10,000 Sears Houses!

Our virtual group of kit house researchers was popping virtual champagne bottles this week when it was announced that that 10,000th Sears house (a Sears Conway) had been added to the national database of Sears homes. As excited as we were about reaching this milestone, I have to admit that I'm still in a bit of shock at passing it. When I first mentioned the national database of homes two and a half years ago after the addition of the 3,000th house, I couldn't have imagined that we would reach the 10,000th home so quickly - or at all! It had taken 3 years to reach 3,000 homes. A big chunk of that total was thanks to the list of homes that Bea Lask had compiled in and around Cincinnati, Ohio. At the rate that we were adding homes at that time, if you had asked me, I probably would have guessed that it would take another 7 years to reach 10,000, and that assumes that we would even be able to find that many houses.

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 few kit 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!

Where are the Sears Houses - March 2018 Edition

123 Lampeter Rd - Lancaster, PA
Sears Somers
Image courtesy of Zillow

It's been just over three months since the last update of "Where are the Sears Houses?" While many of us experienced an extended winter this year, that didn't keep our intrepid band of Sears kit house researchers from finding houses. The winter weather provided a good excuse to hunker down and do a deep dive into resources like mortgages records to find more - and in some cases, rare! - examples of Sears houses. Recently, the national database of Sears houses passed the 9,500 house mark which means it's time for another update of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Here is the breakdown of location of houses by state based on approximately 9,500 homes in the database. Let's take a look!