Richard Warren Sears - my hero and a merchandising genius - decided that the best way to sell more of the stuff in his 100,000-item, 1400-page catalog was to sell kit homes. In the first years of the 20th Century, multi-generational households were the norm, and Sears knew that getting people into a home of their own would create new customers and also create new demand for household products.

In 1908, a little ad appeared on page 594 of the Sears general merchandise catalog. It read, “Let us be your architect, without cost to you.” Interested buyers were invited to write in and request free specialty catalog of house plans. The first houses ranged in price from $500 to $5000.

And so it was that Richard Warren Sears entered into the kit house business. The mail-order homes were shipped by boxcar and came in 30,000 piece kits. Sears promised that a man of average abilities could have one assembled and ready for occupancy in 90 days.

The house were called “Sears Modern Homes.”  And they really were modern homes.

In 1917, American Carpenter and Builder Magazine reported that “watertight roof, walls and floor are an essential feature of a modern city house.” As a point of reference, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books described life on the plains in soddies and tiny cabins in the 1870s.

It’s possible that the Midwestern men and women who built Sears kit homes in the early 1900s could have been raised in housing that would be considered extremely primitive by today’s standards.

Below is a picture of a soddie. These were very primitive and damp and dank and fairly miserable way to spend the day, nine months out of the year. One look at this photo (below) and you can understand why a pretty little Sears bungalow would be classified as a “Modern Home.”

A Soddie in Kansas, early 1900s

A remuddled Sears Americus in Norfolk's Park Place, on 27th Street

The real estate agent must have thought I was off my rocker when she saw me lean my hand against the plaster wall in the empty house, close my eyes and concentrate. After a moment of silence, I opened my eyes and said, “This house has known sadness and pain, but predominantly, it’s a house that’s filled with many happy memories and good times and joy.”

The real estate agent’s eyes grew big and her brow furrowed. After looking at me askance for a moment, she turned her attention toward the hallways and said, “And what a beautiful staircase it has.”

“The listing says it was built in 1920,” I said to the real estate agent. “That’s not right. I’d say 1924 or maybe early ‘25.”

“Those listings are based on tax records and they’re pretty accurate,” she replied. “If it says 1920, it was 1920.”

I poked my husband and whispered, “That’s not right. It’s clearly 1924 or ‘25.”

When we toured the basement, I admired the oversized beams and massive piers. I reached up and stroked the beautiful knot-less lumber.

“It was an individual owner who built this house,” I said as my fingertips caressed the beams. “Someone who knew their lumber built this house. In fact, I’d venture to guess it was someone who was involved in a lumber business or maybe construction.”

Within 30 days, my husband and I were the happy owners of the 2,300-square foot, center-hallway Colonial Revival home. And I went right to work tracking down the home’s prior owners. With the help of one of my neighbors, I found Laura and her brother, Ed. The two siblings - fraternal twins - had been born in the house in 1949 and now lived in a nearby city. I invited them to come out to the house on a Sunday afternoon. In a few days, Ed and Laura were back at the front door of the house - my house - where they’d spent their childhood.

“My grandfather started building this house in 1924 and finished it in March 1925,” Laura told me. “He owned a local lumber yard in downtown Norfolk. When we were kids, he told us that he’d hand selected every piece of lumber that went into this house. He loved this house.”

I poked the hubby again and whispered, “See, I told you.”

We also learned that their grandfather had built the house for his wife. She was ill during the construction and he told her, “Just hang on, and I’ll build you a beautiful house.” His wife passed on a few months after they moved into the house. Her wake was held in the living room, in front of the large fireplace.

The grandfather - the home’s builder - died in the house in the 1960s, leaving the house to his son. Laura and Ed’s parents moved out of the neighborhood in the early 1970s. The house had remained in the same family from 1925 to 1971. In the 1990s, the grand old house was converted to a boarding house, and still has the scars to prove it.

Laura, Ed and I walked upstairs and they reveled in the tour of their family’s home. Tears came to Laura’s eyes as she stood in the hallway by the walnut staircase railing.

“This was such a good house for us to grow up in,” she told me as she brushed a tear from her cheek. “So many happy memories here.”

I turned to my husband and mouthed the words, “I told you so.”

Laura and Ed replicate a pose from the early 1950s

The house as seen in 1949