national database of sears homes

I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. The. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). 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. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). Built around 1917 home resembles the Hazelton Model C2025,l 1915-1920 and the Vallonia Model P13049A or P13049B, 1927-1932. More information, in this blog post of mine, documented through historic mortgage research, by Andrew Mutch, Philadelphia Inquirer article by Kevin Riordan, 418 Woodlawn Ave, Collingswood, NJ 08108, USA, 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. that was $886 in 1940 dollars, about $16,000 today. Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. Price: $179,900. During the Modern Homes program, large quantities of asphalt shingles became available. 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 4120 Adams St., Gary, IN. Or did we just go wrong somewhere when someone decided the house you live in should be treated like a bank? Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. 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. Were most Sears Houses built by the owners? More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. national database of sears homes. 181, and the early version of the. 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. 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. [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. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. Simple theme. "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. But who knows, maybe well see tiny shipping container homes in a museum someday after we take back the rest of the real estate after the revolution. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. : Ohio is the state with the largest number, Pennsylvania is the third- highest-ranking state, Prince George's County, MD & Montgomery County, MD. Moreover, it was just more feasible to plunk down a house somewhere because there just werent as many homes on account of a smaller population. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. 1232 click. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. houses that share a name also share either a number, a floor plan or had Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. You can find catalog images for these models, in the links on the table at the end of this blog post: Also on W Johnson Road, we have new information from Nancy, who contacted me to let me know that she grew up in the Sears house shown below, a Sears. 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. Would you mind messaging me with an address, so that we can add your Sears house to our (private) national database? 1232, later marketed as the No. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. If home is where the heart is, then those living in houses built from Sears mail-order kits may have fallen head-over-heels. 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. 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. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Camden County would be a great place to search, because we know that there are Sears houses in Collingswood, Haddon Township, Haddonfield, and Haddon Heights but, how many? Some Home Club homes have deeds from the "Port Newark Lumber and Material Company". Chabot said while Sears wasnt the first or only company to sell mail-order homes, they were unique among the competition. New York state is 4th, with 1,679 houses found. 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. Walker O. Lewis (primarily before early 1930), William C. Reed (primarily from 1922 - 1929), Nicholas Wieland (sometimes spelled Weiland), Shipping labels: Often found on the back of. [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. 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. 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). I'm not surprised that the Argyle is likely the best seller; it had a long run and was as good-looking as it was practical. Andrew is our number-cruncher, and his blog, I joined the team shortly after Lara, Cindy and Andrew began, in earnest, to log the homes that they were finding. Sears licensed the plans for the Argyle from a. real estate builder/developer named Jud Yoho. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. Simple theme. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. Did materials and labor really get that much more expensive between now and then? I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. A high-speed chase involving an armed carjacking suspect ended in Los Angeles Friday afternoon when the suspect crashed into a police vehicle, and then into a pole. And, to top it off, Gordon-Van Tine has a model almost the same. The wild pursuit began with an a Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. homes for rent in laplace 70068. national database of sears homes. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati Park, MD. HBM (. The multi-million-dollar home has been red-tagged while two other Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. We love her for giving us this to quote over and over again and for the many Sears houses that she has added to our list. 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. 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. Thanks for your interest! You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. Charleston, West Virginia is a hotspot for Sears model homes, in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. 168/Matoka, 301 Weller Avenue, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears Modern Home No. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. Click to visit. 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). Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! Chabot focuses her research on scouring mortgages and deed records, old newspaper articles and other sources to identify kit homes sold by Sears. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. Images are available As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them. 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. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. 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. One final note about our list: as I've mentioned, our list includes, for the most part, homes that we have located, ourselves, but also those that we have learned about from other people. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. Others were not but were still pre-cut kit homes built from plans and materials from Sears. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. The houses made it as far as Alaska and Canada, as the parts were delivered by railroad. Here are both of these models in the 1911/12 Sears Modern Homes catalog. 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. Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. rebeccahunter1216@gmail.com. Marie's great-grandfather, Freeman Pretzinger, built this Sears. On another block of W 11th Street, there is an example of the Sears Modern Home No. Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. 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.. It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. 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. Thanks! No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. 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, Sears Wasnt an Innovator, but They Knew Quality and Efficiency. How did Sears Modern Homes come to be? Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. Tony LaRussa is a Tribune-Review staff writer. So, they are likely from Sears. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! The rest of these models are singletons, from the mid 1920s to early 1930s. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. There havent been any major structural changes, she said. Many of these post 1940 homes were based on models from the 1940 and earlier Sears catalogs but not all were, leading to debate over whether these homes qualify as "Sears Modern Homes". . catalogs for all central and satellite halos down to 10^06 MSun. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. But before all this, having to get your own home built was more common instead of getting on a waitlist for a HUD-subsidized tract home or buying one secondhand from the current occupant. 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. 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. Related: Floating Chairs and Texas McMansions | McMansions vs Really Big Houses | Strange Mansion in Carmel, Indiana | What is a Mansion. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. 02, 2023 : History: Catalogs: Homes: Products: Brands: Stores: People Historic Homes : . If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? I'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? The house that would soon become the Argyle in one of Yoho's magazines, 1913. 159 has two full stories on that non-porch side of the house. If you don't know what that means, look at these two examples, and note where the orange arrow points that little extra strip of roofing that makes a sort of closed triangle. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Having just covered the Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores, something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. Ha! Photo from Lake County Assessor. What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. small-town America, 1920! Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. 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. 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. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! Sales peaked in 1929, just before the Great Depression. 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. In areas where the land is already mostly developed and zoned, its not that simple. Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. *Sears Americus - Temple, PA*It's been about 3 months since the last update 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. Here is the catalog image, from the 1911/12 catalog: And here are two examples in La Porte. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. 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. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. 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. If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. 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 . Im looking at this cute little. Our list, by the way, began in the early years of our research group. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. Asbury Methodist Village Communications Dept. Once again true to the companys roots, youre more apt to find Sears catalog homes still standing in former factory towns of the Midwest. 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. 264B155. How Many Sears Houses Are Still Out There? 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. The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. An open floor plan with sensible . 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. Thank you for visiting! that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. 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. Welcome to the New NSCAA. 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). The American Lumberman article referred to this area where the houses were being built, as the Fairview neighborhood. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . 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. 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. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. 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.

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