Elmhurst #20!

If you watched the NBC Nightly News segment on Sears houses that Wendy and I appeared in, you may have caught a glance of a catalog image of a stately brick and stucco Tudor-style house. If you watched closely, you would have seen that the model featured was the Sears "Elmhurst". If you are a regular reader of the blog, you know that finding and sharing examples of the Sears "Elmhurst" has been a recurring feature on the blog. Coincidentally, a Sears Elmhurst in Alexandria, Virginia was recently listed for sale.  This listing gives us a chance to see this model up close and personal. Let's take a look!

When we first started looking for the Elmhurst, there were only a few known examples. My how things have changed! This Elmhurst is number 20 and I'm confident that there are more examples to be found. Even though the Elmhurst was a large and expensive house being sold from 1929 through 1932 when the effects of the Great Depression were taking their toll on home sales, it appears that Sears found more than a handful of interested buyers.

Image of Sears Elmhurst (1929)
Image courtesy of NBC Nightly News

My fellow kit house researcher Lara Solonickne added this Sears Elmhurst to the national database of Sears houses. As you can see from the real estate listing, the seller knows what they have! It appears to be a well-maintained example of the Sears Elmhurst and has many of the distinctive features that help us identify this house as being from Sears Roebuck.

Sears Elmhurst - 608 Woodland Ter - Alexandria, VA
Image courtesy of Zillow

From the front of the house, we can see how well this house matches the catalog image. It maintains the original look with the brick veneer and stucco exterior with the decorative half timbering. The only thing missing is the decorative shutters that appear in the catalog. It also has the tall vertical window for the staircase between the first and second floor. To the far right, we can see the small decorative pediment that is found in the design by Sears Roebuck.

On the right side of the house, we get a chance to clearly see a view of the house that isn't often visible to us.

Sears Elmhurst - 608 Woodland Ter - Alexandria, VA
Image courtesy of Zillow

From this view we can better see the decorative pediment at the front corner of the house. We can also see the side entrance that leads into the main entrance hall and the small window to the right of it is for the first floor lavatory. While many Sears models had but a single bathroom, lavatories and second baths (and even third!) started becoming more common during this era, especially in larger models offered by Sears Roebuck. The paired windows on the first floor are for the breakfast nook, which appears next.

Sears Elmhurst - 608 Woodland Ter - Alexandria, VA
Image courtesy of Zillow

While the exterior elements have stayed true to the original design, most of the interior elements appear to have been replaced through remodeling. But one element I spotted is definitely original to the house - the pattern of the fireplace bricks.

Sears Elmhurst - 608 Woodland Ter - Alexandria, VA
Image courtesy of Zillow

I know that pattern well - our Sears "Hamilton" has the exact same pattern of brickwork! In the NBC video, you can watch Wendy showing off the fireplace bricks and there's that pattern!

Sears Hamilton - 24740 Taft Rd - Novi, MI
Image courtesy of NBC Nightly News

When researching houses, it's often not one element by itself that helps us identify the house. Instead, it's the sum of a lot of different elements that gives us the confidence that we've correctly identified the house that we're sharing. One last view of the house that I'll share makes that point. The "left" side of the Sears Elmhurst has a set of three dormers on the second floor corresponding to a bedroom, a bathroom and a second bedroom. While that view doesn't appear in the real estate listing photos, you can see those clearly from Google Streetview.

Sears Elmhurst - 608 Woodland Ter - Alexandria, VA
Image courtesy of Google Streetview

One thing I noticed about this particular house is that it follows the original footprint of the house as seen in the catalog. Many of the examples of the Elmhurst that we've seen have additions that weren't part of the original catalog floorplan - some of those were original to those houses and some likely added later. I don't have any information that lets me authenticate this house. However, based on what we can see, I'm very confident that this is the real deal. Do you know of an example of the Elmhurst or any other local Sears houses? Let us know in the comments!