The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. , 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. Builders that already have both the funds and the skilled professionals in architecture, construction, and land use make it easier for the average person who only wants to worry about their career, move, and family. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. Sadly, surviving Argyles do tend to be heavily altered there are probably lots more hiding in plain sight. [37] Similiar references are made to boyhood homes of Richard Nixon and Warren Buffett. 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. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! 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). [4] Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. Ha! But, in the case of the early, non pre-cut houses, when we know that a large number of houses were bought by a company (or offered up on spec, by Sears), we sometimes see that special versions were created for these neighborhoods, specifically. Kushel is credited with suggesting to Richard Sears that the company assemble kits of all the parts needed and sell entire houses through mail order. 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. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. 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. 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. Im looking at this cute little Cape Cod that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . See that curled element at the hinge edge? If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. 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. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. 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. The builder was W.L. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? 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. Additionally, at this point in the Sears Modern Homes program, the homes were sold/packaged only with standard-length wood, so none of the framing lumber would have been pre-cut (and, therefore, there would be no alpha-numeric stamps on the wood pieces in the house). [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. However, these stamps were not used on lumber shipped before 1916, when Sears first started offering pre-cut lumber. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. Construction of the houses took nine months which were completed in 1919. Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. 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. Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. We cannot be absolutely certain, but the numbers do not support it. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your
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. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. 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. All these years later it is still a fortress.. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. The wild pursuit began with an a Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. We just love the Walton model! 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. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. 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. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. Contains merger trees and halo . I think teardowns are the reason that Argyles are not positioned higher in our national database of Sears homes (the Argyle comes in at number 20). 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. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. 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. Others were not but were still pre-cut kit homes built from plans and materials from Sears. 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. True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. I don't feel comfortable making that assumption. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. During the later era of pre-cut houses, we don't usually put homes on our list, if they have these kinds of design differences. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. That's what happens 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. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. 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. Cities with large numbers of documented Sears Modern Homes include: The Carlinville, Illinois, concentration consists of houses bought in bulk by the Standard Oil Company in 1918 to house its mineworkers at a total cost of about US $1 million. small-town America even into the 1940 census). The bulk order is the largest known order for Sears Modern Homes and led to Sears, Roebuck naming their "Carlin" model after the city. Sears offered 370 models over the 32 years it sold houses by catalog. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). contacting them by clicking on their name. Compare that to about 330 million people today. 1. 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. Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. 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 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. Its as sturdy as a house as Ive ever seen. 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. Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside.