national database of sears homes

Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. 1232 / No. Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. 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. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. . Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. 5 Jun. We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. You'll also notice that the No. This Sears mail-order house named The Crescent was built in Munhall in 1920, according to owner Molly Harbst. by . small-town America even into the 1940 census). By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. 02, 2023 : History: Catalogs: Homes: Products: Brands: Stores: People Historic Homes : . Ha! Honor Bilt homes used the best quality materials that Sears could source and they were designed with what was then state of the art heating, plumbing, and electricity. So, they are likely from Sears. From 1908 to 1940, the Sears Modern Homes Program offered complete mail-order houses to the would-be homeowner what would come to be called "kit homes." Customers could select from dozens of different models in Sears Modern Homes Catalog, order blueprints, send in a check, and a few weeks later everything they needed would arrive in a train car, its door secured with a small red wax . Whitehouse. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" 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. 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. I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. New models were introduced every year, and some only stuck around for a couple years. 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. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. Wonderful, Malissa! This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). 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. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly S Where are the Sears Houses - February 2023 Edition, The Strange Case of the Wandering Bungalow, DC House Cat Chiming In - Historic Mail-Order Homes, Same Name, Different House Part 2 - From Aurora to the Elmwood, 1926 Sears Special Supplement from AntiqueHome.org. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. 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). Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. The American Lumberman article referred to this area where the houses were being built, as the Fairview neighborhood. Here is one of the eleven examples in La Porte: This early version of the No. So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. 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. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. 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. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. 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. [37] Similiar references are made to boyhood homes of Richard Nixon and Warren Buffett. The ability to mass-produce the materials used in Sears homes reduced manufacturing costs, which allowed Sears to pass along the savings in lower prices for customers. They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. 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 havent been any major structural changes, she said. 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 roughed it until you found a new place and if you wanted a FOREVER home, you stayed put until it was done being built. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. 1232, later marketed as the No. . Originally marketed as the. 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. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? I don't know the model, but it was a 2 story - 6 room house - 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, living room, dining room, and very small galley type kitchen. 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. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. 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. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. June 1, 2022. by etc north vernon covid testing. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern 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! Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. HBM (. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan. 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. Photo from Realtor site. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. In late 1930, sales of Searshomes were starting to tank. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? 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. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. Thanks! 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. She said she didnt know the house was built from a kit ordered from a catalog until after she bought it. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. Really, they couldn't find any space in there for the Modern Homes records? In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! 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. 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. CNDDB Maps and Data. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. The wild pursuit began with an a Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. I just loved the look of it, she said. He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. The article mentioned Sears having sold 50 houses in La Porte, Indiana but, interestingly, Sears had actually provided the funding and the houses, knowing that the area was in need of housing right away, and offered to have the houses paid for on time. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. There are examples of modern homes built based on the design of Sears Modern Home. I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. Thank you for visiting! that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. 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. [17] Later on in the Modern Homes timeline, Sears had in-office designers but titled them as "experts" rather than actual architects.[17]. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. Boxabl 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. Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. 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. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. 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. Tucker/Crossroads Damn, it was like. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. Rosemary Thornton If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. Welcome to the New NSCAA. 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. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? 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. You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . 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. This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. Sears also offered a plasterboard product similar to modern drywall as an alternative to the plaster and lath wall-building techniques which required skilled carpenters and plasterers. 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. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. 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. This one, too, looks pretty much like just a taller version of the Greenview/115 and the Rossville/171, from the front and porch side of the house so, it was another mystery, as to what to look for on the other side of the house. It was built in 1917. 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. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. As some areas begin to see population booms, such as the tech triangle region of Raleigh, Durham, and Cary as more companies and tech talent make exodus from California and New York based on what I hear from taxi drivers and my university contacts in the region at games conferences every year? 2) Look for shipping labels. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. Later, Sears constructed a second mill in Port Newark, New Jersey and purchased the Norwood Sash and Door Company in Norwood, Ohio. 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. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. Contains merger trees and halo . Original paperwork for the house including blueprints and letters of correspondence from Sears. Powered by, This September 2017 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this short video story by the Washington Post. Simple theme. No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. Square . This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. 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. While these features werent in every single Sears home, they still set the stage for home builders to realize what people wanted in their new digs because of how much their quality of life was improved. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. 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. A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. While researching the property, Harbst learned it was among the first homes built in the boroughs Homestead Park neighborhood. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. 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. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. You can clearly see a major difference on this side of the houses. Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed 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. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. Ohio and Illinois are still leading, though, with 2700+ and 2300+, respectively. In addition to home building costs being up to 40% lower than traditional building, you also had the option to bring your own blueprints to Sears to get them modified for far less than itd comparatively cost to go to a builder or architect today. The HMS data portal is a collection of models, simulations and synthetic observations of the Sun. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? 324 W Johnson Road Sears Jewel, Jewell, or Wilmore (depends on the year). The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. Not all Sears houses were mortgaged through Sears, but many were, so it's a great help for us to be able to access those records. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. [4] Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. Click to visit. 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. Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. 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. 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears No. 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. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. The Greenview/No. 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. Several Sears Modern Homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 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. 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. 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 . Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). ", "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? 168/Matoka, 301 Weller Avenue, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears Modern Home No. Compare house designs to original catalog images. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. 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. 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. We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. The last Sears Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. Related: Floating Chairs and Texas McMansions | McMansions vs Really Big Houses | Strange Mansion in Carmel, Indiana | What is a Mansion. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . The group has identified nearly 540 of the estimated 1,000 Sears mail-order homes that are believed to have been constructed in the region. 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. Damn, it was like Stardew Valley! Im looking at this cute little. national database of sears homes.