Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. That, still, is only helpful if we can find a plat map online for a subdivision called Tanglewood Estates! 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. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. 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. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. This is what these two models look like, in the catalogs (these are from the 1911/1912 catalog): Up until this point, we weren't really sure what the difference was between these two models. 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. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. Im looking at this cute little. She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. 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). Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. Posted by ; fort lincoln cemetery obituaries; 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears No. The HMS data portal is a collection of models, simulations and synthetic observations of the Sun. Wonderful, Malissa! 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. Andrew is our number-cruncher, and his blog, I joined the team shortly after Lara, Cindy and Andrew began, in earnest, to log the homes that they were finding. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). Related: Floating Chairs and Texas McMansions | McMansions vs Really Big Houses | Strange Mansion in Carmel, Indiana | What is a Mansion. 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. , there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. 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). I think that we had only a handful of houses already on the list a few. 181 (264P181) in the 1914 Sears Modern Homes catalog, This image is from the 1913 Sears Modern Homes catalog re-print, available, 374 Hawthorne Street, La Porte, Indiana Sears Modern Home No. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? Here is one of the eleven examples in La Porte: This early version of the No. Sears would be listed as the architect, and because they often gave out mortgages, you can find out if the previous owner(s) had a Sears mortgage or not. Local building requirements sometimes dictated that certain elements of the house construction be done professionally and varied depending on where the house was constructed. The Sears Tower is nearly finished. I was intrigued by the concept of people picking out a house from a catalog, she said. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 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. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. 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. 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. On another block of W 11th Street, there is an example of the Sears Modern Home No. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? One key set of homes that we are fortunate to have on our list, comes from the research of noted Architectural Historian, Rebecca L. Hunter. Construction of the houses took nine months which were completed in 1919. 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. Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. We just can't say, because we can't access those records. 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. There was one snippet in the press release that only a couple newspapers reprinted: "Following twelve years of usefulness, one old design was removed from the home catalogue in 1928, as antiquated after having been constructed more than 1700 times, which probably constitutes the world's record for any construction duplication from a single house plan, he [Betcone] says.". houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had 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). 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 Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. Many of these post 1940 homes were based on models from the 1940 and earlier Sears catalogs but not all were, leading to debate over whether these homes qualify as "Sears Modern Homes". 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. I know of several other models in McCandless. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. 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. As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them. As I detailed in the account of the rise and fall of the Sears empire, this literally led them to become the largest retailer in America because they had so many burners going at onceand their Modern Homes kits, and even the home buying process itself, were part of that in addition to catalog and retail sales. However, these stamps were not used on lumber shipped before 1916, when Sears first started offering pre-cut lumber. She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. 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). After several years, Sears also began assigning names to the various models. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. Mrs. Lask had been a well-respected and well-known docent at the Cincinnati Historical Society, who led interesting bus tours and lectures about Cincinnati architectural history, when she embarked on this project in the 1990s (which she did while in her 70s-- a testament to the concept of life-long learning). Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. Although it is sometimes claimed that no Sears kit homes were built after 1940, Sears continued to offer pre-cut kit homes through 1941 and into early 1942. 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? 1232 click. When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. 159 has two full stories on that non-porch side of the house. By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. 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! The two-story schoolhouse was priced at $11,500 and its design included six classrooms, a library, an auditorium, and a superintendent's office. Thank you for visiting! While seeing a bunch of Sears homes jammed together in a cookie cutter suburb wasnt a very common sight in the 1930s and 40s, they still got knocked together like IKEA furniture compared to building a home from scratch. 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. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. I have the Farnum in New Brighton PA. 1929. 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). 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. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. 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. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. ", "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? Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. Those kinds of topics are cleared up, in this blog post: When I chatted with Kevin Riordan, I also sent him a list of several nice Sears houses that he could consider photographing for his article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). Argyles also have a tendency to hide. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. Compare house designs to original catalog images. Sears could keep manufacturing costs down compared to standard builders and competing catalogs because they had their own manufacturing facilities by then and were able to mass-produce wood, asphalt, insulation material, hardware, and everything else needed to produce a home that wasnt a Habitat for Humanity hut.