A quick, "things you never knew you needed to know". My introduction to Sears Catalog Houses was somewhat typical. The seller mentioned it and it was like "Yeah, OK". Difference was that seller handed me a bag of blueprints. Once I got internet in 1994 I decided to investigate. Briefly:
Before World War II there were an estimated two million "pre-cut houses built in the US in the 20th Century. Most famous is Richard Nixon birthplace at Nixon library but it appears to not be a Sears House. 100,000 Sears Houses. Basically every piece was pre-cut and numbered. (a big advantage since "portable" power tools didn't become practical before World War II.)
07-05-04 update. Rose Thorton in here book contends that the number of Sears Catalog Houses was "under 75,000 probably less. She did the research and found that Sears claimed fewer than 50,00 at the start of the Great Depression. The later Sears claim of 100,00 she reasoned, probably came from Sears approved contractors doing remodeling or repair, which Sears covered by their garantee. Thus, someone getting reroof through Sears might be covered in this depression era claim.The revise book she wrote on Sears houses, linked at the top of this page explains this in detail.
Sears had long sold "house hardware" and eventually had a builders catalog. This led, around 1910 to Sears selling entire precut houses, except the foundation locally. Basic charm was mass production scale that allowed architectural teams to design the houses and Sears populism. "Every design team included a woman to express 'women's concerns' in the house designs". Big kitchens and closets seem to be the big effect here.
The idea worked and the 1920's were certainly the "golden age" of Sears Houses and other precut houses. Death knell came with the Great Depression of the 1930's. This eroded real estate values. It greatly slowed the sales of new precut Sears houses. The "nuke" however is that Sears also offered to finance the house, a precursor to our modern mortgage. During the depression a lot of people defaulted and Sears did not want to foreclose if at all possible, since the media tended to focus on this and the Sears wanted to keep it's "Friend of the people" image so it ate a huge amount of debt of mortgage defaults. This would be billions in today's dollars and market.
Sears finally sold it's precut house assets in 1939 and got out of the business. After the war there was a materials shortage plus better "construction site" power tools so pre-cut lost some of it's advantages. In a shortsighted move Sears disposed of it sales registry of Sears Catalog Houses so now there is an effort to reconstruct this, backed by Sears.
Sears has discovered the value of it's legacy. Many Sears Homeplace stores have recreations of the front of a Sears House. Sears it working with those trying to create a new registry. Unlike many other corporate entities, Sears has let us do our work on the internet. Considering circumstances Sears involvement in this has been overall. positive. I wish they wouldn't have tossed the records but "corporate history" back then was an oxymoron. Sears is overall a positive corporate citizen here, considering the circumstances.
08-08-04 I can send a CD-Rom with scans of my Searshouse blueprints for $2 (cost)) Email me if interested. Also, here ia a letter I recieved from someone I dealt with on something totally unrelated. Wow, thanks. When you said "will mail" earlier, I thought you meant e-mail. I'll definitely look forward to receiving it. Small world: I spent the first four years of my life in a Sears "kit" house in Paris, IL. I visited the place again in 1994 and got a primer on the Sears houses from the son who lived there with his elderly mom. Interestingly, it's the same family who bought the house from my family in 1957. The man was an infant at the time he moved in -- just like me.
