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Learn more about mail-order catalog kit homes in Richmond from expert Rosemary Thornton, author of The Houses That Sears Built, on Sept. 25. Visit richmondmag.com/sears for more info.
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Photo by Jay Paul
Rosemary Thornton guides us through Richmond on the search for mail-order catalog kit homes.
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THEN: The Sears Avalon
Neighborhood: Forest Hill
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Photo by Jay Paul
NOW: The Sears Avalon
Neighborhood: Forest Hill
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THEN: The Lewis Montawk
Neighborhood: Willow Lawn
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Photo by Jay Paul
NOW: The Lewis Montawk
Neighborhood: Willow Lawn
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THEN: Gordon-Van Tine Model 124
Neighborhood: Ginter Park
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Photo by Jay Paul
NOW: Gordon-Van Tine Model 124
Neighborhood: Ginter Park
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THEN: The Sears Osborn
Neighborhood: Lakeside
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Photo by Jay Paul
NOW: The Sears Osborn
Neighborhood: Lakeside
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THEN: The Sears Sherburne
Neighborhood: Woodland Heights
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Photo by Jay Paul
NOW: The Sears Sherburne
Neighborhood: Woodland Heights
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THEN: Harris Brothers N-1000
Neighborhood: Forest Hill
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Photo by Jay Paul
NOW: Harris Brothers N-1000
Neighborhood: Forest Hill
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Photo by Jay Paul
A unique column arrangement may indicate a Sears home.
Imagine traveling to the rail yard to pick up 12,000 pieces of lumber, hardware, nails, shingles, paint and blueprints and transporting all of this to an empty lot, where you would open a 75-page step-by-step instruction book and start building yourself a home. Before Ikea’s assembly-required furniture, there were mail-order catalog kit homes.
Between 1908 and 1940, Sears Roebuck and Co. sold about 70,000 houses from its mail-order catalogs, with styles ranging from simple bungalows to the fabled Magnolia, a grand colonial-revival style complete with columns reminiscent of Tara from Gone with the Wind. Five other companies sold mail-order kit houses during this time as well, providing an inexpensive way for Americans to build “modern homes” as streetcar suburbs were forming, immigrants were flocking to the United States and soldiers were returning from World War I.
Today, a fraction of these kit homes survive, some of them in Richmond. Often, the current residents don’t know of their home’s history, says kit-house expert Rosemary Thornton, author of The Houses that Sears Built and other books on the subject. “Most people have the same reaction when I tell them they are living in a Sears house,” she says. “They ask, ‘What’s a Sears house?’ It is amazing to me how many people don’t know that part of our history.”
Thornton has made it her mission to preserve the history of kit homes before it is too late, maintaining the searshomes.org website and traveling throughout the country to document the homes and to lecture on the topic. She will speak in Richmond on Sept. 25 at the Virginia Center for Architecture. “The window for finding these houses through personal reminiscences is rapidly fading,” she says.
Recently, Thornton made her third trip to Richmond for a “windshield survey” of kit homes. So far, in her survey of Richmond, she has found more than 30 houses she believes to be built from catalog kits.
Richmond’s Kit-House Neighborhoods
For her recent Richmond tour, Thornton, who lives in Norfolk, arrived with an armload of binders containing about 3,000 photocopied images from original catalogs published by Sears, Aladdin, Harris Brothers, Lewis Manufacturing, Wardway and Gordon-Van Tine. She had done some homework before arriving, using Google Earth and Zillow.com to click through Richmond neighborhoods street by street.
“I can look at a map and generally find the sweet spots [for kit homes],” she explains.
First, she looks for neighborhoods that are within one to two miles of railroad tracks, since “the logistics of moving a boxcar full of house parts took many trips.” She also seeks out streets with presidential (Lincoln, Washington) names, tree names (Maple and Elm) or numbered streets, since these were popular naming conventions during the heyday of kit homes. She also visits real-estate sites and searches for houses that are more than 50 years old. “If I find a 1920s bungalow, I know that is a neighborhood to go to,” she says.
Sometimes, though, her hunch is off the mark. In Richmond, she was sure she would find kit homes in Bellevue, a classic 1920s neighborhood full of foursquares and bungalows. But, she did not find one.
