national database of sears homes

They had 447 different styles that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your 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. Welcome to 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. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. Capture from Google Streetview. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. presentation, nows your chance! 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. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. 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. Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. 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. All these years later it is still a fortress.. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. Ha! Thanks for your interest! Compare house designs to original catalog images. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. Excuse me while I openly weep thinking about how many vacation cottages today probably cost the same or even more than, Sears also offered mortgages to home buyers and was pretty liberal with their lending terms, which made them an attractive option for widows, the self-employed, and people in marginalized groups who otherwise had trouble qualifying for traditional bank loansa problem that still persists today. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. I'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. 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. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. [35] Another homeowner, Erskine Hogue Stanberry, states that his Saratoga model was the "first house in Chelsea to have electric lights" and that they "are using the original plumbing and wiring".[35]. When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. We thought it might be of interest to those readers to point out some more of the history of Sears houses in the greater Pittsburgh area, said Chabot, whose family still owns a Sears Silverdale model home in Northampton, Mass., that was built by her great-grandparents in 1911. The House that Came in the Mail - 99% Invisible national database of sears homes - dowdcreative.com The wild pursuit began with an a 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. Im looking at this cute little Cape Cod that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. 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. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). So, they are likely from Sears. 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. small-town America even into the 1940 census). [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. 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. Identifying Sears Homes | Sears Modern Homes During the later era of pre-cut houses, we don't usually put homes on our list, if they have these kinds of design differences. 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. The builder was W.L. sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears homes. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. 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. Contains merger trees and halo . If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. See that curled element at the hinge edge? 06/16/2022 . Thats cheaper than many tiny houses and with space to actually breathe and have more than one person live with you without wanting to kill each other. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. Basic cross-gabled two-story farmhouses are to be found almost everywhere in towns and cities as well as many rural areas throughout the United States. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. Welcome to the New NSCAA. Please contact me if you would like a free Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. Our goal is always to authenticate these houses through mortgage and deed research, or other primary sources, but, when that is not possible, we apply a careful, team approach to analyzing each house that goes on our national list. [5] Early balloon structures were very basic, to enable home buyers to assemble them independently and also because designers had yet to see the implications the method held.[5]. [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. We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. . 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. 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. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. . The last Sears Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". . A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? 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). 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. In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. Lets find out! 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. contacting them by clicking on their name. 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. 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. She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. . At one point, I realized that I needed to organize a list of online catalog resources, so I put together this blog post, which has links to catalogs not only from Daily Bungalow and AntiqueHome, but to the many catalogs uploaded on another key resource, Archive.org (have you donated lately?). Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. 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. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. We just love the Walton model! to you on Flickr or Pinterest. Originally marketed as the. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. 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. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. There havent been any major structural changes, she said. Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. The Sears Tower is nearly finished. The iron strapping itself can be strait or curved, but the curlicue is always there, if it's iron strapping from Sears. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. 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. 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. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! 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 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. 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). I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. Is My House a Sears House? The Nine Easy Signs. - Sears Modern Homes I just loved the look of it, she said. They had. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. 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. to share their names with others who might be interested in 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. Buyers could hire a contractor to assemble their home or build it themselves following the detailed instructions that were included. Welcome to Sears Homes! 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.". [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. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. None of these houses are authenticated through mortgage or deed research, but they are spot-on matches for the models, and we feel certain enough of their origin, to add them to our database. It was built in 1917. 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.