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They had enough supplies and reach that their Honor Built products could span a large gamut of projects from small to large to satisfy alpost any need of the public. There is some debate about whether some homes from Sears that were built in 1941 and 1942 qualify as Sears Modern Homes. 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. A former warehouse of the complex was repurposed by Chicago Police into the Homan Square facility. It gained national notoriety due to its characterization in the media as a CPD 'Black site'. The Power Station is a rectangular, nominally single-story, brick structure measuring 114 by 230 feet (35 m × 70 m).
Before Folding 30 Years Ago, the Sears Catalog Sold Some Surprising Products
The company's growth continued through the 20th century, and by the 1960s it was the largest retailer in the world. Changing trends in retail sales and methods led to a decline, and the company's mail order business was scaled back in 1987, moving out of these premises. The corporate headquarters had been moved in 1973 to the Sears Tower, so the complex then stood vacant. Its closure of the complex presented the city with a redevelopment problem. Homes in a box, delivered to the local train depot from regional manufacturers, allowed many a frugal home buyer to get a good quality house for a reasonable price. The styles ranged from the Craftsman-style bungalow of the 1910s and 20s to the English Cottage and Spanish Revival as well as the ever popular Colonial Revival and its subtypes.
Look At This: Sears, Roebuck & Co. Building
Before drywall, plaster and lathe wall-building techniques wereused, which again required skilled carpenters. Hunter acknowledges smaller homes, including the kit houses, are being torn down and replaced by McMansions. The catalogs proved to be popular, and over time different products were added and tested — including houses. The 1960s brought more competition, in the form of new discount department store chains like Target, Walmart and Kmart. Annual sales rose to $10 billion by the early ‘70s, and the company moved its headquarters into what was then the world’s tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago, in 1973.
Sears Houses In the U.S.
Many people haven't any idea what Gordon Van Tine or Aladdin offered, but almost everyone who has a passing interest in old houses has heard of the "Sears kit home." In addition to Sears, there were other companies that sold kit homes, including Aladdin, Gordon Van Tine, Montgomery Ward, Harris Brothers and more. Not surprisingly, the Midwest has an amazing collection of Sears Homes in particular and kit homes in general. Below are a few pictures of the kit homes I’ve found during my travels in the Midwest. Sears’ simple, warm and customer-service-centered approach helped it stand out among mail-order competitors like Montgomery Ward and Hammacher Schlemmer.
Sears expanded by opening stores.
As shopping malls became ubiquitous across the nation, Sears stores served as familiar anchors, along with fellow chains like J.C. With the rise of the automobile, the mail-order boom in the United States slowed down, but Sears managed to stay successful by expanding consumer credit with its “No Money Down” policy and, in 1924, opening its first retail store in Chicago. After launching the Kenmore brand (appliances) and Craftsman brand (tools) during the 1920s, Sears even expanded into auto insurance, launching Allstate in 1931. When the Elgin Watch Factory, which had employed a quarter of the town, closed in 1964, Elgin entered a localized recession, sparing it from the renovation craze of the 1960s and 70s. Instead, Elgin’s Sears homes simply sat there through the decades, largely untouched.
Instead of abandoning the sale of millwork and other building parts, why not change the way these goods were sold? What if customers could pick a plan for their dream house from a Sears catalog? One order could include everything—nails and screws, paint and roof shingles, windows and doors, woodwork, staircases, and mantelpieces. Sears was not the only company selling mail-order houses; however, it was reportedly the largest.
OKI Wanna Know: Where are the local Sears kit homes? - WVXU
OKI Wanna Know: Where are the local Sears kit homes?.
Posted: Wed, 08 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Sears Homes were kit homes that were sold right out of the pages of the Sears Roebuck catalog in the early 1900s. More than 370 designs of kit homes were offered – everything ranging from Arts and Crafts bungalows to foursquares to Colonial Revivals. These homes came in 30,000-piece kits and were shipped to all 48 states. Sears promised that a man of average abilities could have these homes assembled in about 90 days. These framing systems did not requirea team of skilled carpenters, as previous methods did. Balloon frames were builtfaster and generally only required one carpenter.
Sales slowly recovered as the United States emerged from the Great Depression. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. That 1920 house on Meredith Avenue is Sears Model Home No. 126, according to Sarah Addleman, who recently finished a master’s thesis on identifying Sears homes. She says Omaha likely has other examples, but they can be tricky to identify because most homes of that age—the youngest Sears kit house would be more than 70 years old—have undergone additions and remodeling.
Kit House Hunting
Sears Stores Are Going Away, But The Company's 'Kit Houses' Live On - Texas Standard
Sears Stores Are Going Away, But The Company's 'Kit Houses' Live On.
Posted: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. During those years, about 75,000 well-designed, well-constructed and economical houses were sold to American families. They ranged from pocket-sized English cottages to three-story, five-bedroom suburban manses; from lightly built garages and fishing camps to heavily framed houses that included two-story columned porticos, sleeping porches and porte-cocheres. Some of the earliest, marketed to areas without water or sewer services, had no bathrooms.
In so doing, they helped usher out the era of the custom site-built house, replacing it with the promise that homes could be standardized and affordable. Long before the advent of housing developments and the modern suburb, it was the Sears kit home that gave Americans their first taste of 20th-century domestic life. In theory, really handy homeowners could—and some did—put together their own Sears houses with only the aid of the instruction manual. More often, the actual construction was left to—or at least required considerable help from—a local builder. Over the 30-year lifespan of the Modern Homes program, the various service systems within the house—such as plumbing, electricity, and heating—became more complex, so that owners were more likely to call in trade specialists.
Sears houses were often built in multiples, creating entire homogeneous neighborhoods. The five- and six-room houses of what became known as the Standard Addition, which included many bungalows and Foursquares, cost roughly $3,600 to $4,600 and were regarded as unusually fine examples of worker housing. He was a merchandising genius credited with inventing Sears, Roebuck and Company’s Modern Homes program, which provided well designed, well constructed, economical shelter for perhaps 75,000 American families between 1908 and 1940. Today, buyers are still snapping up vintage Sears houses just as eagerly as they did 80 years ago. Identifying Sears Homes has become a pastime among history enthusiasts because of their sturdy structure, the do-it-yourself nature of construction, and the popular architectural design concepts. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales.
Most included the latest comforts and conveniences available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, telephone, and electricity. Most Americans in the early 20th century lived in multigenerational houses with different rooms allocated for different family members. But the Sears kit popularized newlywed homes and jumpstarted single-family living. It also made modern conveniences like electricity and central heating more widely available to Americans of all social classes. Why did a company renowned for its catalog success choose to sell homes? A former manager of the Sears china department turned a loss into a sales leader when he suggested bundling this stagnant inventory into a home kit.
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