My friend Rachel just loves searching for kit homes. And she’s got a real eye for it, too. In addition to Sears kit homes, Rachel has spotted kit homes from many of the other kit home companies, too, such as Gordon Van Tine, Lewis Manufacturing, Harris Brothers, Aladdin, and more.

However, there’s one model of house that seems to haunt Rachel. Seems like, wherever Rachel goes, she finds a Gordon Van Tine “Roberts” kit home. In my eleven-year career, I’ve probably seen two dozen “Roberts.” In the three years I’ve known Rachel, I’d say she’s see many more than that.

Pretty darn impressive.

Gordon Van Tine was a company that - like Sears - sold kit homes through mail order. According to Dale Patrick Wolicki, Gordon Van Tine sold about 50,000 kit homes during their time in the kit home business (about 1910 - early 1940s). The “Roberts” (Model 535) was one of their more popular houses. Apparently, in Oklahoma (where Rachel lives), it was wildly popular.

To learn more about Gordon Van Tine, visit Dale’s most excellent website.

To buy the book that Dale and Rose spent five years writing, click here.

If you live in Oklahoma and would like to ask Rachel a question about kit homes in the area, please leave a comment below!

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To learn more about Gordon Van Tine, click here.

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Another not-so-popular house, and yet, it sure is easy to identify! This house has many very unusual features that really make it “jump off the curb” at you.

The arrangement of the dormers on the second floor is pretty eye-catching (three windows in the front dormer, four on the side), as is the corner box window on the first floor. That’ll certainly get your attention! The dining room has a squared-bay with a window seat.

The 1200-square-foot house offered three small bedrooms on the second floor (and one bath), with a spacious living room (21′ by 13′), nice size dining room (12′6″ by 14′6″), and a decent kitchen with its own walk-in pantry.

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

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To learn more about Rebecca’s newest book, click here!

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(Clifton Forge has an abundance of Sears Homes. Click here to see more!)

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To see a sneak peek of Rebecca’s newest book, click here.

Click here to see more pictures of pretty, pretty Sears Homes!

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The foursquare is one of my favorite housing styles (but then again, I love them all). For 18 years, my name was Rosemary Fuller, so I have a special affinity for the Sears Fullerton for familial reasons, too!

The Fullerton was one of Sears most popular housing styles and it’s easy to identify because it has many distinctive features. Most notable are the flared columns on the front porch with the paneled columns on top.  The Fullerton also has three windows on the home’s front, and the small “landing window” on the side. The attic dormer is also distinctive. The Sears Fullerton has a broad, low dormer window with an undersized sash.

This foursquare also has something I have never seen on any other Sears House: A fireplace chimney that’s centered on the roof! The Fullerton has a pyramidal hip roof, and the chimney is very near the apex of that pyramidal hip. As the chimney rises up through the attic, the bricks are laid in a “twist,” so that the chimney pops out through the roof’s center.

It’s one of the most unusual features I’ve ever seen in a kit house, and it’s unique to the Fullerton.

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

If you’re here to read about Addie’s exhumation, this is the place to click.

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To learn more about Dr. Hunter and her books, click here.

To visit Dr. Hunter’s website, click here.

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

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Next Saturday (May 19th) , I’ll be giving a talk on Sears Homes in Raleigh. To my astonishment and delight, we’ve found an impressive number of kit homes in this part of North Carolina, including Sears, Harris Brothers, Lewis Homes, Montgomery Ward, Gordon Van Tine and more!

To see more photos of those houses, click here.

At the talk, I’ll be giving a PowerPoint presentation that contrasts and compares the extant Sears Homes with the archival images. It’s a whole lot of fun, and I promise, a good time will be had by all!

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To read more about the kit homes of Raleigh, click here.

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Ok, I made it all up about loading the boxcar. We’re not really loading any boxcars.

But it does sound like fun, doesn’t it?

And did you figure out what siderodromophobia means?

See you on Saturday (May 19th).

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OOOH! I have new photos! Click here to see the new photos!

Faithful readers of my fun little blog will note that I have pictures of the five living Sears Magnolias in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Alabama, and New York. There was a Sears Magnolia in Nebraska, but it was torn down decades ago.

However, until now, I didn’t have any photos of the “Maggy” in South Bend, Indiana.

And then I sold my car.

Or tried to.

When the odometer on my tired old Camry hit 170,000 miles, I decided it was time to replace the old girl. But then, I couldn’t find the car title. Boy did I search. After all, I’m a writer. I don’t lose things. I have 27 boxes of research notes, all painstakingly organized and carefully filed away.

But that car title eluded me.

