national database of sears homes

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. 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. 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. New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. Sears mail-order homes prove plentiful in Western Pennsylvania "The Sears Homes of Illinois" has more than 200 color photos of the most popular designs that Sears offered and can be very helpful in identifying Sears Homes. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. national database of sears homes Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. Its as sturdy as a house as Ive ever seen. ", "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? Thanks! Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. 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. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. 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. Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan. The new owner was a Sears House fan - even produced a short doc film about the house and how she updated it. 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). 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.". 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. Excuse me while I openly weep thinking about how many vacation cottages today probably cost the same or even more than house houses in many parts of the country. BMO Celebrates Kickoff of the 2023 Soccer Season at 'BMO Stadium' in Contains merger trees and halo . Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly Suburbs and Sears Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? While I'm at it, I'll tell you a bit about our mission, as a research team. 06/16/2022 . Welcome to Sears Homes! Or did we just go wrong somewhere when someone decided the house you live in should be treated like a bank? Here is one of the eleven examples in La Porte: This early version of the No. Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. 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. contacting them by clicking on their name. Teen hikers rescued after days stuck in California snowstorm Sears Homes 1908-1914 Price: $179,900. This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes, We started looking around La Porte, Indiana, in 2015. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. Square . 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. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. Keep in mind, however, that even though we have found well over 200 Sears houses in the PA and NJ suburbs of Philadelphia, those are densely populated areas. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. Also, homes in southern Ohio may have financing documents through the "Norwood Sash and Door Company" of Norwood, Ohio. I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. Lets find out! At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. Simple theme. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. 181, Sears No. Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. 264B155. 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. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. 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. Because the Modern Homes division sales records were destroyed, there is no way to definitively verify the number of Sears houses that still exist. 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. Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. Sure, your Wabash or Verona model 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. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. national database of sears homes - dowdcreative.com He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. 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 . 118 In Columbia, 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. 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. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. 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? The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. by . 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. They kept up with it, of course, but it sure has good bones. Many of the homes original features remain intact. Sometimes researchers get lucky and find facts and figures in old company newsletters, personal papers of Sears managers and executives, historical newspapers, and archival interviews conducted with people who worked in the department in the 1930's and 1940's. From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. We just love the Walton model! 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. I've always seen this one in the catalogs, and thought it was kind of ungainly in proportions, but we hadn't found one before this one this is a pretty good match, though not perfect, but, in the days before pre-cut, we are more likely to see some modifications to the models. 159, but it's likely especially because we have found interior views of a couple, and we think we see Sears staircase balusters and newel. 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. It looks almost like a Sears, And, finally, we have this pretty rare model, the Sears. I just loved the look of it, she said. See that curled element at the hinge edge? Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. 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). New York state is 4th, with 1,679 houses found. 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.. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. Chuck Holtzen has joined up with Lara to do research in Illinois, and has been helpful in adding a number of authenticated houses to our list. 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. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" 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). After all, future generations became more transient out of circumstance or in light of the digital nomad movement and taking advantage of technology in general, more mobile by choice. 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. 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears No. A recent Tribune-Review story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless that has most of its original features intact drew scores of letters and comments from Pittsburgh area residents interested in learning more about the unique role these houses played in U.S. history. 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. 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. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. 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. , 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. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way.