national database of sears homes

Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. We are a team of about 10 researchers who work together to hunt around the U.S. for Sears kit houses built during the era of the Sears Modern Homes program (1908-1942). Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. However, we are pretty much limited to counties which have online accessible historic records, and to counties which we are able to physically visit to search in person this means that there are some counties out there with lots of undiscovered Sears houses, because we can't get to the records. 181, Sears No. Looks like Yoho probably bought plan #466 from H. L. Wilson, the actual designer. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? They raised four kids in that house, Steel wrote. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. Builders that already have both the funds and the skilled professionals in architecture, construction, and land use make it easier for the average person who only wants to worry about their career, move, and family. Thanks for your interest! 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. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. 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. 171 often has a full front porch that ends up extending all the way to the left side of the house. 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). 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 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. 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. They had. Kmart History | Search Archives | Sears Holdings Alumni | sears.com | kmart.com : Thursday, Mar. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. 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. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., is constantly growing, with over 13,600 homes currently listed. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. Others were not but were still pre-cut kit homes built from plans and materials from Sears. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. 5 Jun. No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. 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? easier. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. We've found examples from the Wardway, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Homes, and Ray H. Bennett companies. 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. 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. 5008". Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. 172, later marketed as the. 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. Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. Thanks to Ancestry.com, we are often able to get a street name from a census record, but we run into problems there, when we find a town that has no street names (yes! 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 . 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. Really, they couldn't find any space in there for the Modern Homes records? hennessy privilege limited edition / what is mc hammer doing now 2020 / national database of sears homes. 1232, later marketed as the No. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" [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. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. Sometimes the legal description is nice and straightforward, like, "lot 15, block C, Tanglewood Estates, in the town of Dunham". website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. The CNDDB is comprised of two data components: Text information and spatial information. Photo from Realtor site. Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. The Greenview/No. These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. 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. 264B155. 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. 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, Sears No 137 In Mendham, New Jersey, Morris County. There havent been any major structural changes, she said. Washington D.C. and its nearby suburbs have an unusually rich cache of kit houses stashed away in some of the leafy, well-tended neighborhoods where 1920s houses still shine. 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 . Orders were placed by mail, the See more 5,581 people like this 5,890 people follow this https://www.searshouses.com/ cyn.catanzaro@gmail.com Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. 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. 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. Argyles also tend to get messed up and hard to recognize like this one at 6818 N. Oriole, Chicago or this one at 1302 Edgewood, Lake Forest. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. We cannot be absolutely certain, but the numbers do not support it. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. 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. So, I'll just post a nice selection here. During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. 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. of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. Photo from Realtor site. Chabot said while Sears wasnt the first or only company to sell mail-order homes, they were unique among the competition. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. I just loved the look of it, she said. Documented Sears houses have been found across the United States and in a few locations in Canada. Tucker/Crossroads He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. 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. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. Please contact me if you would like a free 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. 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. 1232 / No. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. All these years later it is still a fortress.. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. The truth is out there, and I think you've found it! From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Melissa Steel of Patterson Heights in Beaver County said the story about the Sears house in McCandless sparked fond memories of the family next door who lived in one for many years. This table provides a Streetview link for each house (or, occasionally, a real estate listing link), and, for houses I've shown, but not provided a catalog image of, you'll find a link to a catalog image, as well. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. Our list, in fact, began with 345 Sears houses that Mrs. Lask had found in the Cincinnati area, as part of a Masters Degree thesis project at the University of Cincinnati. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. 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! : Ohio is the state with the largest number, Pennsylvania is the third- highest-ranking state, Prince George's County, MD & Montgomery County, MD. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. However, the streets that are lined with these farmhouse models (and many other houses), are actually in the Lakeview neighborhood so, we imagine that was a mistake in the article. Contains merger trees and halo . Photo from Lake County Assessor. catalogs for all central and satellite halos down to 10^06 MSun. Capture from Google Streetview. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. 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. Built around 1917 home resembles the Hazelton Model C2025,l 1915-1920 and the Vallonia Model P13049A or P13049B, 1927-1932. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. 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. 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. presentation, nows your chance! Sears houses can be identified or authenticated using the following methods. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. One of the things that Marie has done for us, is to perfectly describe our search for Sears houses, as a "badass hobby" that is akin to a "huge historical treasure hunt". 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. national database of sears homes. You can clearly see a major difference on this side of the houses. We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. 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. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. Our research would not be possible, without online resources for Sears Modern Homes catalogs, and the catalogs for other kit-house companies, such as Gordon-Van Tine, Wardway, Aladdin, Sterling, Lewis, and Bennett. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. 506 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears No. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. Original paperwork for the house including blueprints and letters of correspondence from Sears. Our list, by the way, began in the early years of our research group. 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. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. 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 suburban house with a car in every driveway. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. 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. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. I know of several other models in McCandless. Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. 175 (in 1913). 181, and the early version of the. national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. HBM (. 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). One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. Click to visit. muhammad ali i am the greatest speech transcript . 1. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? 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. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. Open to the public. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all However, as you can see in the photos above, that showed the sides of the house, the Rossville/No. Damn, it was like Stardew Valley! Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. Click to visit. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the This system used precut timber of mostly standard sizes (2"x4" and 2"x8") for framing. Asphalt shingles were cheap to manufacture and ship, and easy and inexpensive to install. Simple theme. Between 1908 and 1940, Sears Roebuck and Co. published specialty catalogs offering house plans and building materials. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update Park, MD. 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. 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. 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. We just love the Walton model! 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. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! Due to reviews by homeowners then and now, it would appear that Sears Modern Homes are just as appreciated now as they were then. In fact, the No. 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. [2] No comprehensive list of their locations exists.[3]. that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. This Sears mail-order house named The Crescent was built in Munhall in 1920, according to owner Molly Harbst. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. That's why we love seeking them out! The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. 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. If you are a Historical Society interested in awarding plaques for specific homes understood to be Sears houses, please feel free to contact us to verify for you that the house does match a model offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. 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). 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. 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. Thanks! Harbst said it wasnt until after she bought the house that she learned homes were once sold through mail-order catalogs. 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. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Residential construction was drastically down nationwide due to the Great Depression. [14], In addition to houses, the 1908 Sears catalog offered a kit schoolhouse with the model name "Schoolhouse No. Sales peaked in 1929, just before the Great Depression. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. 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. Without authentication, however, we can't be 100% certain that this house was ordered from Sears, as numerous kit and non-kit companies offered a very similar model, and these kinds of stories that are passed down over time, often turn out to be mistaken (with the house actually being a model from a different kit company, or simply resembling a model offered by Sears). 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". A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. 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. In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. In a second blog post, I'll show the several probable kit houses that we've found in LaPorte, Indiana, from other companies. 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. Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. 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. Andrew spotted these two houses right next to each other, on W 11th Street: a No. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. Many of the homes original features remain intact.

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