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. I have seen articles throughout the years about Sears homes in the Pittsburgh area, she wrote after reading the Trib story. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. Please browse through and enjoy the 1,000+ posts and 5,000+ photos! Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . By Posted on Mar 10, 2021. national database of sears homes. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. 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.. 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. Sears House Seeker A number of those homes are featured on the organizations website. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia, area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Modern Home. "Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,500 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is No. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. It looks almost like a Sears, And, finally, we have this pretty rare model, the Sears. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. 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 is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. Our team did some traveling around streets inside Philadelphia, in neighborhoods like Oxford Circle, Rhawnhurst, and Roxborough, to name a few, and added about 43 houses to our list, from these neighborhoods. When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Rosemary Thornton 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. You usually just left with the clothes on your back and a few trunks, and that was it. He published the design as #466 in his 1912 "Craftsman Bungalows" catalog. Other models only appeared for one year. That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. And it led me to dig a little deeper into the history of my community.. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. [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]. We just can't say, because we can't access those records. 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. But, in the case of the early, non pre-cut houses, when we know that a large number of houses were bought by a company (or offered up on spec, by Sears), we sometimes see that special versions were created for these neighborhoods, specifically. However, based on what the experts said in that Atlas Obscura piece, youre most likely to find Sears homes in places where railroad stations once stood (or are lucky to still have) and where Sears factories had a major role on the local economy, like Cincinnati. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. We certainly imagine that the houses have been retro-fitted with one, at this point. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. The Rossville/No. Argyles also have a tendency to hide. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? [4] Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. It's also possible that some local builder just put together a similar design, to compete with the Sears houses being built in town, but, some of these examples are on blocks of streets that are lined with Sears houses from this early spec offering by Sears. 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. Contains merger trees and halo . , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. We cannot be absolutely certain, but the numbers do not support it. Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. To see a variety of models similar to the Mitchell, that were offered during the kit-house era, see this article. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? Sears began offering financing plans around 1912. 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. 1. national database of sears homes - thenscaa.com contacting them by clicking on their name. Thanks! Betcone spoke of how housing styles were drastically changing and how many customers wanted more efficient, streamlined designs. 181, Sears No. The two-story schoolhouse was priced at $11,500 and its design included six classrooms, a library, an auditorium, and a superintendent's office. , 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. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. national database of sears homes. 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. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. According to the US Census, there were about 88.7 million people living in the United States. Fabricated houses sold primarily through mail order, Column detail from a Sears Vallonia house, pictured alongside its appearance in the catalog, Modern interpretations of Sears Modern Homes, "Did Sears, Roebuck Sell Homes in Canada? As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them. 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. When we find a mortgage record, we're just given a buyer's name, and a legal description of a property. 1916 Sears Roebuck Modern Homes. As sales grew, Sears expanded its production, shipping, and sales offices to locations across the U.S. To provide the materials needed for the Modern Homes division, Sears operated a lumber mill in Cairo, Illinois. rebeccahunter1216@gmail.com. 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. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,500 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is No. 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. Several Sears Modern Homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Newport Beach home dangling on edge after cliff collapses 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! Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. 181, and the early version of the. Ohio and Illinois are still leading, though, with 2700+ and 2300+, respectively. Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. 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. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. Interested in hearing about Rose's near-death experience? Local Sears house enthusiast Karen DeJeet, who owns a Hamilton model in Forest Hills and is a member of the Sears House Finder team, has already done much of the work identifying the mail-order homes still standing in the region. 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. June 1, 2022. by etc north vernon covid testing. Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. 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. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. But, as of this date in 2021, here are leading areas in the U.S. with high numbers of Sears houses. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. 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. Sears also offered a plasterboard product similar to modern drywall as an alternative to the plaster and lath wall-building techniques which required skilled carpenters and plasterers. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. 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. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. by . 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. 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?). 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.