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Plumbing, electrical, and heating equipment could be purchased separately, also from Sears. Sears foursquare models like the Garfield often had pairs of windows on the second floor above the porch and several models had triple windows on the porch. Pay special attention to the locations of the chimneys in your house if they are original to the home. Don’t forget that they may be located on the opposite side of the house if the floorplan was flipped. One thing that is usually not changed when a home is remodeled is the location of the chimney.
This house in Northfield is a perfect match to the Montgomery Ward Kenwood, except it is lacking a clipped gable roof . The double window in the front has been replaced by a bay window, likely after initial construction. The logos might be seen on doorknobs, hinges, miscellaneous hardware. Sears lumber was marked with a letter and number on the tall side of the lumber and can be found two to ten inches from the end of the member.
Delivery and construction
That porch post arrangement was used for half a dozen or so Sears Home models. The Harris J-6 foursquare was a popular model and a number of those homes can be found in central Ohio. The catalog stated, “We have everything you need – including the money” so Sears would finance the home for you. During the height of the Sears home era, Sears became the world’s largest mortgage holder. The company subcontracted manufacturing, and eventually design, to the Gordon-Van Tine Company.
An obvious thing to check is if your house looks like any in the Sears catalogs. Sears has put a number of the catalog homes online at this link. Using other Sears catalogs, the building counsellors also assisted folks with selecting cabinets, doors and windows, as well as gas, electrical, and plumbing fixtures.
Additional Resources
Many people have lived in kit houses for years without realizing the historical and architectural significance of their humble abodes. A guide to provide basic information on kit houses, as well as to provide links to resources on these prefabricated houses. ✔ Energy Efficient - Building log homes and cabin kits from Northern White Cedar, one of nature's best woods and R-value, saves you money on heating/cooling cost.
They also featured high-quality lumber, and the company offered a refund of $1 for each knot found in a kit. From the outside, our home does not resemble the original Sears Starlight. A previous homeowner had enclosed the back porch to create a pantry. When we bought the house, the roof structure was bad, so we completely removed the roof including the rafters. We replaced the rafters with trusses thereby changing the entire design. While we were replacing the roof, we also enclosed the front porch to create another bedroom and an entryway.
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There are Sears home models that do not appear in any of the catalogs that Sears has posted online. For those you need to use the “photo search” function on the Google Lens app. However, finding a home similar to yours in a Sears catalog does not guarantee that yours is a Sears house.
Look at the exposed beam, joists, rafter in the basement, crawl space or attic of the house for the marked lumber. If those are unavailable, the bathtub’s plumbing access doors might allow access to the framing lumber. A couple of our floor joists have grease pencil markings on them, but they are not noticeable without a flashlight. Finding the shipping label is a little like striking gold because it is so unlikely to be in a place that is visible , but some owners of Sears homes have found them, so anything is possible.
Montgomery Ward Homes
Pay close attention to the placement of doors and windows, chimneys, and any character defining detail. Even if the dimensions are off by a few inches, this could signify that the house is not a kit house. Most Sears stores employed building counsellors to assist you in the process of selecting your home, financing the cost, arranging for delivery and constructing the house.
Over the years, we have removed all of the half-inch iron pipe that originally weaved through the house to provide gas for those lights. Unfortunately, none of the lighting or plumbing fixtures were still in the house. However, your home may contain some original Sears hardware. If the house still contains the original cast iron bathtub, it may be marked with a circle containing the letters “SR” for Sears – Roebuck.
The porch is unique from most of the other models in that it doesn’t span the entire front of the house. Instead of being long and rectangular, it is more of a square front porch. On the other hand, “ready-cut” meant that each piece of lumber was cut exactly to the architect’s drawing by the sawmill before shipment. Each piece was then “clearly marked with a printed stencil to correspond with the same piece shown on the plan”. The homeowner had no cutting on their end – simply nail it in its place.
Use your favorite search engine to research Sears or Montgomery Ward houses from the year that your house was built and the two years prior to that. By the time the house kit was ordered, delivered, and constructed, the year of record for when the house was built would most likely differ from the year that it was ordered. Since Sears sold the most by far, I will mostly focus on them. Researchers do not agree on how many homes Sears actually sold, with estimates ranging from 50,000 to more than 100,000.
1930 catalog, which was probably the last catalog Montgomery Ward produced." Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. With the enactment of Rural Free Delivery in 1902, Montgomery Ward could deliver orders directly to homes and businesses outside urban areas. By 1895, the United States Postal Service described Montgomery Ward as their biggest patron, and by the turn of the twentieth century, they had become the largest U.S. retailer. I’m Jen, an “everyday” homeowner on a mission to make homeownership a little easier and a lot more fun. Second, is the side entrance similar to the Miami, another model marketed to farmers.
Some old houses may have been remodeled more than once. If you find a home similar to yours and the website provides the name of the home model, then look for it in a Sears home catalog. If you find a house like yours in a Sears Home catalog, check out the floor plan. If it is a two-story house, check out the floor plans for both floors. Be sure to remember that the floor plan could be flipped or slightly altered by remodeling. Montgomery Ward & Co. sold kit houses just like Sears did.
Many of their homes are identical to those offered by Gordon Van Tine. House-plan books like those from Palliser & Palliser date back to the Victorian period; full construction drawings were offered, and sometimes also a millwork package. By the middle of the bungalow era, a host of companies offered pre-cut kits, which would be shipped by rail for on-site construction. Not only lumber but also everything down to the nuts and bolts, and even paint, were included.
Other smaller providers of mail-order kits included The B.C. Mills Timber and Trading Co., United Grain Growers, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Manitoba Agricultural College. Advertisement for knocked down kits for summer cottages, in Popular Mechanics, May 1908. These were lightly constructed dwellings, not meant to be lived in year-round. Advertisement for a “cut to fit” Craftsman bungalow from Sears, 1916. Sears Garfield home is very similar to the catalog picture from 1932.
