I’m saddened to report that the demolition of the Pop Culture House at Bowling Green State University is apparently going forward.

Yesterday (August 6th) contractors were seen at the site, removing a few windows and some artifacts in preparation of the building’s demolition.

This, despite a truly valiant effort on the part of BGSU staff and faculty and friends to save this house.

This, despite the presentation of a petition with more than 2,100 signatures to BGSU president Mary Ellen Mazey.

The “powers that be” at BGSU apparently prefer that students learn about their history via pricey textbooks and pretty pictures, rather than “hands on.” Given a chance to preserve a piece of true Americana, the college has opted to destroy this “one-of-a-kind” kit house and send hundreds of thousands of pounds of debris to the landfill. (To read about what makes the Pop Culture house truly unique, click here.)

In “The Slate Roof Bible,” author Joseph Jenkins reports that 28% of the volume of debris at landfills is construction and demolition debris.

I’m of the opinion that BGSU should immediately suspend any and all classes related to environmental sciences. They’ve just sent a message - to their community and their students and their staff - declaring boldly that recycling is a dandy plan, but only when it’s really convenient and super easy.

How many pounds of recycled materials does BGSU collect each year and turn over to a recycling center? How many years of recycling bottles and cans will it take to offset the 300,000+ pounds of house they’re sending to the landfills today?

If a person paid attention to behaviors (which are better indices than fancy words), the take-away message from BGSU is, “Recycling is a dandy plan, but only when it’s really convenient and super easy.”

To say that I’m sickened and disgusted by this whole affair would be a gross understatement.

Given the tremendous urgency with which this building has been rushed to demolition, you’d think that the Pop Culture House harbored smallpox, diphtheria, spanish flu, anthrax, polio and the bubonic plague.

It does not.

The biggest sin committed by the Pop Culture House is that it stood in the way of a proposed college expansion. The house had the misfortune of being built on a piece of land that would one day be owned by a college that lacks vision, and also lacks respect for this uniquely American piece of cultural and architectural history.

At the very least, the house should have been moved to another site.

Preliminary estimates placed the cost of moving the house at about $18,000. The cost to demolish the structure is probably not far from the cost to move it.

At the very, very least, the lumber in the house should be salvaged. The quality of building materials (lumber) used in this 1931-built home are the likes of which we will never again see in this country. To read more about that, click here.

Yesterday (August 6th) contractors were seen at the site, removing a few windows and some artifacts in preparation of the building’s demolition.

It’s a sad day for BGSU.

Very sad indeed.

To read more about this house that will soon be nothing but an empty lot, click on the links below.

Part I.

Part II.

Part III.

How to Move a House.

To read an excellent blog that talks more about the ecological importance of preserving this house, click here.

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To read about the other kit homes in Bowling Green, Ohio (safely out of the reach of BGSU), click here.

To contact BGSU president Mary Ellen Mazey, send her an email:  mmazey@bgsu.edu

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Update!! This house is now scheduled for demolition on August 7th. Click here to read the latest!

A Sears House from Montgomery Ward?

Yes, it’s true! But the sad news is, it’s slated for immediate demolition.

Friday afternoon, I wrote a blog about the Sears Lewiston* at Bowling Green State University. Currently this old kit house (circa 1932) is home to the university’s “Pop Culture Department.”

According to an article that appeared in the Toledo Blade, Bowling Green State University has decided that the house must go.  A specific date hasn’t been given, but the school wants the building gone before classes begin on August 20th.

An online petition has been created in the hopes of saving This Old House.  Please sign the petition by clicking here!

And in my professional opinion, this house should be saved.

Not just because it’s an historically significant kit house, ordered out of a mail-order catalog and shipped in 12,000 pieces to the Bowling Green Train Depot and assembled by an old family of Bowling Green, using only a 75-page instruction book and 14 pages of blue prints, and not just because it’s a piece of irreplaceable American and a piece of our heritage and culture… (And yet, those should be enough reasons to save this house…)

This little Neo-Tudor in Bowling Green should be saved for two additional (and uniquely compelling) reasons.

1)  The personal story about how this house came to be: This kit house was purchased from Montgomery Ward in late 1931 or very early 1932. The home’s buyer was Virgil Taylor, the son of Jasper and Mae Taylor. Jasper Taylor was the County Treasurer.

