Sears Modern Homes
[1] Sears Modern Homes were purchased primarily by customers in East Coast and Midwest states, but have been located as far south as Florida, as far west as California, and as far north as Alaska and Canada.
[2] No complete record of their locations was left by Sears when they closed the Modern Homes program, but modern-day researchers are compiling a database of those that have been found so far, and the list continues to grow.
[3][4] Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history.
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.
Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house.
Once delivered, many of these houses were assembled by the new homeowner, relatives, friends and neighbors, in a fashion similar to the traditional barn-raisings of farming families.
Although most shipments came by rail, newspaper advertisements in the late 1920s and early 1930s showed Sears offering truck delivery to buyers living within a 35 mile radius of their Newark, New Jersey, plant, or their Norwood, Ohio, Sash & Door company.
As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them.
In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department.
Kushel is credited with suggesting to Richard Sears that the company assemble kits of all the parts needed and sell entire houses through mail order.
That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order.
Sears' use of "balloon style" framing systems did not require a team of skilled carpenters, as did previous methods.
Balloon framing systems rely only on nails to make connections between joints, whereas previous methods used heavier members and pegs.
[9] Early balloon structures were very basic, to enable home buyers to assemble them independently and also because designers had yet to see the implications the method held.
The mortgage program was also a public relations disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company.
Some models were offered with variations, the most common of those being expanded floor plans and additional finished living spaces.
Some models were offered in both wood siding and brick veneer versions with different names attributed to the same or almost identical home plan.
The two-story schoolhouse was priced at $11,500 (equal to $389,978 today) and its design included six classrooms, a library, an auditorium, and a superintendent's office.
[23] 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.
According to a review written by Mary Ann O'Boyle of Takoma Park, Maryland, her Sears home feels "unabashedly American, the kind of house you see in movies about the good old days" and "allows me to connect with the past".
[49] Another homeowner, Erskine Hogue Stanberry, states that his Saratoga model was the "first house in Chelsea to have electric lights" and that they "are using the original plumbing and wiring".
