Sears Homes
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How to Identify Sears Homes
One day while traveling through Illinois, I met a man who shared a remarkable story about the Sears home his mother built many years ago.
“My mother was looking through the Modern Homes catalog,” he recalled, “and she couldn’t decide between two different houses. She liked the top half (roof lines) of one house and the bottom of another house. She cut these two pictures out of the catalog and taped them together. She really liked the looks of her ‘modified’ house. She sent this taped creation to Sears - with a note asking if they could send her this house with that roof line - and they said, ‘We sure can!’”
Imagine trying to identify that as a Sears house, 80 years later!
Sears architects designed many different houses in many different styles and offered a wide variety of options. Want two dormers instead of one? Want a big dormer or an itty-bitty one? Switch from a gable roof to a hip roof? Would you rather have brick in place of clapboard? Take out a window? Add two windows? Reverse the floorplan? Try a different front porch? No problem!
Sears encouraged homeowners to customize these houses to suit individual needs.
So, how do you identify a Sears home?
First, begin by eliminating the obvious. Sears sold these homes between 1908-1940. If your home was built outside of that time frame, it can not be a Sears catalog home. Period. Exclamation mark!
The Nine Signs:
1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic
2) Look for shipping labels
3) Check house design using a field guide such as “Houses by Mail” or original catalogs.
4) Look in the attic and basement for any paperwork that might reveal that you have a Sears home
5) Courthouse records
6) Hardware fixtures
7) Goodwall sheet plaster
8) Unique column arrangement on front porch and five-piece eave brackets
9) Original building permits
1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number.
2) Look for shipping labels. Shipping labels can often be found on the back of millwork (baseboard molding, door and window trim, etc) or in the basement, sometimes around or under the basement staircase.
3) Houses by Mail by Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jhandl is a wonderful field guide. It lists the hundreds of different designs of homes that Sears offered from 1908-1940.
4) Ephemera and paperwork - Look in the attic and basement for any paperwork that might reveal that you have a Sears home.
5) Courthouse records - From 1911 to 1933, Sears offered home mortgages. Using grantor records, you may find a few Sears mortgages and thus, a few Sears homes.
6) Hardware fixtures. Sears homes built during the 1930s often have a small circled “SR” cast into the bathtub in the lower corner (furthest from the tub spout and near the floor) and on the underside of the kitchen or bathroom sink.
7) Goodwall Sheet Plaster - Another clue that you have a Sears home is the presence of Goodwall plaster, an early quasi-sheetrock product offered by Sears.
8) Clues outdoors. Five-piece eave brackets (the diagonal supportive brace between the roof line and the exterior wall) are also a sign that you may have a Sears home.
9) Building permits. In cities that have retained original building permits, you’ll often find “Sears” listed as the home’s original architect.
From “The Houses That Sears Built” by Rosemary Thornton
Lumber was numbered to facilitate construction
Shipping labels can also be a clue that you have a Sears Homes
Sears Oak Park in Franklin, VA
Sears Alhambra in Lexington, VA
Sears Winona in Raleigh, NC
Sears Auburn in Halifax, NC
Sears Phoenix (Photo is courtesy of Rebecca Hunter, Elgin, IL)
Rose;
I have three Sears houses on a beach front property on Casey Key near Sarasota Fl that I want to sell. They have been standing on the beach since 1936 and are in great shape. If you know anyone who may want to buy them and disassemble to move them please let me know. Regards
Dale Thomas
941 525 0641
@Ugly Womans Guide
SME = “Subject Matter Expert”.
@David
Here is a link to a pic of the house:
http://tinypic.com/r/1r2ov6/5
From the story I was told, these house were usually painted white but when the owner’s wife saw the brick, she wanted to keep it.
I hope I’m not one of the 99.9%.
Rosemary,
It seems you are the SME on Sears homes. I read a posting you made on city-data.com about the Magnolia. I am purchasing one right now and not from one of the states you mentioned on your posting! The floor plan is different than what is displayed in the catalog. I don’t have much more info that what I have read on the internet and would really like to see your research on this particular house. Please send me an email so we can chat.
What is an SME? I hope that’s a good thing!!
@Freddie
Actually, Here’s the one from the home tour I got to see last year: http://www.owdna.org/snaps3.htm
There are a couple Sears homes that I know of in the Old West Durham neighborhood in my city of Durham, NC. I actually got to see one in a home tour last year. Here is another about half way down: http://www.owdna.org/snaps4.htm
I think my street has several Sears homes, our home being the Lewiston model (complete with the original diamond paned stained glass window). Unless another company copied this model I am 99% certain our house is a Sears house. I have no confirmation on this however and I wonder, how common were Sears homes in Delaware? Also, are there any pictures of original interiors or did the catalogs only show exterior photos.
On your period and exclamation point on the time frame of the house having to be built by 1940: That is slightly inaccurate. Some of these homes were built several years after purchase, so they may have been built after 1940. There are some documented cases of this.
Gary, your point is a valid one, but in my 11 years of experience, I’ve only heard of two cases where houses were not built (completed) more than one year after purchase. People just did NOT spend $3000 for a house (the equivalent of $80,000 today) and then drop the building materials at an open lot and let it sit for any extended period of time. The vast majority of these homes were habitable within a few months of purchase. In fact, the Sears mortgage demanded that the house be occupied within four months of the home’s arrival to your local depot. Failure to have the house built in time meant you could be foreclosed upon.
Hi Rosemary,
Someone suggested that we may have a Sears home and I got so excited because I have only read about them in Cottage Living, but never thought I would be living in one! I see some of the characteristics that were mentioned when doing an internet search, but have not found proof-no stamps on lumber or documents. I would love it if I could send you some pictures of the house and get your opinion…Please let me know!
Thanks,
Danielle
@Lynda Abbott
The Chatham is not a common model, but there are a few here and there. I know of a real beauty in Kirkwood, Missouri. I know they’re others, but I can’t recall at this early hour. Send me a pic of your house and I can tell you more. Also, how did you authenticate the house? thorntonrose@hotmail.com
We bought a 1935 Chatham. (In our Town Sears kit homes are common). I can’t seem to find anyone who has a Chatham to get ideas from. When we moved in it as a amish makeover nightmare. I’ve been working to get it back to original. They also built on to the back for a larger kitchen. I am clueless on how the kitchen might of looked. We are lucky however, they have done very little to the sunroom, and the phone nitch it still here. But in their need to “modernize” it, it’s crying for help. I’m not sure the inside doors are original, ect. I’m having a heck of a time finding anyone who has this model!
We bought a house and found a piece of wood with numbers like those
I am not american, and i had never heard of “catalog/ kit houses” before, but i fell in love with this house at first sight… and out of sheer curiosity, i started asking and searching around for a reason for the numbers- and now my husband and i want to restore it to its former beautiful state (even though i think it is already beautiful as it it), but have no idea where to start, we don’t even have pictures of how the interior looked like! By doing a websearch, i found the style of the house, and with that- a website that talks about these kind of houses, they told us it’s a Westly model (even though it has chunky tapered columns- probably something they modified when they built it). The layout of the house is basically the same, but it lost its fireplace sometime in the past, and has some arches that i’m sure are not of this style (and they replaced the coffered ceilings too)…So we have a lot of work to do 
wish us luck!
Rosemary,
My 3 sisters and I just inherited what we believe to be a Sears & Roebuck 2 story kit home in Florida. Someone told us that they thought you might be interested in buying it after seeing a History Channel program that you were on. If so, please contact me at this email address. Best wishes and Happy New Year.
Connie Foster