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. 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. | Sears Modern Homes", "Sears Houses in Arlington Virginia: A Comprehensive List", "How Sears built an entire local neighborhood", "Historic Structures Crystal Lake Historical Society", "Sears Houses in Elgin Illinois arranged according to model name", "Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes in the Philly Suburbs and Sears House Hunters", "Where are the rest of the Sears houses in the U.S.? In real life, with its two full stories, the whole house is a much taller house than the Rossville/171 or the Greenview/115. Sears Modern Homes - Wikipedia That is unique to Sears. 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. Marie gives the perfect explanation of our Sears House hunt, in this. Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. We just love the Walton model! 115 cuts off abruptly, right in the middle of the front facade, even with the left side of the upper window, and it then has a straight slope porch roof jutting out. Finally, if you really want to understand the basics of what a Sears Modern Homes kit house is, and what it is not, you might find this blog post of mine to be helpful and informative. to share their names with others who might be interested in Images of Sears Homes 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. I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. The house was in original condition and was never modified while we lived there - it was sold in 2003 or early 2004. You had the flexibility to swap out certain elements without causing the whole thing to collapse like one of those Instagrammable burgers thats way too tall. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. Simply put, life was rougher. 168 / Matoka: I am really (really!) Photo from Realtor site. presentation, nows your chance! These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses". Whitehouse. 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. 264B155. 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. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. However, these stamps were not used on lumber shipped before 1916, when Sears first started offering pre-cut lumber. If you have any authenticating source for us, we'd love to hear about it (you can email me directly at SearsHouseSeeker@gmail.com). Michigan, Indiana, and New Jersey have large overall numbers, as well. For this week's listing of the week, we decided to find seven charming Sears Catalog homes you can actually buy today. 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. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home easier. When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. 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. Text information is available through RareFind 5 and provides essential information about special status species and occurrences. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). [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. 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. national database of sears homes Those are ridiculously difficult to pin down. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. Not all Sears houses became private residences. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. The. 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. 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). You can contact Tony by email at tlarussa@triblive.com or via Twitter . Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. A kick-off celebration was held March 3, 2023, for the newly renamed BMO Stadium. Remember when Sears sold houses? See some of Ann Arbor's kit homes - mlive The new owner was a Sears House fan - even produced a short doc film about the house and how she updated it. 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. My father knew the local builder (Mr. Humphreys) who put the house together. 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. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. When the. 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. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. Among those are: Sears Modern Homes can also be found in historic districts listed in the National Register of Historic Places: According to Carolyn Fraser's Pulitzer-winning book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the house that Rose Wilder Lane built for her parents, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder, at Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri was from a Sears kit. excited about this find and I really hope it is one: a Sears No. 1232 click. 159, except for a closed pediment up in the front and side gable. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. This product offered the advantages of low price, ease of installation, and added fire protection. 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. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. 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. 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". In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. 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". Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. According to a review written by Mary Ann O'Boyle of Takoma Park, Maryland, her Sears home feels "unabashedly American, the kind of house you see in movies about the good old days" and "allows me to connect with the past". some ch Don't miss this never before seen catalog from Sears. Is My House a Sears House? The Nine Easy Signs. - Sears Modern Homes Parts for the homes, which were sold between 1908 and 1940, were delivered to the nearest rail station. 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. 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. 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. You can see that La Porte, Indiana is mentioned as one of the "built at" locations: We found four examples of what we believe to be the model No. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. 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. Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. 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. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home 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. 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. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. 159. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your 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. Historic Homes Images of Sears Homes Click on the associated link for a collection of images and photographs of almost all 447 house designs sold through the Sears Modern Homes program. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. I'm sure it was Matthew who cleared up for me that the No. 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. I know of several other models in McCandless. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. Thanks for your interest! 5 Jun. 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. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. So, they are likely from Sears. See that curled element at the hinge edge? To drum up business, Sears issued a press release to newspapers across the United States. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. Sears House Seeker 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. I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. Open to the public. Photo from Realtor site. 159 was available with either clipped gables or peak gables, for the roof. 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 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. 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. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. 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. The suburbs of Philadelphia are not the only places where we find Sears houses, by the way. 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.. Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. [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]. That's why we love seeking them out! 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. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. of "Where are the Sears Houses?" 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. That, still, is only helpful if we can find a plat map online for a subdivision called Tanglewood Estates! the case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. 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. national database of sears homes - nyomkovetes-blog.hu 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 now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. 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. Owners of these houses along the years may have, however, found paper shipping labels affixed to the back of trim pieces around doors or windows, or decorative moulding pieces. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. This phrase is trademarked and cannot be used without permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc. 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. 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. My home reminds me of that type of architecture.. Telephone 847-697-4551. www.kithouse.org. 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 moving easier. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. 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. Either way, these houses offered variety and quality even if they werent necessarily innovative. Several Sears Modern Homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. 181, Sears No. In it, they included excerpts from an interview with David S. Betcone, who was the chief architect for Sears at the time. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. [8] By 1934, Sears had stopped offering mortgages. I just loved the look of it, she said. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. 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? By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. . 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. Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression until 1940. I thought it was very interesting when I learned that you could also buy a house from their catalogs.. A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. So Betcone gave us a huge clue as to what the top seller for Sears was. 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. "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. Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. According to the catalog image, both models have only a partial porch at the front of the house. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all