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For decades, Americans could browse a catalog, choose a home and order it by mail.
Sears, Roebuck and Company was a prominent manufacturer of mail-order homes. The company sold about 70,000 to 75,000 homes from 1908 to 1940, according to the Sears Archives. Its catalogs offered more than 400 different house styles and the listed prices could range from around $200 to $6,000. Customers even had the option of designing their own home and submitting the blueprint to Sears.
鈥淭here are quite a few [Sears houses] in the D.C. area,鈥� said Judith Chabot, who runs the blog
Judith Chabot is part of a team of researchers documenting Sears houses, mostly on the East Coast and in the Midwest. Her interest was sparked after learning her mother grew up in one in Massachusetts, and she鈥檚 spent roughly the past decade finding others.
鈥淲e don’t know why exactly we love this search so much, but one of our researchers called it a big map treasure hunt,鈥� Chabot said. 鈥淚t’s kind of like birding also, like, 鈥極h my gosh, I found an Avalon!鈥� or 鈥極h, I found a Wesley!鈥� and then you check that one off your list.鈥�
The Aladdin Company and Montgomery Ward were other major kit home producers. Pre-cut materials, supplies and instructions would arrive via train, then friends or contractors could help assemble the house. The process was supposed to save time and money, plus cut down on waste.
Sears houses came in an array of styles, from simple cottages to big Antebellums. They also featured modern conveniences, including indoor plumbing, central heating, and electricity.
A 1928 Sears catalog included 鈥淭he Fullerton,鈥� a two-story home with six rooms and a big porch for about $2,000, 鈥淭he Selby,鈥� a one-story home with two bedrooms and one bathroom for about $600 and dozens of options in between. Chabot said the catalogs also published testimonials from homeowners.
鈥淭hey’d send in a photo of their house and then they’d write a letter about [how] this was a fine home and it was a joy to build and it’s the best house in the neighborhood,鈥� she said.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation published a book called 鈥淗ouses by Mail: A Guide to Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company,鈥� sharing the history of these ready-to-assemble homes and providing a guide to identifying them, with hundreds of illustrations of house models and floor plans.
The book described 鈥渆xceptionally sturdy and well-designed鈥� houses that were 鈥渂uilt to last,鈥� and included a quote from the Smithsonian that 鈥渋t was the American Dream by Mail Order.鈥�
鈥淭hey were made, as all the homes were back then, with really solid, big strength wood and old growth wood,鈥� Chabot said, 鈥淭hey weren’t cutting corners at all. These are not flimsy homes.鈥�
Mortgages were rare during that time period. So Sears would help finance these mail-order homes. Chabot and her colleagues research mortgages and deeds to identify Sears houses or when a wall is torn down, specific ink stamps and shipping labels might provide clues.
鈥淚f you’re lucky, you will find markings on the framing lumber. So it’d be a letter in a number combo like B326 or A121,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat is how Sears labeled the dimension of the lumber.鈥�
Many mail-order homes still exist today, sometimes without the current homeowner鈥檚 knowledge.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development鈥檚 Office of Policy Development and Research, 鈥渢he largest concentrations of documented Sears kit homes may be in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and its suburbs with approximately 1,000 homes.鈥�
The Holbrook House in College Park, Maryland, was built in 1927 and is an example of the Sears Alhambra model. In 2016, a Sears Colonial house sold in D.C. for $1.06 million.
鈥淧eople think that all the houses with that kind of look from the 1920s must be Sears houses, but really only about 1% of houses built during that era are Sears houses,鈥� Chabot said. 鈥淭hey’re pretty rare.鈥�
Chabot and her colleagues maintain a national database of Sears Houses, regularly adding new discoveries. You can see the ones they鈥檝e researched, including numerous in the D.C. area, on .
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