http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/tag/the-sears-homes-in-standard-addition/

There are cropped a bit differently, but clearly this is the same photo. Sears wasn’t always accurate in their captions, using a photo of the homes in Wood River to depict the homes in Schoper, for example, which begs the question:

Is this Chester or Carlinville?

Initially I assumed it was Carlinville if only because a number of photos of the Standard Addition in Carlinville survive from this period. Now I’m not so sure. While the homes in Carlinville have had any number of additions over the years, the roofs provide a good tool for identifying the house plans from images on Google Earth or Zillow, and while I’m hardly an expert I can’t find this pattern of plans in the Standard Addition in Carlinville. In addition, I don’t believe the Roanoke was among the plans built in Carlinville (although it was built in Wood River).

http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/2011/01/24/eight-little-models-in-carlinvilles-standard-addition/

Yet, both the first house on the right and the fourth house on the left sure look like Roanoke houses to me. So, how can this be Carlinville?

I think it’s possible this in indeed the homes in Chester.

But there’s another interesting thing about this picture.

Look again at the photo labeled “Sears, Roebuck and Co. houses at Schopper [sic], Ill. Sold to the Standard Oil Company” which is almost certainly actually the houses on 9th Street in Wood River:

http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/2011/05/23/carlinville-and-schoper-illinois/

Now compare the houses on 9th Street in Wood River to the houses on the left side of the street in the Chester photo. Notice that after the Whitehall the next six houses on 9th Street – two Gladstone Foursquares followed by what looks like a Carlin, a Roanoke and two more Foursquares – matches the sequence of plans in Chester exactly. Now, the Chester photo certainly isn’t Wood River because the homes on 9th Street were all built on the west side of the street, but it’s interesting that the plans were repeated in the same pattern.
Sun Shipbuilding Company may well have been familiar with the Standard Oil houses in Illinois. Sun Ship was controlled by the Pew family who also controlled Sun Oil. Not surprisingly, Sun Shipbuilding constructed a lot of tank ships, both for Sun Oil and the Standard Oil Company.

It appears that Sun Shipbuilding started developing two neighborhoods for its employees beginning around 1918, Sun Hill and Sun Village. These neighborhoods were located northwest of the shipyards between Melrose Street/Elsinore Avenue and the Ridley River. It appears that 9th Street marked the border of Sun Village, and 17th Street the border of Sun Hill.

There has been considerable redevelopment in the area since 1921. The Delaware Expressway (I-95) was built about 1959 – 1962, dividing Sun Hill from Sun Village, and the shipyard itself is now a casino and race track. If this is a photo of Chester, I fear the houses are long gone.

Any way you look at it, Addie was let down by so many. To have such a beautiful young woman taken from this Earth so abruptly, then hidden in a shallow grave as the world continued on around her is heartbreaking no matter how long ago it was.

Grass grew over the freshly dug ground that covered her lifeless body, seasons changed, and eventually she was just forgotten about. All while her murdering husband carried on with his new younger wife as if she never existed.

And to blame a disease that actually did kill so many people, especially children is about as low as a person can get, although for Enoch, it was obviously an easy thing to do.