Virgil built this kit home on a lot that he’d been gifted by his parents. Imagine, hauling 12,000 pieces of house from the train depot in Bowling Green to the building lot. That, in and of itself, was a monumental task.

Virgil also obtained a mortgage from Montgomery Ward, so this means that the kit house had to “completed and ready for occupancy in four months.”

Virgil had to hustle.

In 1936, the Great Depression must have hit Virgil hard. He lost the house to foreclosure, and it went back to Montgomery Ward. For a short time, Montgomery Ward rented out the little house and then it was sold to the college in the late 1930s.

This is an amazing story because it’s an encapsulation of life during the the early 1930s. Dad wants to help son get a start in life. Dad gives son a free lot. Son buys a kit home, and working nights and weekends, he builds the house. As he builds it (probably working side-by-side with Dad), both men think about the security that “a home of his own” will give to young Virgil.

As he painstakingly drives in each of the many nails in this kit (about 750 pounds of nails), he thinks about growing old in this house, and maybe someday bringing a wife and child into his “home.” And then the Great Depression hits and Virgil loses everything, including his beloved home and the lot his parents gave him. And the happy memories of working with Dad. And the joy of building something with his own hands. And all the faith and hopeful expectation about his future, secure in a home of his own.

All of it gone, washed away by the economic tsunami of the 1930s.

Losing a house is hard. Losing a home that you built with your own two hands must be excruciating.

Now that’s a compelling story, but there’s yet another reason that this house has captured my fancy.

2) Virgil’s house is a Sears kit home (The Lewiston*) and yet it was ordered from Montgomery Ward.

Yeah, you read that right.

This is not unheard of, but it is pretty darn unusual. Apparently, Virgil fell in love with the Sears Lewiston and yet - for reasons we haven’t discovered yet - had an allegiance or connection to Montgomery Ward. Virgil apparently sent a photo of the house to Wards and asked them to build him this Sears House.

When I first heard that this was a Montgomery Ward house, I was a tiny bit incredulous. Dale Wolicki and I co-authored a book (”Mail-Order Homes of Montgomery Ward”), and I can tell you, they never offered a kit home that looked anything like the Lewiston.

And then Raymond I. Schuck sent me some photos (shown below). This house was ordered from Montgomery Ward. But it’s not a Ward’s house.

Our priority is saving this house, so please - before you gaze upon the awesome photos below - take a moment and sign this online petition. Please forward this link to every old house lover you know and ask them to do the same. Post the link on your Facebook page. Tweet this page. Spread the word.

This online petition is easy to use and loads fast. This won’t take more than 60 seconds of your time.

* The persistent asterisk is because I’m not sure how to label this house. It’s a Sears Lewiston, ordered from Montgomery Ward.

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Tomorrow, I’ll write a blog showcasing a few of the kit homes that Dale found in Bowling Green.

To read one of the many reasons that I think this house should be saved, click here.

To learn more about Wardway Homes, click here.

Many of the 370 designs that Sears offered were quite attractive, thoughtfully designed and architecturally interesting.

The Glyndon was not one of them.

The best feature of this quotidian castle was its low, low price: $888.

According to the accompanying testimonials in the old Sears catalogs, this was a very popular house, and yet, I’ve only seen one in Northern Illinois. Sears House aficionado Donna Bakke found these two Glyndons in Ohio.

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To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To read the next fascinating blog, click here.

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It must have been hard to write magniloquent, enchanting copy to accompany (and pitch) each of the 370 models that Sears offered in their Modern Homes catalog. And yet, some of these descriptions are pretty darn good - such as this one.

The Maywood two-story home bespeaks simplicity and worth. Designed after the finest in modern architecture, it makes an ideal home. Viewed from any angle its lovely proportion and balance is outstanding. Every line is expressive of quality, durability and good taste.

Now that’s good writing!

The Maywood was first offered in the late 1920s, and was a popular house for Sears. It had a good floorplan, and (unlike most Sears Homes) the rooms were all fairly spacious (by 1920s standards).

The Maywood was patterned after a popular housing style, so not every house that looks like a Maywood is a Maywood. Take a look at the pictures below to learn how to differentiate the real deal from the look-alikes.

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To learn about Indiana’s $1 million Sears House, click here!

