national database of sears homes

of "Where are the Sears Houses?" 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. national database of sears homes - thenscaa.com 172, later marketed as the. 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. I just loved the look of it, she said. Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly Suburbs and Sears Simple theme. Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed Home - National Housing Preservation Database (NHPD) Because these homes were constructed using pre-cut lumber and plans provided by Sears, these homes can be considered to be "Sears Modern Homes". Photo from Lake County Assessor. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! 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). In fact, the No. 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. 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. There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. 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. In their own way, houses with Craftsman-style design elements often managed their own form of ebullient excess such as Modern Home No. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. to you on Flickr or Pinterest. I grew up in a Sears house located in Keyport NJ. However, many houses described as Sears Homes are not true Sears Homes, being either the product of another kit home manufacturer or not a kit home at all. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. 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. 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. The Sears Argyle was a small house, about 1,000 square feet, and many of them have been demolished. In the companys own words, Sears didnt really innovate home building. 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. 199 models here in La Porte, are somewhat tweaked in their design, but we still do think that they are examples of that model. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses in the U.S., where we add new finds, almost daily. 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. Referred to as a gable-front-and-wing, it was a national folk style that owed much of its heritage to the earlier Greek Revival style. However, these stamps were not used on lumber shipped before 1916, when Sears first started offering pre-cut lumber. 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. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Without facts and sales records, we can make an educated guess. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. sub 2:15 half marathon training plan; national database of sears homes. 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. 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. 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. Welcome to the New NSCAA. There were about 132 million people by the time Sears stopped selling Sears Modern Homes kits in 1940. Today, those marks can help prove that you have a kit home. Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs. Many of the smaller models are regularly torn down. Thanks to the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the NRDB will continue to be updated and available at least through 2023, and in some form, beyond that. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. Later, Sears constructed a second mill in Port Newark, New Jersey and purchased the Norwood Sash and Door Company in Norwood, Ohio. 171 examples in La Porte. This picture came from an original set of Sears "Honor Bilt" blueprints. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? 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. They had. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. June 1, 2022. by etc north vernon covid testing. Sears Modern Homes - Home | Facebook [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. No built examples have been found of some of the least popular models. From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. Spatial information is available through GIS downloads or can be viewed in the BIOS Viewer. Like this page to learn about homes purchased as kits through mail order catalogs. Honor Bilt homes used the best quality materials that Sears could source and they were designed with what was then state of the art heating, plumbing, and electricity. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. That, still, is only helpful if we can find a plat map online for a subdivision called Tanglewood Estates! Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. 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. Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces. I have the Farnum in New Brighton PA. 1929. [16], There was no single architect for the Sears designs. , 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. 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. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that Chabot learned about the homes history. 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. It's likely that other Sears models can be traced to him as well. But Matthew has a way of pulling everything together and spitting out a coherent comparative analysis with visuals that helps us see what we hadn't noticed previously. Im looking at this cute little. [37] Similiar references are made to boyhood homes of Richard Nixon and Warren Buffett. Balloon frames could be built faster and generally only required one carpenter. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. Advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942. 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. Sears's use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods. Sears Modern Homes were sold between 1908 and 1942. That's what happens 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. 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". 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. 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.