Depending on where you live, the thought of just building a small or medium sized house can sound totally bizarre or perhaps totally doable if youve got miles and miles of wide open space to work with. In fact, the No. 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. That's what happens Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. Original paperwork for the house including blueprints and letters of correspondence from Sears.
Sears Modern Homes - Wikipedia 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! Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes, We started looking around La Porte, Indiana, in 2015. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 .
national database of sears homes - onehundredeggs.com Welcome to the New NSCAA. 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. All these years later it is still a fortress.. Measuring in at a roomy 3,500 square feet, the . However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. 5008". [17] Later on in the Modern Homes timeline, Sears had in-office designers but titled them as "experts" rather than actual architects.[17]. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" According to a review written by Mary Ann O'Boyle of Takoma Park, Maryland, her Sears home feels "unabashedly American, the kind of house you see in movies about the good old days" and "allows me to connect with the past". Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes.
to you on Flickr or Pinterest. 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. 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. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). I learn all kinds of interesting stuff here; thanks! hennessy privilege limited edition / what is mc hammer doing now 2020 / national database of sears homes. My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. Thank you for visiting! We have just over 200 Sears houses on our list, that came from Rebecca's research project in Elgin (it also included kit houses from other companies, that she was able to identify -- we've added those to our lists for those companies, as well). [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. But at the time, there was a housing boom taking place as people wanted to escape the crowds and disease of the cities. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. 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. Photo from Realtor site. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. For this week's listing of the week, we decided to find seven charming Sears Catalog homes you can actually buy today. But before all this, having to get your own home built was more common instead of getting on a waitlist for a HUD-subsidized tract home or buying one secondhand from the current occupant. It mightve been easier to get a job or start a business off the bat compared to the hoops and bureaucracy we have for both these days, but there was no U-Haul or Pods to make moving easier. CNDDB Maps and Data. 181, Sears No. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. 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). 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".
national database of sears homes - nyomkovetes-blog.hu *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update 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.". Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? A high-speed chase involving an armed carjacking suspect ended in Los Angeles Friday afternoon when the suspect crashed into a police vehicle, and then into a pole. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. 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. I don't feel comfortable making that assumption. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. 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. This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). ", "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. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati
Sears Modern Homes - Home | Facebook Other models only appeared for one year. You'll notice that most are in states east of the Mississippi River, with highest overall state totals in Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York. 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). 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. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. Catalogs Online: Sears, Radford, Gordon-Van Tine, Sears Starlight (Sears Homes of Chicagoland), Sears Door Hardware: La Tosca, Shefton, Rhythmic, ONLINE CATALOGS on Archive.org: Sears, GVT, Radford +more. You roughed it until you found a new place and if you wanted a FOREVER home, you stayed put until it was done being built. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Sears Houses In the U.S. 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. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. Chabot can help people identify if their home was built from a Sears kit if they provide her with an address of the property through the House Seekers website, which also has links to catalogs produced by the company and other sellers. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. 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. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. 5 Jun. We found and listed about three houses, I think but didn't really focus on La Porte much more than that day in 2015. The truth is out there, and I think you've found it! 217 (early Starlight), Sears Modern Home No, 126, on the left, at 808 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana, On the right, Sears Modern Home No. Researchers Cindy Catanzaro and Andrew Mutch, and the late Donna Bakke, put together a document explaining Bea's work, and listing 345 of the houses that she found, which you can see. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. Sears houses can be identified or authenticated using the following methods. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? We also find street names that have changed (without our knowing that), or, especially for folks who bought their house in 1930-32 (the waning years of the mortgage program), we find that folks lost their homes during the depression, so we can't pin them down using the 1930 or 1940 census records. Powered by, This September 2017 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this short video story by the Washington Post. Finally, if you really want to understand the basics of what a Sears Modern Homes kit house is, and what it is not, you might find this blog post of mine to be helpful and informative. 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. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. While researching the property, Harbst learned it was among the first homes built in the boroughs Homestead Park neighborhood. to share their names with others who might be interested in
The builder was W.L. Click here. Many included the latest technology available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, telephone, and electricity . If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. 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. The windows, the kitchen and the bathroom were updated over the years, but it is still very much the house it was when it was built..
Images of Sears Homes Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. 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. Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . 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. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the 199 (the predecessor to the Sears, We've put eleven houses on our list that we are pretty confident are the early version of the. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. muhammad ali i am the greatest speech transcript . If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. Author, researcher and lecturer Rebecca Hunter became fascinated with the phenomenon of mail order homes in 1996, and is currently engaged in the study of kit homes and agricultural buildings marketed from 1906-1982 by nine different companies. Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down.
Sears Modern Homes Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! It looks almost like a Sears, And, finally, we have this pretty rare model, the Sears. 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. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. 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. Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed
Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim.
The House that Came in the Mail - 99% Invisible "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. If yours is not one of those, please let us know :) We are confident about all three being Sears houses, but have not been able to authenticate any of them (with mortgage or deed records, blueprints, shipping labels, letters from Sears, or marked lumber).
national database of sears homes - assuredtriumph.com Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. 306 Highland, Madison, WI.
