Ordered by mail, they arrived by rail, hundreds of thousands of house parts, ready to be hauled out of boxcars to suitable sites and assembled according to markings, accompanying plans and instructions. Home, sweet home! Lumber and lath, shingles and millwork, building paper, flooring, nails, hardware, eaves trough, downspouts, paint and varnish-all were included in the supplier`s basic price. Optional extras were steam or furnace heating, plumbing packages, electric wiring, gas or electric fixtures, wallpaper, screens and storm windows. It was, indeed, one-stop shopping.
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, enterprising merchants-Aladdin Readi-Cut Homes, the Hodgson Co. and Montgomery Ward among them-began selling architectural plans and materials necessary to build whole houses. But none was more successful at sales than Sears, Roebuck and Co., which sold more than 100,000 ready-cut single-family houses, two-family dwellings and cottages from 1909 to 1939.
People looked at the special Sears` catalogs, liked what they saw and ordered designs and materials suited to their family and financial situations; what`s more, floor plans and materials could be altered, on request. Buyers, including contractors, developers and individual owners, furnished the land, foundations, masonry materials, labor and landscaping.
”Give the Kiddies a Chance,” begged the 1926 Modern Homes catalog, which also urged readers to ”Have Real Friends and Neighbors.” ”A home of your own is an absolute necessity,” another catalog declared. Who could deny it?. It was the hard sell, and it worked.
Home for all incomes
From ”The Wayside,” a four-room, ”path to the bath” basic shelter built in Downers Grove and Flossmoor, to the top-of-the-line, two-story
”Magnolia,” with eight rooms, 2 1/2 baths, a solarium and servants`
quarters, there was something for everyone.
Because they came via boxcar, most mail-order homes were built in the Midwest and Northeast, areas well served by freight lines in the early 20th Century. The Chicago area, where Sears was reincorporated in 1895, is literally blanketed with them. A small sampling of the way they were at the time of construction shows ”The Argyle,” a bungalow, in Des Plaines, where Oscar and Elmer Blume put up 104 of the houses; ”The Natoma,” a three-room design sans bathroom, and ”The Westly,” a seven-room, two-story house, both in Aurora; ”The Saranac,” a five-room bathless model, and ”The Vallonia,” in Barrington, the latter ordered for $2,076 in 1926.
Oak Park has No. 135, built before 1918, the year names replaced numbers, and ”The Somerset,” a five-room, one-bath bungalow built between 1917 and 1925 at a cost of $732 to $1,576, depending on the year it was ordered. At 24 and still counting, Villa Park`s Historical Society is searching for more Sears structures and plans for an October program on the topic.
Chicago, Elmhurst, Arlington Heights, Glen Ellyn, Homewood, Batavia, Crystal Lake, Hinsdale, in short, places developed between 1910 and 1940, all boast Sears pre-cut houses.
Not all were ordered by mail, however. To fuel sales, Sears opened offices where prospective buyers could see floor plans, elevations, scale models and samples of building materials before placing orders with salesmen. Four of these offices were in northern Illinois-two in Chicago, one in Joliet and one in Rockford. In 1929, in sales office cities, the company began hiring local contractors to oversee construction.
History intact
Many Sears houses have been enlarged or otherwise altered. Bathrooms have been added or improved, kitchens have been updated, wallpaper, paint and lighting fixtures replaced. Yet some have remained remarkably close to the original structures.
Leonard Heinz, a hair stylist in Hinsdale, has lived most of his life in
”The Sunlight,” a five-room, one-bath bungalow built in Lemont in 1929 by his uncle. His father, 91, and his late mother bought the house a couple of years later for $1,900 and moved in when Heinz was a toddler.
”It`s a very comfortable house with quality materials, right down to the closet rods,” he says. ”My dad has maintained it well from early on. He`s a stickler for keeping things in prime condition, but in order to do that you have to have something good to begin with.
”We recovered the frame exterior with manufactured siding that doesn`t have to be repainted and we glassed in the 8-by-14-foot front porch. It`s like having an extra room spring, summer and fall-much pleasanter than a deck, I think. Those were the main changes.”
On the other hand, during a four-year exterior restoration project, Barbara and Ralph Haines of Elmhurst tore off siding that a former owner had used to cover the original frame siding of ”The Ardara.”
Six years ago they bought the house, a six-room, one-bath bungalow set on a 55-by-205-foot lot, from his aunt and uncle, who had owned it for many years.
”At some point my uncle pulled out a front window and discovered the house was pre-cut by Sears,” says Ralph Haines. ”We went at the restoration pretty much nonstop for four years, tearing off siding and adding trellises we had had copied. Except for the door of the attached garage, our house is what you would have seen in 1926, the year we think it was built.”
The Haines were aided in their efforts by information from a Realtor, Sears Archives and the grandchildren of the original owners, who sketched the place from their childhood memories.
”It`s a beautiful `cottage` house,” Barbara Haines says. ”We`re going to build an addition because we need more space, but I can`t think of anything I don`t like about the house. It`s very well made; the craftsmanship is wonderful-solid wood floors, doors that fit.”
Hansel and Gretel
As luck would have it, Deborah Johnson was driving along a quiet street in Hinsdale in 1977, when she noticed a Realtor setting a ”For Sale” sign in the front yard of ”a house with a storybook look.” Captivated, she went through the interior and promptly put in a bid of $90,000, $10,000 less than the asking price, and got it. Built during the `30s, ”The Strathmore”
originally cost less than $1,760; the framed original bill of sale is on display in her family room.
Owner and president of Taylor-Johnson Inc., a public relations/
advertising firm in Western Springs, she has converted the first-floor rooms for new uses, added a second story composed of three bedrooms and two baths, built a spacious deck and enhanced the property with her gardening skills.
The place is a popular hangout for her daughter, a junior at the University of Iowa; her son, 16; and their friends. ”We all just love this Hansel and Gretel house,” Johnson says.
Sears Modern Homes were popular because the designs followed the styles of the day, the materials offered quality at reasonable prices, construction was speedy and financing easy.
Indeed, the liberal credit policies eventually proved the undoing of the Modern Homes department, which closed in 1937, although publication of the catalog continued through 1940.
For three decades, Sears offered Americans an opportunity to realize their dreams of homeownership. As one new owner of a vintage Sears house put it, ”When we bought it we were excited and proud; we felt the house was true Americana!”