To learn more about Goodwall Sheet Plaster and its fireproof qualities, click here.

To make Rose’s day complete, leave a comment below! 

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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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Two years ago, when my last computer burped twice and fell over dead, I recovered 35,000 photos from the hard drive. That was two years ago. Since then, I’ve added many more photos, and I’ve received (via email) several hundred photos. Sometimes, it takes me a while to get those photos organized and posted here at the website.

Pat of Ohio sent me these wonderful photos of kit homes in Ohio almost a year ago. They’re wonderful pictures, but even better than the pictures is the note she sent along.

Without your books, we would never have found such excitement and joy! Every time we spot another kit house, whether it be a Sears or an Aladdin, we get so excited! Of course, if my son is with us he just cringes when he sees the camera come out, because he knows many photos will be taken and his trip home will be delayed!

He now has a standard question before we leave the house: “Are you guys going to be looking at more houses? Because if you are, I’m staying here. You guys are obsessed!”

Below are a few of the kit homes that Pat found in Ohio.

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To keep reading about Sears Homes, click here.

To learn how to identify kit homes, click here.

To buy Rose’s books, click here.

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About an hour northeast of Cincinnati is a wee tiny town named Enon, Ohio. And in that teeny tiny town is an unusual Sears House, known as Modern Home #112.  The distinctive houses (such as #112) are easier to identify because they have some unique details that’ll catch your eye! And with this home’s two-story polygon bay - extending to the third floor - it should be very easy to identify!

An interesting aside: My husband’s childhood friend - Sam Swauger - lived in Enon for a time. Anyone known Sam? 

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To learn more about identifying kit homes, click here.

To read about Addie Hoyt, click here.

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Yesterday, after a massive “tidy up all the mess in the attic” project, I found photos of the Sears Magnolia in Canton, Ohio. In Fall 2002, PBS History Detectives invited me to appear on their second episode (first season), to do a story on the Sears Homes in Akron. The filming started at the Sears Magnolia in Canton. Filming the 15-minute segment took eight days.

It was an incredible amount of fun and a good time was had by all. I took many photos, and after cleaning up my large attic, I finally found those photos.

Enjoy!

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

To learn more about early 20th Century breakfast nooks, click here.

To buy Rose’s book, click here.

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There’s a rumor circulating on the web that the house featured in the movie, “The Notebook,” is a Sears Magnolia. This is not correct. I repeat, this is NOT correct. For those who are interested in a comparison, look at the house featured in the movie (click here) and compare it to the original catalog picture shown below.

These houses (the real Sears Magnolia and the not-a-sears-house shown in that link above) are radically different - IN THE DETAILS - and that’s where you must look. Just because they’re both a two-story white house with a hip roof and big columns, that’s not enough.

A good place to start comparing houses is the roofline. The porch roof over the real Magnolia is a very low hip roof. The porch roof over The Notebook House is a massive gabled roof with a half-round window within its gable. Also, the proportions are wrong. The Sears Magnolia is 2,940 square feet. The Notebook house is probably double that.

These details really do matter.

There are so many delightful things about being so deeply immersed in this avocation of Sears Homes, but trying to teach people how to pay attention to architectural details before deciding that a similar looking house is a Sears House is pretty unfun. There are about 70,000 Sears homes in the country. Judging from my mail, about 3.4 million people THINK they have a Sears House!

The real Sears Magnolia (catalog), and a picture of the Magnolia in Benson, North Carolina (below).

To learn more about how to identify a Sears Home, click here.

Thanks to a FOSH (Friend of Sears Homes), I found the 5th known Sears Magnolia in the country. Joy sent me a link last week to a story on a Sears Home just outside of Raleigh. When I clicked on the link, I had no idea the show would be featuring a Sears Magnolia - the Creme de la creme of Sears Homes!

The happy owners of the Magnolia allowed me to tour the inside of the house, where I found proof that it was indeed a Sears Magnolia (as if there were any doubt). Click on this link to read more about that.

This was the second Magnolia that I’ve been inside. The first was in Canton, Ohio. In 2002, PBS’s History Detectives did a segment on Sears Homes, and invited me to be part of the program.

There are also Sears Magnolias in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Alabama.

To see more pictures of Sears Homes in Raleigh, click here.