Hampton Manor, New York - An Introduction

Sears Priscilla
Image courtesy of Google Maps

I recently saw a Facebook post showing the blueprints for the Sears Stuyvesant that was built in Hampton Manor, New York. From the comments, I realized that outside of our kit house research group, most folks in the Sears house research community apparently are not familiar with Hampton Manor or the large number of kit houses, mostly from Sears, that were built there over a 15 year period. The models range from the modest, like the Sears Kismet, to large Dutch Colonial models like the Priscilla and Rembrandt. You'll also find numerous examples of some of the most popular models from Sears including the Crafton, the Hampton, the Vallonia and the Winona. You also see several examples of one-of-a-kind designs like the Stuyvesant and the Sears "Apartment Bungalow". To keep things interesting, you can also find a couple of houses from Wardway! To assist those doing research on the houses in Hampton Manor, I've put together a list of homes that have been identified to date.

Image courtesy of FultonHistory.com

The Veeder Realty company that developed Hampton Manor in several phases and built Sears houses in each phase was also responsible for several other developments around Albany and Schenectady, New York where you can find more examples of Sears houses. I'll share some of those finds in future posts!

Sears Most Popular - April 2018 Edition

Every few months when the national database of Sears houses passes a major milestone, I do an update of how many Sears houses have been located in various states and provinces. The most recent update was in March of this year. As the national database closes in on 10,000 homes, I thought it would be interesting to share some additional information that is available from the database. One of the data sets that is of interest to our kit house researchers is the relative popularity of models of homes in the database. While we can't say definitively that the popularity in the database is an exact match with the popularity of the homes sold by Sears, it's likely that it's a close match.

Sears Hamilton in Ypsilanti, Michigan

As owners of a Sears "Hamilton" kit house, we are always interested in seeing other examples of this model. The very first Sears Roebuck house we went hunting for was another "Hamilton" so we could compare our house against one just like it. Fortunately for us, there are a fair number of examples of the "Hamilton" in some of the communities near us. One of those "Hamiltons" is currently for sale. It's a very nice example of the model finished in brick and the real estate photos give us a chance to check out the interior and exterior of the house. Let's take a look!