Where are the Sears Houses - June 2017 Edition

19 Flower Ave - Hastings on Hudson, NY
Sears Newark

The national database of Sears Modern Homes just passed the 7,500 home mark which means it is time to revisit the breakdown of location of houses by state and compare that to our previous update in February 2017. Let's take a look!

As of this date, Sears houses have been located in 42 states, the District of Columbia and the Provinces of Alberta and Ontario, Canada.

Thank You Ann Arbor!

1754 Jackson Ave - Ann Arbor, MI - McClure #1106

Wendy and I want to thank everyone who was able to attend to attend tonight's presentation - "Kit Homes of Ann Arbor: A Historical Tour" at the Ann Arbor District Library. This was our largest audience to date for a presentation and we were pleased that so many kit house owners were able to attend. We wanted to especially thank the members of the Rickelmann family who attended and for allowing us to share your family's story of the Sears La Salle on Pauline Avenue with the Ann Arbor community.

We've posted a page that includes some of the Ann Arbor resources. We'll be adding more information on that pages soon!

Sears Testimonial Houses in Kansas City, Missouri

Recently, I've been looking for Sears kit houses in and around the Kansas City, Kansas/Missouri metro area. I wrote about a couple of Sears houses that I located in Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of the two Kansas Citys. While researching another Sears-house related topic, I came across one of the Sears promotion posters that I own that's titled "Honor Bilt Homes Make Happy Homes". The two-sided poster contains several dozen testimonials from satisfied customers from various cities in the Midwest and Eastern United States where Sears kit houses had been built. One of the cities that is featured on the poster is Kansas City, Missouri with 3 different testimonials. A check of the National Database of Sears Homes didn't reveal any testimonial houses for Kansas City so I decided to get looking! Let's see what I found!

ID this House! Sears Hawthorne

Catalog image Sears Hawthorne (1932)

I was recently scanning through real estate listings online when I spotted what looked like a rare Sears model, the Hawthorne. The listing included some great photos of the Hawthorne, a model that was offered by Sears Roebuck in the early 1930s. Those photos give us the chance to see some of the distinct elements of this model, details that could help us identify other examples of this house. As we only have one other example of this house on the National Database of Sears Homes and I've run across some look-a-likes for this model, I thought this house would be an excellent candidate for my "ID this House!" series. Let's learn to ID this house!

ID this house! Sears Van Dorn

Catalog image of Sears Van Dorn (1928)

Sears offered a number of Dutch Colonial Revival style houses in the Sears Modern Homes catalog. Many of these models were large, spacious homes. But Sears also offered several smaller, more modest houses in this style, the best known example being the Sears Puritan. Similar in size to the Puritan but not as well known is the Sears Van Dorn. While the Van Dorn may not appear as distinctive as the Puritan, it actually has several elements that I've found make it fairly easy to spot once you know what to look for on this model. Let's learn to ID this house!