In the mid-1880s, while working as a railway station agent in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, Richard Warren Sears paid $50 for a shipment of watches that arrived at the train station and had been refused by a local merchant. Selling them to other railway agents and passengers, Sears turned $50 worth of watches into $500 in a few months.

His timing could not possibly have been any better.

With the advent of the steam locomotive and reliable passenger rail service, people could now travel hundreds of miles each day, but there was a problem with all this expeditious movement. In the early 1880s, the United States had 300 different time zones. You read that right: 300.

In November 1883, railway companies established four time zones to help manage and standardize the complex train schedules. As folks adapted to the new time zones, watches became a hot commodity.

In 1886, 23-year-old Sears invested his $5000 cash profit into a new watch business and called it the “R. W. Sears Watch Company.” He advertised his watches in regional newspapers and in a short time, he moved the business from Minneapolis to Chicago.

Around 1891, Sears and Roebuck published their first mail order catalog, offering jewelry and watches within its 52 pages. By 1893, the little watch and jewelry catalog had grown to 196 pages and offered a variety of items, including sewing machines, shoes, saddles and more. One year later, another 300 pages were added, creating a 507-page mail order catalog.

On November 1, 1908, 44-year-old Richard W. Sears emerged from a terse closed-door meeting with his business partner Julius Rosenwald and announced that he would resign as President from his own company. Sears’ reason for retiring: He “didn’t see the work as fun anymore.” A short time later, Sears sold his stock for $10 million dollars. There was another reason for his departure. Sears wanted more time to take care of his ailing wife, who had suffered from ill health for years.

In September 1914, at the age of 50, Sears died, having turned $50 worth of pocket watches into a multi-million dollar mail order empire. His estate was valued at more than $20 million.

Richard Warren Sears at his office at 925 Homan Avenue, Chicago, IL

Sears Homes were the most popular kit homes and were sold right out of the pages of the Sears Roebuck catalog in the early 1900s. More than 370 designs of kit homes were offered - everything ranging from Arts and Crafts bungalows to foursquares to Colonial Revivals. These homes came in 30,000-piece kits and were shipped to all 48 states. Sears promised that a man of average abilities could have these homes assembled in about 90 days.

Today, the only way to find these kit homes is literally one by one.  And that’s what I do. When I decided that Sears Homes would be my career, I endeavored to memorize each of those 370 designs of Sears Homes. Now I can drive the streets of small town America and find the Sears Homes - one by one.

In addition to Sears, there were other companies that sold kit homes, including Aladdin, Gordon Van Tine, Montgomery Ward, Harris Brothers and more.

Here are a few of the kit homes I’ve found in the Lynchburg and Roanoke area.

(Special thanks to Dale Patrick Wolicki for accompanying me on the trip to Roanoke, Bedford and Lynchburg to help with the treasure hunt!)

The Sears Alhambra was one of the most popular Sears Homes

The Sears Alhambra in Roanoke, Virginia

Another Sears Alhambra - with some modifications - in Lynchburg

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Best described as a trailing-edge Victorian, the #306 was surprisingly popular

And here's the #306 in Christianburg, Virginia

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The Martha Washington was a spacious and fine home. Here is a Martha Washington in Bedford, Virginia.

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This is a kit home offered by Montgomery Ward. Like Sears, Montgomery Ward also sold kit homes. This one is in Bedford, next door to the D-Day monument.

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Harris Brothers was another kit home company (based in Chicago). This is the HB Ardmore, just outside of Roanoke (in Salem).

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Here's a pair of Aladdin Georgias in Roanoke

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Another Wardway house, this one is in Roanoke.

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And the creme de la creme of our trip: A Wardway #101 in a tiny town just outside of Roanoke. And Dale Wolicki was the one who made this discovery! Without him, I would have passed it by!

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This is an Aladdin Detroit, which we found in Lynchburg.

To look at more pictures of Virginia’s Sears Homes, click here:

This weekend, the hubby and I traveled to Stanley, Virginia (in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley) and saw this gorgeous Sears Milton. It’s one of Sears finest homes, and other than this Milton in the Virginia mountains, I’ve never ever seen another Milton - anywhere or anytime.

It’s a real beauty. And the good news is, it’s a Bed and Breakfast. Hopefully this summer I’ll have a chance to travel back to Stanley and spend a night or two inside the Sears Milton on West Main Street.

For more information on the Milton House Inn, click here.

