Sears Torrington in Annapolis, Maryland

Flag of Annapolis, Maryland
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

The past few weeks, I've been working on authenticating Sears houses in the Maryland counties that border Washington DC. I've found over 100 houses so far and I'll be sharing information about the first round of homes soon! While researching those mortgages, I also searched a few other Maryland cities to see what other Sears houses I could locate using mortgage records. I've traced back several mortgages to several Sears houses that are considered rarities in the world of Sears homes. Among those discoveries is a Sears Torrington in Annapolis, Maryland, a house that - to date - I'm not aware has been located by Sears kit house researchers. What makes this discovery even more interesting is that this Torrington - or more accurately, the family that purchased this Torrington - has a deeper connection to Sears houses than I first thought.

My search through the mortgage records for Anne Arundel county led me to a pair of mortgages from March 1932 between Edwards D. Ford, the Sears trustee from Philadelphia and William A. and Carrie M. Conrad. The Conrads had taken out two mortgages from Sears for a total of $11,200! I knew that at this price range, I was looking for a high-end Sears kit house or a custom designed Sears house.

Excerpt from Conrad mortgage
Image courtesy of the State of Maryland

By the way, if there were questions about Ford's connection to Sears, this is from the same document.

Excerpt from Conrad mortgage
Image courtesy of the State of Maryland

I've had pretty good luck using the State of Maryland's database of subdivision maps but in this case, the maps appeared to be incomplete and I was getting conflicting information on where the house might be located. I knew it was in the vicinity of "Spa Creek" near downtown Annapolis but my searches on some of the streets in the area didn't turn up anything the size of the house that I had expected to find. While many of the houses were from "the era", there were also large modern houses and even large houses sometimes get lost to redevelopment.

Failing to find the house using the land property tools I had at hand, I turned to Ancestry to track down the Conrads. I quickly had success - or at least an address. A search of Ancestry showed the Conrads living at 121 Spa View in the 1940 Census in a house with a value of $12,000! But it wasn't clear to me if this was their actual address or just part of the numbering system used by the Census enumerator back in 1940. Further down the search results was a listing for the Conrads in a 1959 Annapolis City Directory. The search results for Ancestry listed their address as "21 Spa View". But I knew better than to trust that. I clicked through to the actual image from the city directory - "121 Spa View av" - we had a match!

Annapolis, MD City Directory (1959)
Image courtesy of Ancestry.com

With the address in hand, I fired up Google Streetview and punched in 121 Spa View Avenue, Annapolis, MD and landed here:

121 Spa View - Annapolis MD (2012)
Image courtesy of Google

Hmm...OK, there's a house back there, it looks like it could be from the 1930s. OK, let's try it from some different angles. Maybe if I shifted a bit to the left or right...nope, more trees. Often times in Google Streetview, there's an option to view a location in a different year, depending on how often Google has photographed the street. In this case, I could go back to 2007 when the quality of the photos wasn't as good.

121 Spa View - Annapolis MD (2007)
Image courtesy of Google

Not much better - in fact, it was worse in some ways. But now I was getting a sense of the entire house and in my brain, I was starting to recall that I had seen this house design in the Sears catalog. I jumped over to Archive.org and started flipping through the digitized 1932 Sears Modern Homes catalog. There it was - the Sears Torrington. Or at least I was pretty sure it was the Torrington.

Sears Torrington - Catalog Image (1932)
Image courtesy of Archive.org

Although the view in Google Streetview was pretty poor, if I zoomed in close enough, I could start to see that the details of the house design that matched the Torrington.

121 Spa View - Annapolis MD (2012)
Image courtesy of Google

Those included:

• The overall design of the house with a front-facing gable on the two story portion of the house flanked by story-and-a-half wings that were finished in brick. 
• Chimneys at each end of the house.
• A single dormer on each wing of the house.
• The design of the front entrance.
• The bay window design on the first floor of the two story portion. 

On top of all that, I had the mortgage between the Conrads and Sears. Although it looked a bit rough, I knew that this was a yet-to-be-discovered Sears model - the Sears Torrington.

Next, I decided to see if Bing Maps gave me any better view of the house....oh my.

121 Spa View - Annapolis, MD
Image courtesy of Bing

I have to admit, I wasn't shocked to see this. A run-down looking old house on the waterfront in a desirable community is a prime target for a renovation or demolition. In this case, you can still see the outlines of the Torrington even after the changes and additions. I checked online and saw that the house had sold in July 2012 for $1.2 million! The view from Google Street was likely taken before the house sold and obviously the view from Bing shows the house in the process of being transformed.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I contacted fellow kit house researcher and real estate agent Catarina Bannier to see if she could find any photos of the house when it was listed for sale in 2012. Sure enough, she came through with these photos. These give us a much better view of the house and we can clearly see that this is a Sears Torrington.

121 Spa View - Annapolis, MD - Sears Torrington
Image courtesy of MRIS

As you can tell from the amount of the mortgage, this was no run-of-the-mill kit house. Here's Sears description of the main features of the house, straight from the catalog.

Sears Torrington - Catalog Image (1932)
Image courtesy of Archive.org

The image that Catarina shared with me include some of these features. Let's go on a tour of the house. We'll start in the entrance hall looking into the living room.

121 Spa View Ave - Annapolis, MD - Sears Torrington
Image courtesy of MRIS

Here's a view of the living room showing the main fireplace, Through the French doors, we can see through to an addition on the back of the house. It's possible that the addition is original to the house.

121 Spa View Ave - Annapolis, MD - Sears Torrington
Image courtesy of MRIS

Here we can see the bay window in the dining room.

121 Spa View Ave - Annapolis, MD - Sears Torrington
Image courtesy of MRIS

One of the interesting elements of the Torrington floor plan was the inclusion of a garage in the house. This was a fairly novel concept in 1932 (although not a first for a Sears house). In the case of this house, the location of the garage didn't really work as the rear of the house faced the water.

First Floor of Sears Torrington - Catalog Image (1932)
Image courtesy of Archive.org

I don't know whether this garage space was ever used for that purpose or if it has always been a living space. But you can see from the inside how some of that space is used.

121 Spa View Ave - Annapolis, MD - Sears Torrington
Image courtesy of MRIS

121 Spa View Ave - Annapolis, MD - Sears Torrington
Image courtesy of MRIS

This view of the back shows where the garage would have been located. One thing I noted in most recent view of the house from Bing was that the new owners were adding a garage to the house - 80+ years later that planned! You can also see that the dormers on the back of the house were larger than what was shown on the plan. It's not unusual to see these kinds of changes on the higher-end houses from Sears. In this case, the larger dormers provide more useable space and light into the bedrooms. You can also tell from the floor plan that this was a large high-end house - two bathrooms on the second floor!

Second Floor of Sears Torrington - Catalog Image (1932)
Image courtesy of Archive.org

121 Spa View Ave - Annapolis, MD - Sears Torrington
Image courtesy of MRIS

Having identified, authenticated and documented the Torrington, I thought that was the end of the story. But it turns out, it was just part one of a two part story involving the Conrads and Sears kit houses. Keep an eye out for Part Two!