In the process of searching the entire house, I did find many other things, including these photos of the Sears Magnolia in South Bend, Indiana. Only thing is, I have no idea who snapped these photos for me. Some kind soul took these photos and mailed them to me. Based on markings found on the pictures, it appears that the photos date to Fall 2003.

The Sears Magnolia was the the crème de la crème of Sears Homes. It had 2-1/2 baths, two fireplaces, four spacious bedrooms and a sleeping porch, two staircases (front and rear), and a grand total of almost 3,000 square feet. The front of the house boasted two-story ionic (and sometimes Corinthian) porch columns, with a porte cochere on one side and a 140-square-foot sunporch on the other side.

It was quite a house.

Is there a Sears Magnolia in your neighborhood? If so, send me a photo. I suspect there are many more Magnolias in the country. Heretofore, we’ve found seven. It sure would be fun to find Number Eight!

Two requests:  If anyone reading this blog lives in South Bend, I’d love to get some newer photos! And it’d be just swell to have an address for this house in South Bend. 

To learn more about the Sears Magnolia, click here.

Or here.

Read about the fellow who built a Magnolia in Ohio here.

To read about the exhumation of my Aunt Addie, click here.

To buy your dear mother the perfect Mother’s Day gift, click here.

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To see more photos of the Sears Magnolia, click here.

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In February 2003, I traveled to Flora, Illinois to give a talk on Sears Homes. It was one of my first “paid gigs,” and I was very excited about actually getting paid to do the thing I loved the most - talk about Sears Homes!

In celebration of this happy time, I treated myself to a fine automobile for the trip. The night before my talk, I went to Enterprise Rent-A-Car and rented a 2003 Cadillac DeVille.

My oh my, that was a sweet ride!

During the ride around Flora, I found several interesting houses, including the Sears Modern Home #147. The folks in Flora knew it was a kit house, but they didn’t know which model it was.

This was the first time I’d seen a #147, and it was - without any doubt - the nicest #147 that I ever did see. It was in remarkably original condition.

After I finished in Flora, I rode over to Olney (nearby town) to look for more kit  homes. While driving around in Olney, my shiny new Cadillac had mechanical problems and I had to take it to a nearby shop for emergency repairs. When I returned the car to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Wood River (near my home in Alton), the clerk was very apologetic. He offered to discount the price of the three-day rental. I told him, “That’s a good start.”

He then said, “How can I turn this into a good experience for you, Mrs. Thornton?”

I said, “How about a deeper discount? I just spent four hours standing outside a car dealership in Olney, Illinois, waiting for them to fix your car.”

He then offered to discount the price of the rental to nothing.

“That’ll work,” I told him.

Almost ten years later, when I look at these old photos, I remember that fine “Glacier White” Cadillac with its buttery soft “Cashmere Gray” leather seats. Despite our little mishap in Olney, that was one fine automobile.

And in the intervening 10 years, I’ve rented at least 20 cars from Enterprise.

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To see more pretty pictures of Sears Homes, click here.

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Want to see more pretty pictures? Click here.

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My buddy Dale found and photographed this Sears Priscilla in Glenview, Pennsylvania three years ago and shared it with me. Good thing he did, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Priscilla “in the flesh.”

This classic Dutch Colonial had about 1,600 square feet and a spacious attic, too (due to the steep pitch of the roof). As is shown by the floor plan (below), it had a very large living room (25′ by 14′), a fireplace with a tiled hearth, built-in china hutch in the dining room, and a built-in ironing board in the kitchen.

Upstairs, there were three bedrooms and a sleeping porch (which was probably converted into a bedroom in later years). To learn more about why “sleeping porches” were so popular, click here.

Very few Sears kit homes had functional shutters, but the Priscilla was one of them.

It was a beautiful home and it was one of the more expensive houses that Sears offered, which may explain why it wasn’t a more popular house.

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To read about how to identify kit homes, click here.

Raise your hand if you had to look up “pulchritudinous.” 

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To see more pretty pictures, click here.

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Here in Virginia, some call it “The Crab Theory.”

In Germany, it’s known as Schadenfreude. It means, “enjoying the misfortune of others.”

Growing up on an estuary off the Elizabeth River, we often went crabbing. And we learned that if you put a lone crab in a bucket, that crab will do all within its power to climb out of that bucket. The trick is to put two or more crabs into your bucket. When one starts to climb out, the other crabs will snag him and pull him back down.

Sadly, there are times when homo sapiens behave more like crabs than human beings.

Years ago, I really struggled and prayed to overcome envious thoughts and feelings. One day, I saw an article in the Christian Science Sentinel about a woman who’d spent decades truly cultivating the habit of gratitude. According to the article, her mother had taught her - by word and deed - that she should learn how to feel genuinely grateful when good things happen to other people, because each “good thing” was a divine promise that, “If it happened for them, it can happen for me, too.”

