Sears Homes: mansions by mail
Remember the Sears Modern Home Catalog?
From 1908 to 1940 Sears Roebuck & Co. helped thousands of families realize the American dream of homeownership. In 1908 Sears issued their first Modern Homes Catalog, offering prefab house kits in 44 designs that ranged in price from $495 to $4,115. By 1940 the prospective buyer could choose from some 400 models, all designed by architects employed by the company and ranging in size and style from Tudor revival mansions to Arts and Crafts era bungalows or English cottages. The buyer was encouraged to customize his future home by adding or subtracting features.
By changing the roofline, adding more windows, changing room sizes, or selecting different moldings or cabinetry the customer essentially could design his own dream home. That task aside, the shear magnitude of the job ahead was literally brought home to the buyer when two boxcars arrived at the local train station loaded with some 30,000 pieces—anything from precut and numbered boards, doors and windows to nails, downspouts, doorknobs, paint and varnish. With the parts of his house heaped at his feet, the new homeowner was presented with a leather-bound set of instructions and left to his own resources.
Despite the prefab nature of Sears homes, the use of high quality materials and the presence of a rock-solid Sears guarantee on all products meant that, for the first time, an average American worker in 1920 could afford a well constructed, modern home. Sears homes were outfitted with electricity, indoor plumbing and centralized heat and, in some cases, were more up-to-date than the communities in which they were to be located. Well into the 1920s, Sears offered $23 outhouses in place of bathrooms for those houses that were to be built in towns without municipal water systems.
According to a book on the history of Sears Roebuck, sales for Sears homes peaked in 1929 at $12 million. The economic depression of the Thirties took its toll on home sales and in 1932 the Modern Homes department began operating at a loss. In 1934 the company began the process of shutting down operations of the department. They continued to sell remaining stock at buyers’ request but the last Modern Homes Catalog was issued in 1940. At the end of the era Sears had sold an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 homes to customers all over the United States.
Humble beginnings aside, today, the old Sears houses are much sought after by a new generation of homebuyers. Since preservationists rediscovered the houses in the 1980s, ownership of a Sears home has taken on the same cachet as owning a loft apartment in New York City. In 2001 a Sears home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, sold for $816,000. Every year the historic community of Carlinville, Illinois, organizes a Christmas festival that showcases a group of 152 Sears homes located in a 12-block area. The festival draws thousands of tourists from hundreds of miles away.
There is a movement afoot to locate and record all of the Sears homes still standing. The movement is spearheaded by people who consider Sears homes as icons of an era in American entrepreneurship that revolutionized the building industry. Unfortunately, identification will be difficult. When Sears closed its Modern Homes department in 1940 most of the company’s sales records were destroyed. The good news for potential buyers is that many of the existing Sears homes already have been identified and recorded.
For those of you who are trying to determine if you own a Sears home, help can be found in the pages of a book available through most libraries. Houses by Mail: A Guide to Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company, by Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl is considered to be the definitive guide to Sears homes. The book is full of photographs of the houses and the text reveals some easy ways to make a quick identification. For example, you should check exposed lumber in the attic or basement. Framing members—especially in homes built after 1920—were stamped in red, black or blue ink with alphanumeric codes such as C589. Look for labels or identification marks on moldings, doors or windows that might say “Sears Roebuck” or “Norwood Sash and Door.” If you’ve just bought the house (particularly in the case of a one-owner home) make a thorough search of the house checking closets, cabinets, basement and attic for old papers such as blueprints, shipping receipts or labels.
Source: © Alice Dahlgren's AtHome Newsletter
