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The total number of kit homes sold will likely never be known as so many of these houses, originally built in close-in "suburban" neighborhoods in their day, have been torn down and replaced as cities and towns expanded. The story of Sears begins in 1886, when a railroad station agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota named Richard Sears started selling gold watches at $14 apiece. The next year, he set up shop with watchmaker Alvah Roebuck on Dearborn and Randolph Streets in Chicago. Hunter started taking notes about styles and locations, but she also wanted to verify her finds.
Historic homes that were sold as kits, and shipped to homeowners by rail.
Sears was an important part of life in America’s frontier, and its iconic catalog provided access to conveniences and essentials, including the roof over many people’s heads. The catalog flourished after the Homestead Act, the growth of railroads, and postal reforms such as special rate classifications and free rural delivery. It was during the Modern Homes program that largequantities of asphalt shingles became available. The alternative roofingmaterials available included, among others, tin and wood.
A Sears Roebuck house ©
They showed that homes could be standardized and affordable, but attractive and well built. Long before the advent of housing developments and the modern suburb, the Sears kit house gave many Americans their first taste of 20th century domestic life. The materials needed to build each home typically arrived by railroad and were then trucked to the home site. The kit included lumber, roofing, wiring, flooring, windows, doors, hinges, doorknobs, cabinets, nails, screws, paint, and varnish.
The History of Sears Kit Homes
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Events included an annual track and field competitions, and company baseball teams. By the 1890s, Richard W. Sears, a backwoods Minnesotan who understood agrarian life, expanded his mail-order enterprise to cater specifically to rural Americans, offering everything from fishing tackle to eyeglasses to baby carriages. “In rural America, you often had a few books, your Bible and the Sears catalog,” says Franz. In the early 20th century, when the average life span was 47, Sears exploited a scared, sick and vulnerable generation with countless sham remedies. In 1886, a 22-year-old station agent on the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway purchased a shipment of unwanted gold watches from a local jeweler. Wristwatches had just hit the market, and since station agents needed to track train schedules, the young man thought he might hawk the watches to his fellow railway workers.
The merchandise tower, the only surviving element of the 3-million-square-foot Merchandise Building, is to the west, and the Power House and Administration Building are to the east. Beyond those two, fronting on West Arthington and Spaulding Avenue, is the former Merchandise Laboratory.[1] These buildings were built along the former right-of-way of the Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad (now CSX). Many manufacturers, including Sears, took plans submitted by customers and manufactured custom homes.
The Aladdin Company was just one competitor already testing the waters with such an idea, and Sears quickly followed the same path. Some of these homes were based on models offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. Others were not but were still pre-cut kit homes built from plans and materials from Sears. The first Sears, Roebuck & Co. calendar hit mailboxes in 1894 and was followed over the next few years by specialty catalogs and color sections. Customers would receive a railcar filled with precut lumber and the necessary supplies and instructions to build a home, or hire a company to perform the assembly, at a fraction of the cost of a custom-built house.
Historic House Is Yours Free, But There's A Catch
The lumber was cut to size at the building site before being assembled by a local builder. A year later, the Modern Homes department had grown to 120 salespeople working out of 16 district sales offices. But preparations for World War II ended the enterprise in 1942, by which time the demand for lumber had exploded. From 1908 until 1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold over 70,000 kit houses through their Modern Homes and Honor Bilt catalogs. Designs for 370 different plans ranged from the elaborate to the simple; the ‘Goldenrod’, for example, was a three-room vacation cottage (no bath, out-house separate). Sears was not the first company to offer mail-ordered "kit homes," but by the time the catalog was discontinued in 1940, Sears is estimated to have sold between 70,000 and 75,000 houses.
Sears Homes
Thedifficulty in identifying a Sears home is just a reflection of the unique designand tastes of the original buyer (see FAQs). Mutch began researching Sears homes after the son of the house's original owners reached out to him and shared photos of the house under construction. Mutch and his wife, Wendy, run the Kit House Hunters blog, where they share the work they and other researchers have done to identify kit homes around the country. An old photo of Romain's home he found at his local library (top) compared with the catalog image for the Vallonia model (bottom).
Look At This: Sears, Roebuck & Co. Building
Featured in catalogs from 1912 to 1929, the Westly was one of Sears’ most popular designs. It still shines in countless towns across the country by the hundreds, if not thousands. These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. However, these stamps were not used on lumber shipped before 1916, when Sears first started offering pre-cut lumber. Because these homes were constructed using pre-cut lumber and plans provided by Sears, these homes can be considered to be “Sears Modern Homes”. 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”.
Available in a variety of styles and at a range of price points, these DIY kit houses would arrive via railroad boxcar as precut and then the buyer would have them assembled. Pattern-book houses are structures for which architects would sell stock plans for homes to help cut costs. Many pattern-book houses can be found throughout the Minne Lusa neighborhood. Everett S. Dodds was an Omaha architect who sold stock plans, and History Nebraska says 78 homes are attributed to him. The Sears home mortgage program started out as one of their keys to success.
The ability to mass-produce the materials used in Sears homes reduced manufacturing costs, which allowed Sears to pass along the savings in lower prices for customers. Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. In the 1920s extensive athletic facilities were added to the complex, as an encouragement for after-work socialization to keep employee morale high. Included were a clubhouse and tennis courts, and the Sears Department of the YMCA.
Some models of Sears homes were very similar in design to models offered by other kit home manufacturers or through plan books. Designs may have been modified but generally should match in layout and dimensions. The Ohio bungalow restored by Sam and Kathleen (previous story) is the ‘Argyle’, a Sears bestseller with just 1,008 square feet but many nice features, inside and out. By 1919, it was $1,479, and by 1923, it cost $2,349— still an exceptional value. Sears provided some customization (mirror-reverse plans, for example), a book-length instruction manual, and 10,000–30,000 pre-cut and -fitted framing members and elements. Plumbing, electrical, and heating equipment could be purchased separately, also from Sears.
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Staff then packaged the necessary materials and shipped the loaded cartons to a buyer’s address. Most of the millwork was fulfilled by the Sears-owned “Norwood Sash and Door Company” of Cincinnati, Ohio. However, building materials like millwork could be purchased separately from Sears so millwork with shipping labels is not, by itself, a definitive indicator of a Sears Modern house. Many included the latest technology available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, and electricity.
Remarkably, too, most of the Sears homes Hunter found looked like they were straight out of the catalog. She was able to find so many not because Elgin had the most Sears homes but because the homes could still be recognized, thanks to a perfect storm of historical conditions. Located in Cairo Illinois, the largest of these mills covered nearly 40 acres, and the sheer variety of homes it shipped out was staggering. The resulting Sears Modern Home Program was a hit, particularly after the end of World War I, the influx of returning veterans triggered a need for more housing.
Sears stopped the mortgage program in 1934 as a result of the Great Depression. The Modern Homes program itself ended in 1940, undone by loan defaults and pre-World War II shortages of building materials. Like many other retailers, Sears was severely impacted by the Great Depression.
Tin was noisy duringstorms, looked unattractive, and required a skilled roofer, while wood washighly flammable. Asphalt shingles, however, were cheap to manufacture and ship,as well as easy and inexpensive to install. It was that interaction that motivated him to research Sears kit homes.
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