Buddhists call this Mudita. It’s the practice (and discipline) of finding joy in other people’s happiness and success.

In the anonymous, faceless world of the internet, I’ve noticed that people sometimes engage in very negative behaviors, saying things that are better left unsaid. In short, they’re behaving more like angry crabs than intelligent human beings!

I’m starting to wonder if the anonymity of the internet is making us a little too callous with our words. There are those who seem to delight in “pulling others down,” rather than lifting them up.

Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) is credited with saying that the “kindest thing we can do for our heavenly Father is to be kind to His children.”

I don’t think Saint Teresa of Ávila would be a fan of the ugliness that sometimes appears online. 

Imagine how much sweeter the world could be if we practiced the discipline of “mudita” in all of our communications, both online and in person.

Maybe we need to abandon the crabby habit of schadenfreude and work on cultivating the saintly habit of mudita.

To learn about Sears Homes (a very happy topic), click here.

To see more pictures of my cute dog, click here.

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Of the 370 models that Sears offered, there was only one house that was fancier and bigger than the Glen Falls: The Sears Magnolia.

In 1922, the Magnolia had sold for $5,849. In the mid-20s, the Glen Falls sold for $4,560.  The Magnolia had 2,900 square feet. The Glen Falls had about 2,700 square feet. It was a very large house for its time.

And while I love this house, it harbors some bad memories for me.

I’ve received a verbal thrashing from TWO Glen Falls homeowners, both of whom were pretty upset when I told them that their beautiful house might be a Sears house. The house is so grandiose and so beautiful, people just don’t believe that this was one of those “crappy little kit homes.”

Alas!

To learn how to identify Sears Homes, click here.

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To learn more about Sears kit homes, click here.

To learn more about Rose’s newest book, click here.

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So promised the catalog advertisement for the “Honor Bilt” house, The Josephine.

This diminutive 840-square-foot house provides a nice example of the difference between “Honor Bilt, Already Cut” houses and the “Lighter Bilt, Not Cut or Fitted” houses.

The Honor-Bilt Josephine was offered for $1,470 while its cheaper cousin (Lighter Bilt) was $1,052. In today’s economic clime, that may not seem like a big difference but imagine a Realtor showing you two houses that appear to be the same, and both with 840 square feet. One is selling for $105,000 and the other is selling for $147,000. Which one would you choose?

And yet, the Honor Bilt really was the far better value.  These homes utilized traditional construction standards, such as double headers over the doors and windows, double floors (primary floors over subfloors), exterior sheathing under clapboard or cedar shingles and wall studs on 16-inch centers.

“Lighter Bilt” was another kettle of fish. These homes were really not intended for cold-weather climates. Wall studs were on 24-inch centers, and there were single headers over doors and windows, no subfloor and no underlying exterior sheathing. Those things make a big difference.

And then there was the whole pre-cut vs. non-cut lumber. You’d have to be taking some heavy doses of laudanum to think that non-precut lumber was a good plan.

To appreciate the value of precut lumber, think back to the early 1900s. Electricity was in its infancy, and in many cities, electricity was turned off each night at 11 p.m. for six hours of repairs and maintenance! In 1910, only 10% of homes had electricity. By 1930, that number had jumped to 70%. (Source:  Electrifying America:  Social Meanings of  a New Technology, David E. Nye.)  As late as December 1917, American Carpenter and Builder Magazine was still describing electric lights as a luxury that a builder should incorporate into a modern city home.

To cut a piece of lumber with a handsaw required time, strength and a degree of expertise (for a good square cut). Electric saws and the heavy duty wiring to handle the amperage draw were a thing of the future. In fact, the electric handsaw (a portable circular saw) wasn’t widely available until 1925. A fascinating news item in the February 1925 American Carpenter and Builder heralded the “new invention” with this commentary:  “The portable circular saw does the sawing for 15 carpenters.”

In 1921, Sears conducted an “experiment’ building two Rodessas (small frame homes) side by side at the site of the Sears mill in Cairo, Illinois. One house was erected using Sears’ precut lumber. The second house was built using traditional construction techniques; no precut lumber. The precut house was fully assembled in 352 carpenter hours and the non-precut home was completed in 583 carpenter hours.

In short, the fellow building his own Sears kit home would probably be doing his sawing with an old-fashioned, man-powered saw. The 1927 Wardway Homes catalog estimated that the average two-bedroom stick-built home required about 4,000 cuts with a saw.

That’s a whole lot of sawing that could be spared by purchasing an “Already Cut” Sears Home.

To learn more about Honor Bilt and Lighter Bilt houses, click here.

To buy Rose’s newest book on Sears kit homes, click here.

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To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To see more pretty pictures of old houses, click here.

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