Table of Content
Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. Before 1916, the home builder had to cut their Sears-supplied lumber to appropriate lengths. These pre-1916 houses are generally considered "catalog houses", not "kit houses".
"It’s kind of like bird watching," says Judith Chabot, a French teacher in St. Louis who moderates the Sears Modern Homes Facebook page and writes the Sears House Seeker blog about the kit houses she finds around the country. She says there are over 8,200 documented Sears kit homes and around 1,000 from the other kit companies. She says there is no estimate of how many kit homes are still standing in the country. Among the catalog giant’s astounding range of offerings were house kits, which the company began marking in 1908. The kits came in 447 different designs, from the grand “Magnolia” ($5,140 to $5,972) to the more humble, but popular “Winona” ($744 to $1,998). Sears advertised the kits with the promise that “We will furnish all the material to build this .
Sears house kits become a big seller.
In 1932, the company opened its famous flagship store on State and Van Buren Streets in the Loop district of Chicago. Richard Sears, who wrote almost all of the catalog’s copy himself until his retirement in 1908, held to the motto “We Can’t Afford to Lose a Customer,” making sure that Sears stayed competitive in terms of price and value. Sears' retail stores spread across the country and its sales stayed strong even during the Great Depression, as the company spawned now-famous brands like Kenmore, Craftsman and even Allstate Insurance.
Jeff Yoder, 34, an information-technology support specialist, built a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 2,760-square-foot Shelter-kit house in Ypsilanti, Mich., in nine months. The home, finished in March, cost $125,000 and included everything except the land. Having never built a house himself, he had a tough time convincing the bank to give him a construction loan. "It’s a shift," says Dave Kimball, whose Warner, N.H.-based company Shelter-Kit has shipped components for homes as large as 8,000 square feet—a product that cost $300,000.
Design
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. At any rate, Sears always furnished estimates of the finished cost of the house, including labor .
There were actually six large companies that made kit houses, but none had the marketing clout of Sears and its famous catalog. Another company, Aladdin, sold enough homes to the Bristol Brass. Co. in 1916 to fill four blocks near the factory in Bristol, Conn.
The Story on Sears Houses
One of the best known Sears house locations is in Carlinville, Illinois, where Standard Oil of Indiana built a million-dollar development of 192 Honor Bilt houses for employees of Schoper coal mine . 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. Sears prided itself on offering floor plans that were both efficient and attractive, maximizing the usability of very limited space. The smaller houses sometimes combined living and dining rooms, while the smallest made do with a built-in eating nook or the kitchen table.
The lumber was cut to size at the building site before being assembled by a local builder. There is a tendency to think of the “Sears House” as a monolithic entity, but there were actually many different Sears catalogs that offered houses and auxiliary buildings, such as garages. Others continued to sell just lumber and building parts, which had been a Sears staple. Distinctions among the buildings offered, the quality of the materials, and the construction methods used can be confusing.
But its competitors were gaining ground, and by 1991 Sears had lost its crown as the nation’s top-selling retailer to Walmart. Some of these amenities came as part of the package, while others were options. Sears furnished wood lath for plaster walls, but not the plaster.
One Magnolia built in Lincoln, Nebraska, was demolished in 1985. The Wise family owns the Hammond, made by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and sold through the pages of its catalogs. About two dozen of Sears most popular designs had a unique column arrangement that makes identification easier.
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. Sears houses were often built in multiples, creating entire homogeneous neighborhoods.
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. Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt.
Sears also financed home purchases, and half its homes were tied up in mortgage loans by the time of the Great Depression. The company lost $11 million on defaulted mortgages in 1934, and by 1940 it was out of the house business. Sears, Roebuck and Company is a retail giant with 19th-century roots as a mail-order business operating in rural America. Sears grew into one of the nation’s largest corporations, redefining the American shopping experience in the process.
Modern Homes catalogs often carried designs well past what is generally considered their peak years. Bungalows, for instance, were among the most frequently built of all of Sears house types (and along with the Colonial Revival and the Cape Cod cottage, the longest-lived), appearing in every catalog from 1908 onward. As late as 1939 the “Winona,” which first appeared in 1916, is shown with another, rather stodgy five-room example, the “Plymouth,” which first appeared in 1934.
No comments:
Post a Comment