During her recent trip to Richmond, she also spent time cruising the streets of Woodland Heights and Forest Hill on the south side of the James River, and Battery Park, Barton Heights, Ginter Park, Highland Park, Lakeside and the area around Libbie and Grove avenues on the north side.
Richmonder Molly Todd was Thornton’s driver. Todd discovered a blog post Thornton had written about a previous trip to Richmond and invited Thornton back for another look. As Todd manned the steering wheel, Thornton craned her neck from side to side, yelling “stop,” or “slow down” when she spotted a house that looked interesting.
“I have tried to memorize about 1,000 houses,” Thornton says. “I have a good memory, which makes me well-suited to this particular gig.”
Identifying a Kit House
Thornton’s encyclopedic knowledge of kit homes made for some quick investigative work during her survey. A spotting typically goes like this: After seeing a home that looks interesting, she stops, rolls down the window and snaps a few photos with a digital camera.
She then opens the binder of the manufacturer that she suspects originally sold the kit and looks up the original catalog image of the home. “I give these houses Apgar scores,” she says, referring to the scale used by doctors to evaluate the health of a newborn baby. A perfect match to the catalog image is a “10”; a house that has been modified over the years but appears to have the original bones of a kit home may score lower. Until she can get inside a home to document it — which often is difficult to do — it is an inexact science.
As she drives through Woodland Heights, she spots what she believes to be numerous examples of Harris Brothers’ N-1000, a charming California bungalow with overhanging eaves, decorative brackets and a side porch. They are perfect matches to the catalog image, but she is not 100 percent sure they were built from kits. Thornton explains that the manufacturers also would sell house plans independent of the building kits. Builders sometimes would purchase the plans for popular kit-house models and replicate them en masse.
To complicate matters, Thornton says about 30 percent of kit houses were customized as they were being built. “One of the most popular modifications was what I call ‘puffing’ the house," she says, “adding two feet onto the back and sides.”
Details count when identifying a kit house. Thornton looks at column and window arrangements, eave brackets and the proportions of the house as clues. “Most people do not look at the details, which is what drives me nuts,” she says. “Eave brackets are really important [clues]. People may add an eave bracket, but they aren’t going to remove one.”
There are many misconceptions about kit houses, Thornton says. First, people often believe that because a house was purchased through a catalog, it must be an inferior product. This simply is not so — after all, people are still living in these homes that have stood the test of time. Another popular myth is that if a house has an “S” on its chimney, it is a Sears kit home. This is also false, Thornton says.
There is significant interest in kit homes. Thornton says she receives hundreds of emails every month from people who believe they live in a kit home. “People love looking back at the past to a time when things were simpler,” she says. “The idea that you could order a kit from Sears and put the house together yourself is fascinating to people. … There is also the sense of finding hidden treasure when you come across one of these houses. Making people aware of these treasures and preserving them is my No. 1 goal.”
Do I Live In a Sears House?
Rosemary Thornton fields hundreds of emails each month from people wondering if they live in a Sears home. Here are her nine steps for identifying a Sears home:
[ 1 ] Was it built between 1908 and 1940? If not, it cannot be a Sears home.
[ 2 ] Look in the basement or attic for lumber that was stamped with a letter and number to make construction easier.
[ 3 ] Check the back of baseboard moldings and door and window trim for shipping labels.
[ 4 ] Compare your house to original catalog images. Thornton’s book, Sears Homes of Illinois, is a good place to start.
[ 5 ] Look in the attic and basement for any paperwork (original blueprints, letters, etc.) that might reveal you have a Sears home.
[ 6 ] Check the sinks and tub. Sears homes built during the 1930s often have a small circled “SR” cast into the bathtub in the lower corner and on the underside of the kitchen or bathroom sink.
[ 7 ] Goodwall sheet plaster, an early quasi-drywall product offered by Sears, can be a clue that you have a kit home.
[ 8 ] A unique column arrangement on the front porch and five-piece eave brackets may indicate a Sears home.
[ 9 ] Find the original building permit for your home. In cities that have retained original building permits, “Sears” often was listed as the home’s original architect.