Sears offered about 370 designs of kit homes in the early years of the 1900s. During their 32 years in the kit home business, Sears sold about 70,000 of these houses. Sears also sold kit barns. While doing research on Sears Homes in Illinois, I was told about this Sears Barn outside of Mattoon, Illinois (see picture below). It was built in the early 1920s and is still in beautiful condition today.

I’m often asked for more information about barns, but I’m not the expert on this topic. All that I need to know about barns came from The Book of Barns, by Rebecca Hunter and Dale Wolicki. According to this interesting little book,  Sears started offering barns in 1911, when four barn designs first appeared in the pages of the Sears Modern Homes catalog. In 1915, a few hog houses and chicken coops appeared. In 1918, the first speciality catalog appeared, featuring barns and other outbuildings.

Rebecca and Dale’s research shows that part numbers (originally used to facilitate construction of these DIY kits) can be found on the framing members of the Sears kit barns.

Purportedly, there is a Sears barn at Montpelier (Virginia), the home of James Madison and his wife, Dolly.

Sears Barn in Mattoon, IL

In May 1911, Sears opened up a mill in Cairo, Illinois. Cairo’s location at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers made it a natural for shipping and distribution. At the turn of the last century, Cairo (pronounced “Care-Roe”) could boast of having four major rail lines, enabling it to become a centralized shipping point for lumber harvested from the South and sent to the North.

The Sears Roebuck Mill, also known as the Illinois Lumber Company, got its start when Sears Roebuck paid $12,500 for a 40-acre tract in North Cairo. 

On May 21, 1911, The Chicago Tribune reported that Sears intended to build a $250,000 plant. A few weeks later, The Cairo Evening Citizen had doubled that figure and reported “Half a million to be cost of new Sears Roebuck Plant” (July 29, 1911).

In November 1911, Sears ran a two-page advertisement in American Carpenter and Builder Magazine headlined “Great News for Builders.” The advertisement (see below) said,

Shipments have begun from our second and newest great lumber plant in Illinois. We can deliver you bright, fresh, clean lumber at manufacturer’s prices almost as quickly as you can haul makeshift sizes and weatherworn stock from a high priced neighboring lumber yard. Our mill work is sheltered from rain, sun, soot and wind. Our new Illinois plant is located on two of the largest and fastest railroads in the North with direct connections to over 20 different railroads.  (Weatherworn stock was a reference to the fact that, unlike Sears, many mills did not keep their lumber under roof.)

In March 1912, F. E. Van Alstine, Superintendent of the Sears mill was quoted in The Cairo Evening Citizen as saying that Sears had chosen Cairo because of “their low freight rates, superior shipping facilities and other natural and commercial advantages, (which) made the city more desirable than St. Louis, East St. Louis, Paducah (Kentucky) or Memphis” (Tennessee).

But later that month, the rains came and the floodwaters rose, nearly destroying the brand new mill in Northern Cairo. On April 5^th, The Cairo Evening Citizen reported that the “main building of the new Sears Roebuck factory was hurled off its foundation and is leaning toward the east. Just what damage was done to these buildings could not be ascertained, as there was no way to reach them except by skiff.”

In mid-April, the paper said that all seven lumber sheds had been torn from their foundations and much of the lumber inside the sheds had simply floated away.

By August, The Cairo Evening Citizen happily reported that despite the hard times and high waters, Sears Roebuck had decided to remain in Cairo.  It also reported that about half the lumber sheds had been rebuilt and some of that floating lumber had been recovered. The same article reported that the folks at Sears corporate headquarters in Chicago were so pleased with Van Alstine’s post-flood restoration work that they presented him with a brand new automobile.

The mill produced everything for the Ready-Cut (precut) Sears homes except for millwork. The Sears mill located in Norwood, Ohio, supplied millwork; windows, doors and interior trim and moldings.

By the early 1930s, sales of Ready-Cut homes had plummeted and the mill began looking for other ways to generate income. They began building crating material for tractors and other large equipment, including Frigidaire refrigerators and appliances sold by Sears. In the late 30s, the mill produced prefabricated buildings for the camps which housed workers in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Wheeler relates that a typical CCC camp (which included several different buildings) required 400,000 feet of lumber and about 35 of these camps were milled and shipped by the Cairo plant.

In 1940, Sears closed the plant and sold it to the employees. Shortly after the employees purchased the plant, they obtained a contract to build massive crates for shipping B-17 and B-29 bombers overseas for the war effort.

After World War II ended, the former Sears Mill - now called Illinois Lumber Company - drafted and published their own book of house plans and tried to sell Ready-Cut homes again, but without success. The Cairo Evening Citizen relates that the plant was liquidated and closed in November 1955. The article adds this interesting aside:  “Like several other Cairo lumber industries, it slowly died because the wood articles it manufactured were supplanted by iron and steel.”

