For years and years, I lived in the St. Louis area and that’s where I wrote my books on Sears Homes (and where I did all the research). In 2006, I moved back “home” to Hampton Roads (where I was born and raised), and it was pure fun to spend my spare time hunting for Sears Homes.

Here are a few of the houses that I found.  BTW, if you find this interesting, please spread the word about this impressive collection in Hampton Roads and email this link.

And if you think you know the location of a Sears Home, please send me a note at thorntonrose@hotmail.com.

These are just a few of the kit homes I’ve found in the area. Heretofore, I’ve found 52 in Portsmouth, 75 in Norfolk and about 15 in Chesapeake.

To see another article about Sears Homes (with many pics) click here.

To read another article by Rosemary Thornton, click here.

Sears Westly

Sears Westly in Portsmouth on King Street. Photo was taken in 2004.

Sears Westly in Suffolk, Virginia

____

Sears Crescent

Sears Crescent in Larchmont section of Norfolk

____

Aladdin Kit Homes (a competitor of Sears) was very popular in Hampton Roads, probably because they had a massive mill in Greensboro, NC and shipping charges would have been affordable. Sears sold about 70,000 homes during their 32 years in the kit home business (1908-1940). However, Aladdin started in 1906 and went to 1981, selling about 75,000 houses.

This Aladdin Colonial pictured below is in Suffolk. For years and years, people believed the house pictured below was a "Sears kit home." This is not uncommon. This house (below) *is* a kit home, but it came from Aladdin, not Sears.

Aladdin - another kit home company - offered the Aladdin Colonial. This one is in Suffolk.

____

This is a kit home from Gordon Van Tine, a competitor of Sears in the kit home business.

Here's a Gordon Van Tine in the Ocean View area of Norfolk - and in perfect condition!

_____

Aladdin was very popular in the Hampton Roads area. Here's an Aladdin Venus. Note the casement windows.

This Aladdin Venus still has its original casement windows. It's in Colonial Place (Norfolk).

_____

The Beckley (from Sears)

This is The Beckley, which is in use as the Sextant's Office at a large cemetery in Newport News.

______

I've also found several homes from Gordon Van Tine in Hampton Roads.

This pretty little #594 sits on a large parcel of land in Chesapeake's Deep Creek area.

_____

And this is a Sears Americus, which was a very popular house for Sears.

This Sears Americus is in Park Place on 27th Street (Norfolk). Sadly, it's been turned into a duplex.

_____

Sears Whitehall from the 1928 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Sears Whitehall just off Colley Avenue and 28th Street in Norfolk

_____

Aladdin kit home: The Virginia

Aladdin Kit Home - The Virginia - in Norfolk's Colonial Place

________

Aladdin Kit Home: The Pasadena

Here it is, right in Norfolk's Lafayette/Winona neighborhood

_______

As mentioned, Norfolk is full of Aladdins and here's the Aladdin Edison

An Aladdin Edison in Norfolk, within a few yards of the ODU campus.

____

Aladdin Detroit

A perfect Aladdin Detroit in Chesapeake

To read the next article, click here:

Yesterday, my husband and I did a field trip to Richmond to look for Sears Homes. I knew there were several in Colonial Heights and only three in Petersburg, but I’d never really scouted out Richmond - until July 5th 2010.

People often ask me how I find these houses. The answer: Lots of practice. Years ago, I specifically worked on memorizing hundreds of housing designs offered by Sears, Aladdin (another kit home company), Montgomery Ward, Gordon Van Tine and more. Now I can drive the streets and find the houses that match these early 20th Century designs. It’s a whole lot of fun.

Here were my best finds from our search in Richmond.  All these houses were found within the city limits of Richmond, Virginia. If you know of any kit homes in Richmond, please send me the address.

BTW, if you like what you see, please email this link to a friend.

Read about The Sears Homes in Hampton Roads here.

Sears Strathmore, from the 1936 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Here's a Strathmore - in perfect condition - in Richmond

Catalog Image of Sears Modern Home #190

Sears Modern Home #190.

This is not a Sears Home, but a house sold by another kit home company, Harris Brothers.

Close-up of the Harris Brothers kit home J-181

And here it is, in living color. Nice match, too.

Sears Avalon

Sears Avalon in Richmond, in beautifully original condition

Sears Westly

Sears Westly on Fauquier Avenue in Richmond

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

We’ve broken a record in Norfolk. A bad record. We’re not far from breaking the 1889 record of 70 inches of rain in one year. And hey - we got three weeks to go!

We had more torrential downpours last night. And then more rain in the wee hours.

This morning, I arose at 4:30 to get some writing work done. I went out to my sunporch and heard the plop, plop, plop of a leaky roof splashing raindrops onto my beige carpet. So then I had the husband run around and fetch plastic buckets and containers for the SEVEN places that were dripping water.

I ran upstairs and out to the sunporch ROOF (which is flat) and wearing my jammies, I went out on the roof (barefoot), got down on my hands and knees and bent over the edge of the sunporch roof in the POURING rain and cleaned out the gutters. When the gutters get too full, the water rises up behind the flat-roof’s flashing (bent over into the gutters) and then - thanks to that little miracle we call “gravity - flows merrily into the sunporch ceiling. The low spot on the sunporch ceiling is in the center, so that’s where it drips.

While I was up above - traipsing to and fro on this black rubber roof - my bare feet hit a slick patch of black rubber roofing (at 4:30 am keep in mind) and that sent me slip-sliding across the roof. In that split second, as the roof’s edge came closer and closer, I thought, “Great. This is how it all ends. The architectural historian slides off the flat sunroof of her own 1924-built Colonial Revival at 4:30 in the morning, with green-handled salad tongs in one hand and a blue Mag-light in the other.”

