the United States. Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. That, still, is only helpful if we can find a plat map online for a subdivision called Tanglewood Estates! Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. 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. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. When the. 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. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. Because lets get real: affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans, 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. 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. Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! 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. Enjoy! TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. One of the early Sears House researchers that our group still relies on for her expertise in the D.C. housing market, is D.C. realtor Catarina Bannier (Bannier & Sandalow). The Sears Tower is nearly finished. 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. 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. Simply put, life was rougher. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. 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 Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes. . But, as of this date in 2021, here are leading areas in the U.S. with high numbers of Sears houses. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed 118 In Columbia, 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. Original paperwork for the house including blueprints and letters of correspondence from Sears. All these years later it is still a fortress.. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. She said she didnt know the house was built from a kit ordered from a catalog until after she bought it. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. 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. Im looking at this cute little. Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". A recent Tribune-Review story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless that has most of its original features intact drew scores of letters and comments from Pittsburgh area residents interested in learning more about the unique role these houses played in U.S. history. [17] Later on in the Modern Homes timeline, Sears had in-office designers but titled them as "experts" rather than actual architects.[17]. Welcome to Sears Homes! Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. Hi, Lauren! I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. Contains merger trees and halo . 02, 2023 : History: Catalogs: Homes: Products: Brands: Stores: People Historic Homes : . Let's take a look at a comparison of that side, for these two models: Also, the front view shows us how the front porch roof connects to the house differently, across these two models. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. , such as stamped lumber in the basement or attic, shipping labels on the baseboards and other millwork, or even looking up your deed and records pertaining to the actual home purchase. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. 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. One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. 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. I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. Open to the public. Please contact me if you would like a free Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. 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. 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. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! I don't feel comfortable making that assumption. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. 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. One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. I was intrigued by the concept of people picking out a house from a catalog, she said. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). In late 1930, sales of Searshomes were starting to tank. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. Among those chiming in about the article was Judith Chabot of St. Louis, Mo., who runs SearsHouseSeekers.com, which serves as a depository for information gathered by Sears home enthusiasts across the country. Stevenson, Katherine Cole, and Jandl, H. Ward, (1995), Davis, Michael W.R. and Schweitzer, Robert (1990), This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 21:18. muhammad ali i am the greatest speech transcript . According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Tucker/Crossroads 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. Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. 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. 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. 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. hennessy privilege limited edition / what is mc hammer doing now 2020 / national database of sears homes. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. 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 CNDDB is comprised of two data components: Text information and spatial information. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. homes for rent in laplace 70068. national database of sears homes. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. Compare house designs to original catalog images. 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. Simply put, life was rougher. 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. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). Given the more disposable nature of shipping container homes and the portability granted by some tiny houses, its kind of sad in a way that this current crop of Internet-order homes is not only not as simple or affordable as it was yesteryear, but also carries less permanence compared to these mail-order houses. In other cases, the home followed the general design of a Sears house without being an exact duplicate. 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?). More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. presentation, nows your chance! 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. Chabot focuses her research on scouring mortgages and deed records, old newspaper articles and other sources to identify kit homes sold by Sears. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. After several years, Sears also began assigning names to the various models. 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. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. 06/16/2022 . In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. [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 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. The best guidebook to the basic history of the Sears Modern Homes program, is the book, Houses By Mail, put out by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and written by Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. Public records: From 1911 to 1933, Sears offered home mortgages and Sears company officials or the Sears, Roebuck corporation may be named on the mortgage or deed associated with the property where the home was constructed. Referred to as a gable-front-and-wing, it was a national folk style that owed much of its heritage to the earlier Greek Revival style. The HMS data portal is a collection of models, simulations and synthetic observations of the Sun. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Wonderful, Malissa! If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. 264B155. 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). 5008". Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. 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. 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. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. 181, and the early version of the. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes.