national database of sears homes
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. In fact, the No. Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. 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. Images of Sears Homes 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. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed to share their names with others who might be interested in contacting them by clicking on their name. It was built in 1917. Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. 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. 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). This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). Their blueprints were based on what was popular at the time and while they werent the first or only company to do mail-order houses, theyre among the most memorable because you could buy damn near anything in their 500+ page catalogs. Photo from Lake County Assessor. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. 1232 / No. Andrew is responsible for adding hundreds (and hundreds) of Sears houses to our database, especially in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., in numerous counties in Michigan, and a gold mine of houses in Westchester County, New York, especially in Yonkers. Home - National Housing Preservation Database (NHPD) 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). To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. 1. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. 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. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The House that Came in the Mail - 99% Invisible There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. 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. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. But, as of this date in 2021, here are leading areas in the U.S. with high numbers of Sears houses. Newport Beach home dangling on edge after cliff collapses Knowing the limitations of a newspaper article, I know that he will only be able to show one or two house photos, so I thought that I would highlight a few that we have found, through our research. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. Our list, in fact, began with 345 Sears houses that Mrs. Lask had found in the Cincinnati area, as part of a Masters Degree thesis project at the University of Cincinnati. Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. Jud Yoho may also have been the designer behind the popular Sears model called the Hollywood. ", "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. national database of sears homes The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. Search. While researching the property, Harbst learned it was among the first homes built in the boroughs Homestead Park neighborhood. For more information on who we are, and what we do, visit our website: All photos in these blog posts are the property of the author of this blog- link to this blog. Balloon frames could be built faster and generally only required one carpenter. national database of sears homes - thanhvi.net Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. Sears Is Crumbling, but These 9 Sears Catalog Homes Stand Tall Los Angeles Modern Stilt Home Featured in Heat (Listed for $1.599 Million), International House Flipper Alex Camacho Makes $80k Profit on One House Flip, Bugsy Siegel Murder Mansion in Beverly Hills Flats (Listed for $17 Million), Zsa Zsa Gabors Pink Palm Springs Palace (Listed for $3.8 Million), 35 Kitchen Breakfast Bars The Latest In Casual Kitchen Dining. Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. I think the reason the Sears house is so interesting is that most people associate them with the Wish Book catalog that came in the mail at Christmas. Our team did some traveling around streets inside Philadelphia, in neighborhoods like Oxford Circle, Rhawnhurst, and Roxborough, to name a few, and added about 43 houses to our list, from these neighborhoods. Identifying Sears Homes has become a pastime among history enthusiasts because of their sturdy structure, the do-it-yourself nature of construction, and the popular architectural design concepts. 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. Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Walker O. Lewis (primarily before early 1930), William C. Reed (primarily from 1922 - 1929), Nicholas Wieland (sometimes spelled Weiland), Shipping labels: Often found on the back of. Sears Homes Enthusiasts Chabot said while Sears wasnt the first or only company to sell mail-order homes, they were unique among the competition. 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. contacting them by clicking on their name. No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? 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. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . 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. Beginning in 1916, the catalogs showed an additional floor plan that did have a bathroom: The rest of the examples of Sears houses in La Porte, that we have found to date, are one-off examples, so were probably individual purchases by the original homeowner, or a few spec houses by the realty company mentioned in the American Lumberman article. So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. Please contact me if you would like a free 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. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. Many of the famous designs were commandeered from other sources and/or purchased from architects but given just enough change to be advertised as their own. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. There havent been any major structural changes, she said. Other models only appeared for one year. Others were not but were still pre-cut kit homes built from plans and materials from Sears. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. 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. Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. I have the Farnum in New Brighton PA. 1929. 168 (Matoka): Here is the catalog image of the No. 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. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,500 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is No. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Ohio and Illinois are still leading, though, with 2700+ and 2300+, respectively. 1232, later marketed as the No. 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. 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. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. Among those are: Sears Modern Homes can also be found in historic districts listed in the National Register of Historic Places: According to Carolyn Fraser's Pulitzer-winning book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the house that Rose Wilder Lane built for her parents, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder, at Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri was from a Sears kit. 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. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. 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. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? Also, considering that the article was published in April of 1912, all of these models would have been marketed only with their number, as no word names were given to the models until 1916. that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. 181, Sears No. national database of sears homes - thenscaa.com Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. Washington D.C. and its nearby suburbs have an unusually rich cache of kit houses stashed away in some of the leafy, well-tended neighborhoods where 1920s houses still shine. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. Or did we just go wrong somewhere when someone decided the house you live in should be treated like a bank? muhammad ali i am the greatest speech transcript . You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . 159 examples that have a closed pediment in the gable (and a porch style difference). 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 This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. ", "How to Properly Identify a Sears Magnolia", "Have You Seen This Kit Schoolhouse? I know of several other models in McCandless. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. 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! 171 often has a full front porch that ends up extending all the way to the left side of the house. 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. Here is one of the eleven examples in La Porte: This early version of the No. So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. In other cases, the home followed the general design of a Sears house without being an exact duplicate. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. 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. That is unique to Sears. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said.