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

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Sears Crescent

Sears Crescent in Larchmont section of Norfolk

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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.

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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!

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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).

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The Beckley (from Sears)

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

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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.

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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.

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Sears Whitehall from the 1928 Sears Modern Homes catalog

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

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Aladdin kit home: The Virginia

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

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Aladdin Kit Home: The Pasadena

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

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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.

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Aladdin Detroit

A perfect Aladdin Detroit in Chesapeake

To read the next article, click here:

Just a few days ago, Norfolk and Western’s #1134 settled into its new home in downtown Portsmouth.  According to the The Lost Engines of Roanoke website, the old steam locomotive was rescued from the Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal Yard in Roanoke, Virginia where it had been dying a slow-death by rust for the last 60 years. The website also states that #1134 and her siblings (#917, 1118 and 1151)  landed there in in the 1950s, having been relegated to the scrap heap when newer, more modern steam engines were ordered by the railroads.

The Virginian Pilot reports that on Tuesday (May 18, 2010), the 250,000-pound locomotive was back on the tracks again at its new home in Portsmouth. Unfortunately, this shining black beauty is not ready to be run out of town on a rail. She’s had a “cosmetic restoration,” meaning that she’ll never ride the rails again under her own steam.

Nonetheless, it’s wonderful that a handful of visionaries in Portsmouth have worked so tirelessly to preserve a piece of our country’s past. And Norfolk and Western’s #1134 is the capstone in the privately-funded Railroad Museum of Virginia. According to the article in the Pilot, contributions are welcome and can be made to:

The Railroad Museum of Virginia, Inc.
c/o Willard J. Moody Sr. Esq.
500 Crawford St. Suite 300
Portsmouth, VA 23704

The beautiful and cosmetically restored #1134 sits on the rails in downtown Portsmouth

Another view of N&W 1134

close up of the wheels

In 1975, I could be found tooling around Portsmouth in my 1959 red Cadillac Sedan de Ville. It was a great car with a four-barrel carb, dual exhausts and a powerful V-8 engine and more than 300 horsies under the hood. Or so I told people. When I shared that statistic, people would cock their head a little and look at me funny. (That has happened to me a lot in this life…)

And then I’d tell them that it was a 390-cubic inch engine which produced about 330 horsepower.

Mechanically speaking, one horsepower equals the amount of effort needed to move 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, or (in simpler terms) the ability to lift 33,000 pounds one foot in one minute’s time. When used as a measure for electric motors, one horsepower equals about 746 watts. The term “horsepower” was coined by James Watt. He was an 18th Century genius who is credited with significant innovations to the steam engine, making it useful, affordable and practical. The historians say that Watt’s inventions and innovations transformed America from an agricultural society to an industrial society.

There’s a reason our old expressions developed the way they did. Back in the day, stage coaches often had six horsepower, with the six sinewy animals straining at the reins to pull the carriage down the dirt roads. Or, as in the case of the 1905 advertisement shown below, the most modern concrete mixers of the day had ONE horsepower.

BTW, there’s a significant problem with this advertisement. There’s no legal disclaimer at the bottom that says, “Horsie not included.”

one-horse powered cement mixer

Closer look at the one-horsepower concrete mixer

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.