All that remains today at the site of the Cairo mill are two Sears kit homes - two Rodessas - which were built as part of an experiment in 1921, to prove the superiority of Ready-Cut homes over traditional  stick built homes.

I purchased this picture on eBay for $3.00 many years ago. What a thrill to find an original picture of a Sears Home from the 1910s!

This house came out of the Sears Roebuck catalog and was shipped in 30,000 pieces.

The house was shipped by railroad and after the boxcar arrived it was moved over to a siding. You then had 24 hours to unload all those pieces of house!  Typically, it took many trips to and from the train station to get the boxcar unloaded and that’s why Sears Homes are often found within 1-2 miles of railroad tracks.  Each piece of lumber was stamped with a letter and numbers to facilitate assembly (see image at bottom of screen).

A 75-page leather-bound instruction book, with the homeowner’s name embossed in gold on the cover, gave precise directions on the proper placement of those 30,000 pieces of house. The book offered this somber (and probably wise) warning:  “Do not take anyone’s advice as to how this building should be assembled.”

In 1908, Sears estimated that a carpenter would charge $450.00 to erect your spacious two-story foursquare, with its hipped roof and a lone shed dormer in the attic. However, Sears also promised that a man with an elementary understanding of construction techniques would be able to assemble the house.

According to their calculations, a painter would want $34.50 to paint the two-story house.  The plasterer’s bill would be around $200, they figured, which included nailing up 840 square yards of wooden lath and applying three coats of plaster.

Masonry (block, brick, cement) and plaster were not included in the kit, but the Bill of Materials List advised that 1300 cement blocks would be needed for the basement walls and foundation.

The salutary effects of living in a modern home were extolled throughout the pages of the Sears catalogs. Beyond the financial freedom and comfort in old age that owning a Sears home would surely bring, Sears promised that their modern homes would improve the health, morals and well-being of its occupants.

The term “Modern Home” was part of the vernacular in the early 1900s. It was a descriptive term indicating that a house had modern amenities (that we take for granted today), such as a primitive, centralized heating system, electricity and indoor plumbing. In some cases, the houses were more modern than the communities in which they were built.

An original photo of a Sears House from about 1912 or so

Here's the catalog page from a 1913 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Picture of marked lumber from a Sears House. The mark is usually found about 2-8" from the end of the beam and is often in black ink. The "D" represented that this was a 2x8, C for a 2x6 and B for a 2x4. This mark, together with that 75-page instruction book facilitated construction.

To buy an autographed copy of  The Houses That Sears Built, click here. It makes the perfect Christmas present!

Did I mention that it makes the perfect Christmas present?

From 1908-1940, Sears sold houses by mail order. These 30,000-piece kits came with a 75-page instruction book that told the wanna-be homeowner how to put it all together. Sears promised that a “man of average abilities” could have it 100% complete in 90 days. Sears offered 370 designs, including foursquares, cape cods, neo-tudors, trailing edge Victorians, Colonials and more.

The specialty catalogs  - devoted to “Modern Homes” - averaged about 100 pages with the peak being 1924, when the catalog hit 140 pages, with 100 designs.  These “Sears Modern Homes” catalogs can now be found on eBay for a variety of prices.

And these really were modern homes. Think about this. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her “Little House” books describing life on the plains in the 1870s and 1880s. She talked about living in a soddie - a house made with dirt blocks - and waking up to find frost on her comforter.

At the turn of the 20th Century, American architecture evolved very quickly. We went from living in tiny cabins and soddies (sans lights, central heat and indoor plumbing) to these sweet little bungalows with three bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a kitchen - wired for electricity!

Sears Osborne, catalog image from 1924

In fact, sometimes these mail-order homes were more modern than the communities in which they were sold.

And that’s why the plumbing and electrical fixtures were NOT part of the kit home, but were purchased separately. If electrical service and municipal water systems were not available in your community, you wouldn’t need to spend money on the plumbing and electrical supplies!

In the back pages of the Sears Modern Homes catalogs, this little jewel was offered:

And it has two seats - for more family fun in the outhouse!!

The Sears Modern Homes department closed their doors in 1940. During a corporate house-cleaning after WW2, all sales records, blueprints, ephemera and other items were destroyed. The only way to find these 75,000 kit homes today is literally, one by one.

To learn more, buy Rose’s book, The Houses That Sears Built.