Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and it's currently estimated that about 70% of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. ", "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? [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. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. 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. Its not like nowadays where you move, wait for your stuff to arrive, and if youre a work-at-home like me, youre pretty much unable to work while you wait for a technician to ensure you have Internet access. Marie gives the perfect explanation of our Sears House hunt, in this. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. She said she didnt know the house was built from a kit ordered from a catalog until after she bought it. 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. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. For this week's listing of the week, we decided to find seven charming Sears Catalog homes you can actually buy today. One of the biggest questions that researchers have been wanting to answer is: What is the Top-Selling Sears House of All Time? During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. 06/16/2022 . There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. The Rossville/No. The two-story schoolhouse was priced at $11,500 and its design included six classrooms, a library, an auditorium, and a superintendent's office. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? 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. Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. Please contact me if you would like a free All these years later it is still a fortress.. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? Ha! Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. They had. What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? rebeccahunter1216@gmail.com. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. Fabricated houses sold primarily through mail order, Column detail from a Sears Vallonia house, pictured alongside its appearance in the catalog, Modern interpretations of Sears Modern Homes, "Did Sears, Roebuck Sell Homes in Canada? 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. homes for rent in laplace 70068. national database of sears homes. 126 and a Sears No. My uncle mentioned that he had found some shipping labels from Sears in the house and when we asked my grandmother about it, she said: Oh, yes, we ordered it from the Sears catalog, Chabot said. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. 171 examples in La Porte. Your comment will appear after it has been previewed and approved by the blog author. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? 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. | Sears Modern Homes", "Sears Houses in Arlington Virginia: A Comprehensive List", "How Sears built an entire local neighborhood", "Historic Structures Crystal Lake Historical Society", "Sears Houses in Elgin Illinois arranged according to model name", "Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes in the Philly Suburbs and Sears House Hunters", "Where are the rest of the Sears houses in the U.S.? Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. 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. Welcome to Sears Homes! Having just covered the Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores, something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. Our research would not be possible, without online resources for Sears Modern Homes catalogs, and the catalogs for other kit-house companies, such as Gordon-Van Tine, Wardway, Aladdin, Sterling, Lewis, and Bennett. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). 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. 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. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. Andrew Mutch ran across that same article in the American Lumberman, and posted in our group, asking if anyone was interested in looking for some of the old models that might be around. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. However, these stamps were not used on lumber shipped before 1916, when Sears first started offering pre-cut lumber. As sales grew, Sears expanded its production, shipping, and sales offices to locations across the U.S. To provide the materials needed for the Modern Homes division, Sears operated a lumber mill in Cairo, Illinois. Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. 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. Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Our list, by the way, began in the early years of our research group. 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). They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. Park, MD. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 159 was available with either clipped gables or peak gables, for the roof. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; 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). Simple theme. Damn, it was like Stardew Valley! We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma HBM (. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). Ohio resident Marie Vore reached out to us one day, on our Sears Modern Homes Facebook page, with a question about a possible Sears house that she had run across in a real estate listing. 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. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. 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). Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. easier. to share their names with others who might be interested in That's why we love seeking them out!