However, I survived that event.

Then hubby came out in the darkness and held the flashlight for me while I cleaned partially decomposed leaf matter and acorns and twigs and squiggly pink worms out of 35 linear feet of gutters in the pouring rain while wearing my jammies.

About 20 minutes later, I came back inside, drenched to the bone, and put on clean jammies and dry socks.

At 10:30 am, another torrential downpour clogged up the gutters again. This time, I went out with my drill motor and my hammer. I was going to fix those *&#^ gutters once and for all. I drilled about 129 half-inch holes in the gutters and then using the hammer, I *beat* the downspout off the gutter. I could *see* the problem - the downspouts were clogged with all manner of debris, but everytime I jammed my hand down into the downspout’s elbow, I only made matters worse, because when I pulled my hand *out* of the downspout, the razor-sharp sheet metal screws removed a little more downspout-clogging organic matter from my right hand.

I saw someone driving by on the street slow down to watch this amazing show. I am quite sure I looked like a mad woman. That’s because I *felt* like a mad woman.

At this point, if I’d had access to 13 sticks of dynamite I would have used all of them to blow those sunporch gutters to aluminum-gutter hell, where they surely belonged.

Again, when I re-entered the bedroom (where you access the sunporch roof) I was soaked through and through. As I walked toward the bathroom to peel off soaked clothes, I muttered, “Those gutters won’t hurt anyone now.”

I washed my hands in the bathroom and they burned from the death of a thousand cuts. Forcing my large hands into the downspouts’ mouth again and again and again left me with a right hand that resembled an uncooked rump roast. I focused on something other than pain and wondered if it’s possible to go into shock from having 83 small slices on one hand.

So I went back to my work and then I realized I need some boxes to ship books to people overseas. I went downstairs to my basement (where we store boxes) and as I descended the steps, I saw one of my boxes gently floating by at the foot of the stairs, like a cardboard gondola (sans gondolier).

My basement has five inches of standing water and a POS sump pump with a lot of ’splaining to do. Remembering the MANY extension cords we’d draped throughout the basement floor (to run fans and humidifiers after the last GREAT FLOOD - two weeks ago), I decide to not step into the potentially electrically charged water.

Instead, I pause and don my husband’s insulated rubber-sole boots and then courageously step off the basement steps and into Lake Colonial Revival. Nothing sparks or zaps and if I have just died instantly from an electric shock, it happened so fast that I have no conscious memory of it, so it’s all good. Perhaps with this one great step, I’ve walked right into eternity and never even knew it. I wonder if this is the case. However, I don’t see Mother anywhere nearby so I figure I’m still among the living and walk over to the sump pump.

Once at the sump pump, I give it a good swift kick in the float and it roars to life. Forty minutes later, we’re down to 1/2″ of water. Using my water-puddle-rapid-movement-device (something I used to call a broom), I sweep a little more recalcitrant water into the sump and then I notice that the formerly dry spots in the basement are wet again. The basement is refilling itself with an endless supply of flood water.

At this point, I call my husband and tell him, “I’m leaving. Don’t know when or if I’m coming back, but I’m leaving. I’m off to find dry ground and a dry house with beige carpet that doesn’t squish when I walk across it and gutters that don’t channel rain water into my office space where I store boxes and boxes of early 20th Century irreplaceable documents. If I come back with an olive branch, you’ll know I was successful. If not, it’s been nice knowing you.”

Long day. And I just got back home. He reported that the basement refilled after I left.

It’s nuts I tell you - just nuts. Our basement hasn’t flooded since 1924. An old man built our house in 1924 and he built it on its own tall hill. And yet - we flooded. Second time in 87 years. And the first time was two weeks ago.

Anyone got a rubber room I can borrow for a few weeks? I might need it…

Somewhere around the 29th first date, I’d figured out that meeting for drinks was a far better plan than meeting for lunches and dinners. Get stuck with a ne’er-do-well on a dinner date and you’re committed to chow down 2,000 calories of fat-laden Shrimp Scampi just so you can make a fast get-away. Too many calories, too much money and way too much time invested in some pitiful man who’s got 101 equally boring stories, all of which begin or end with, “My ex-wife is such a crazy witch…”

But then I discovered that meeting for “drinks” presented its own problems because people usually meet at bars when they’re meeting for drinks. I’m highly allergic to cigarette smoke and it’s hard to be your best charming self when you’re busy trying to surreptitiously sniffle and/or wipe a drippy nose on the cuff of your pretty shirt. Further, I don’t drink alcohol, and I don’t like bars. Being around drunken sots is a lot more fun if you’re one of the sots. Or so I’ve surmised.

So then I started meeting a few guys at public places. I met a couple fellows at parks and I met two guys at a local library. Meeting at the city park was nice and gave both me and Mr. Potential Suitor a chance to walk and talk and admire nature’s beauty. Meeting at the library wasn’t such a good idea. It’s hard to be clever and cute when you’re forced to keep your voice to a whisper.

In the end, I discovered the best meet and greet places were little cafes and coffee shops and outdoor restaurants. For  these quixotic quests, such places were quiet and quaint, just right for a quirky girl, like me.

And in fact, that’s where I met my 70th first date. And while I was impressed with so many of #70’s fine qualities, perhaps the one that impressed me most of all:  He never said anything ugly about his ex-wife or ex-girlfriends.

Once a year, we go back to that coffee shop and sit in the same spot and drink the same drinks and hold hands and gaze into one another’s eyes. It’s wholly delightful.