CNDDB Maps and Data - California Department of Fish and Wildlife House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. There are many very close lookalikes to this model, so we aren't always confident that they are from Sears, when we spy them in the wild, but this house has Sears curlicues on the hinge end of the decorative iron strapping. 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. I-79 restrictions begin Wednesday night in Allegheny County, West Deer firefighters respond to bedroom fire, heavy smoke at Poplar Street home, Man shot dead in McKeesport the 4th slaying this week and 5th in a month, Medical examiner IDs man killed in McKeesport shooting, Report on Allegheny County Jail deaths finds no 'trends or common factors' that led to them, Historic Hempfield cemetery seeks volunteers, donors to help care for grounds, 2nd annual 'Restaurant Ramble' features 10 downtown New Kensington eateries, Tom Sizemore, Saving Private Ryan actor, dies after brain aneurysm, TV Talk: Mel Brooks History of the World, Part II belatedly arrives on Hulu, Western Pennsylvania's trusted news source, story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless, number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was.
Natural Resources DataBase - NRDB But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. They werent all the 3-bedroom Craftsman ranch style you see throughout Los Angeles or the compact Levittowners in Pennsylvania and Long Island to the east: the Atlanta and Chateau models were probably the great-grandaddy of the modern McMansion, with the Malden model being its odd little cousin that sits in the potato salad at the family reunion, what with the odd arrangement of dormer windows although they arent fake. : Ohio is the state with the largest number, Pennsylvania is the third- highest-ranking state, Prince George's County, MD & Montgomery County, MD. 172, later marketed as the. 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. 168/Matoka, 301 Weller Avenue, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears Modern Home No. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! Thanks for your interest! If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. Sears Lewiston: A Sears Model Home in New Jersey Authenticated Sears Lewiston 261 N. Jackson St., North Plainfield, NJ 1929 This great-looking Sears Lewiston was built in 1929, and used as a model home for Sears after it was built by Anthony P. Raffaniello, and his wife, Helena. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Then, we always get a chuckle when the legal description includes things like, "by a large Elm tree" or "100 feet past a stone marker". 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 Photo from Lake County Assessor. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Shipped by railroad boxcar, and then usually trucked to a home site, the average Sears Modern Home kit had about 25 tons of materials, with more than 30,000 parts. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). 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. Ohio and Illinois are still leading, though, with 2700+ and 2300+, respectively. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. Michigan, Indiana, and New Jersey have large overall numbers, as well. Marie gives the perfect explanation of our Sears House hunt, in this. small-town America even into the 1940 census). I have the Farnum in New Brighton PA. 1929. The larger Victorian-style houses that were already there and scant in number were out of reach for working class first-time home buyers. , there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. Thanks to the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the NRDB will continue to be updated and available at least through 2023, and in some form, beyond that. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. Construction of the houses took nine months which were completed in 1919. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. Because the various kit home companies often copied plan elements or designs from each other, there are a number of catalog and kit models from different manufacturers that look similar or identical to models offered by Sears. 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. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? Lg Refrigerator Temperature Min Max, Cardinal Health 2017 Annual Report, How To Cook Lettuce Indian Style, Friday Brushed Canvas Extra Slipcovers, Pacinos Italian Family Restaurant Menu, Thekkady Tourist Places In Tamil, How To Get A Job At Target, , Cardinal Health 2017 Annual Report, How To Cook Lettuce Indian Style, Friday Brushed Canvas Extra 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. Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books.
Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? 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. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. We just love the Walton model! When the. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. 1232 / No. [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. 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. easier.
national database of sears homes - dowdcreative.com 171 often has a full front porch that ends up extending all the way to the left side of the house. In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. Kmart History | Search Archives | Sears Holdings Alumni | sears.com | kmart.com : Thursday, Mar. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? 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).
Modern Home 264B155 - Two-story Craftsman-style Bungalow - 1916 Sears 264B155. In 1908, Sears issued its first specialty catalog for houses, Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans, featuring 44 house styles ranging in price from US $360$2,890. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Compare house designs to original catalog images. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year.
Modern Home 264B110 - Farmhouse style - 1916 Sears House Plans I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. 06/16/2022 . I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. 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. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners?
The Top-Selling Sears Kit House - Sears Homes In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. Whitehouse. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. 2) Look for shipping labels. Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. In late 1930, sales of Searshomes were starting to tank. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". Most of us have a small collection of physical catalogs, or PDF catalogs, but we rely heavily on resources provided, especially, by our friend at AntiqueHome.org, and Daily Bungalow. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. Photo from Realtor site. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. 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.
Images are available Car culture hadnt yet arrived, but trains and trolleys began extending to these greener areas that were still pretty empty so you could visit or work in the city. The CNDDB is comprised of two data components: Text information and spatial information. , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. 175, 1911/12 catalog image for the Sears Modern Home No. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. Contains merger trees and halo . 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. , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple.
Betcone spoke of how housing styles were drastically changing and how many customers wanted more efficient, streamlined designs. 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. 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. 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.