Where are the Sears Houses - February 2023 Edition

Sears Americus - Temple, PA

It's been about 3 months since the last update of "Where are the Sears Houses?" With the winter weather and the holidays, the pace of discoveries slowed down a bit compared to the last two updates but not by much! Over the past 7 months, we've added over 1,500 new houses to the National Database of Sears Homes. It's been a pretty impressive pace. We'll see if we can keep it going into 2023. Meanwhile, let's see what all these new houses have done to the line up of places where Sears houses have been located. Let's take a look! 

Sears Rodessa in The Bronx, New York City, New York

One of the last places that most people would think to find Sears houses is in New York City. "New York City?!" Yes, the home of skyscrapers, subways, brownstones and Central Park is also home to Sears houses - almost 150 of them identified to date. While many of us picture Times Square as the quintessential New York City setting, the reality is that New York City is a geographically big city - over 300 square miles in size. Large swaths of the city were developed as the "suburbs" of the high rises of Manhattan, particularly during the years when kit houses were most popular, and on these streets, we've found quite a few Sears houses. Let's take a look! 

Aladdin Pomona in Wheatland, Wyoming

Before this month, the national database of Aladdin houses didn't include any houses in Wyoming. We knew that houses (and garages and a barn!) had been sold to customers in Wyoming from the years of the sales index that we've reviewed. But no specific houses had been located either from searches based on the sales index or in searches we've done looking for houses from other kit house companies (it's not unusual to run across houses from one company while you're looking for houses from another). But that changed when I started looking specifically for houses in Wyoming that were listed on the sales index. While I didn't find all the houses on the list, I found several including an Aladdin Pomona in Wheatland, Wyoming. Let's take a look! 

Aladdin Pomona in Fenton, Michigan

Back in 2016, while doing research for a kit house presentation at the Jack R. Winegarden Library in Fenton, Michigan, I came across this house in Fenton at 894 North Leroy Street which looked to be an Aladdin "Pomona". I took some pictures of the house to include in the presentation and added it to our national list of Aladdin homes. At the time, I didn't have any reason to think that it wasn't a Pomona. But without any information to confirm that it was one, I couldn't authenticate it as the real deal. This is often the case with houses that we find "in the wild". But recently, I had the good fortune of being able to confirm its authenticity. Let's take a look! 

Aladdin Pilgrim in Le Roy, New York

January has been a good month for finding Aladdin homes. After I finished documenting the Aladdin homes in the Cabbagetown neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia, I returned to searching for homes on the Aladdin sales index. So far, I've found over 20 Aladdin homes in states across the country. Those have included both popular models like the "Pomona" and lesser known models like the "Norwood". This Aladdin "Pilgrim" in Le Roy, New York is one of those homes that I found. Let's take a look!