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I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. 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. Identifying Sears Homes | Sears Modern 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. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. small-town America even into the 1940 census). If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. homes for rent in laplace 70068. national database of sears homes. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. Sears has opened the doors to its vast archival collection and invited the public to peek inside. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for, 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. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? However, based on what the experts said in that Atlas Obscura piece, youre most likely to find Sears homes in places where railroad stations once stood (or are lucky to still have) and where Sears factories had a major role on the local economy, like Cincinnati. Related: Floating Chairs and Texas McMansions | McMansions vs Really Big Houses | Strange Mansion in Carmel, Indiana | What is a Mansion. 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. Homes Index 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". You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . Teen hikers rescued after days stuck in California snowstorm However, many houses described as Sears Homes are not true Sears Homes, being either the product of another kit home manufacturer or not a kit home at all. We just love the Walton model! Originally marketed as the. Sears Is Crumbling, but These 9 Sears Catalog Homes Stand Tall 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. BMO, LAFC, and Angel City FC leaders were joined by special guests Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Mia Hamm for the . 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. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Other Sears houses were found dotting other areas of La Porte, but the biggest concentration of the early models, probably all from 1912, were in that Lakeview area. Damn, it was like. Andrew spotted these two houses right next to each other, on W 11th Street: a No. . There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. 126 and a Sears No. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. 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. While Sears no longer has records of where each of the nearly 75,000 mail-order homes it sold were built, it does main an extensive archive of the models that were available as well as the history of its Modern Homes division. This is just the top of the blog page you'll find dozens of links to online catalogs here, a link to the excellent Pinterest resource made for us by Sears-house owner Dale Haynes, and a list of hard-copy book resources that are both interesting and informative. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. 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. It's also possible that some local builder just put together a similar design, to compete with the Sears houses being built in town, but, some of these examples are on blocks of streets that are lined with Sears houses from this early spec offering by Sears. 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. 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. 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. 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 Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. 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. Sears mail-order homes prove plentiful in Western Pennsylvania There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. 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. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! Photo from Realtor site. 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. This Sears mail-order house named The Crescent was built in Munhall in 1920, according to owner Molly Harbst. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. Action in the Community Through Service Homeless Shelter. 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. 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. 171 often has a full front porch that ends up extending all the way to the left side of the house. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. 181, and the early version of the. presentation, nows your chance! 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. 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. 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. Homes built after 1916 can be identified as Sears kit homes by numbers stamped on the timbers. You'll also notice that the 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). Other times, the legal description refers to a house being on "a road leading from York to Millville", and maybe the lot bordering "the land of Joseph Craws" usually, that road, if we can figure out which one it is, is miles and miles long, and there's no way to find "the land of Joseph Craws", so that's of no help at all. 06/16/2022 . TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. Home - National Housing Preservation Database (NHPD) Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. New York state is 4th, with 1,679 houses found. 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. Local building requirements sometimes dictated that certain elements of the house construction be done professionally and varied depending on where the house was constructed. 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. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. There were less people, but quality housing that could get built easily was a must for the quickly-growing population as World War I veterans came home and started families, and an immigration boom was taking place. 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. In some cases, homeowners used plans from original Sears homes to recreate a modern version of a Sears home. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. 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". Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. 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. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. BMO Celebrates Kickoff of the 2023 Soccer Season at 'BMO Stadium' in Photo from Lake County Assessor. Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. 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. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. Documented Sears houses have been found across the United States and in a few locations in Canada. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern 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). The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. 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.. Im looking at this cute little. However, in La Porte, we've also found five examples* of houses that look like a great match for the No. The next housing boom came after World War II so that veterans could have affordable housing for their families and suburbs could accommodate the massive amount of white flight taking place. 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). Powered by, This September 2017 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this short video story by the Washington Post. However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. Jud Yoho may also have been the designer behind the popular Sears model called the Hollywood. [4] Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home But articles are so scattered by time, date and location that it is difficult to realize the scope and number of Sears homes here in the Pittsburgh area.. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. 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 . That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. By the time of the 1914 catalog, the model had been tweaked, to add the peak gable, closed pediment pop-up dormer over the upper bay windows. 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. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. 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. 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). We have a database of all the models that have been identified nationwide to date. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. | 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.? I'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. [6] Plumbing, electrical fixtures, and heating systems were options that could be ordered at additional cost; they were many families' first steps to modern HVAC systems, kitchens, and bathrooms. Marie gives the perfect explanation of our Sears House hunt, in this. 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. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. muhammad ali i am the greatest speech transcript . Later, Sears constructed a second mill in Port Newark, New Jersey and purchased the Norwood Sash and Door Company in Norwood, Ohio. No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. Open to the public. catalogs for all central and satellite halos down to 10^06 MSun. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. That's what happens 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, models were probably the great-grandaddy of the modern McMansion, with the, model being its odd little cousin that sits in the potato salad at the family reunion, what with the odd arrangement of, True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings.