Sears Catalog Home: Encyclopedia II - Sears Catalog Home - Heritage

Sears Catalog Home - Heritage

Sears Catalog Homes proved to be both affordable and of substantial construction. One of Sears's, and indeed the nation's, biggest selling models was the common bungalow. This compact, affordable house began as a vacation-style home in the 1880s but grew into a major housing type in cities and suburbs in the years before World War I. Sears homes have become increasingly popular among history enthusiasts because of their sturdy structure, unusual building and architectural design concepts.

The modern-day locations of all of them are not known, but most of the 100,000 sold have probably survived. Clusters can be found all across the United States and are proudly featured by communities such as Arlington, Virginia, and the surrounding area with 100, Hopewell, Virginia, with 44, and Downers Grove, Illinois, with 27. Aurora, Illinois, has at least 7 Sears catalog homes.

Not all buyers were individuals or small volume developers. In 1918, Standard Oil Company purchased a large group of the Sears houses for its mineworkers in Carlinville, Illinois, at a cost of approximately US$1 million. Today 152 of the original 156 homes still exist, the largest single repository of Sears Catalog Homes in the United States.

And, not all of them became private residences. At Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Hampton Roads waterfront in the Newport News, Virginia area, the cemetery office building is a 1936 Sears Catalog Home.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Heritage", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki