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.
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, and this is one of the largest known contiguous collections of Sears Catalog Homes in the United States. There are nine styles of houses in a nine block area which represents Standard Addition in Carlinville. Styles are the Langston Model, Madelia Model, Warrenton Model, Whitehall Model, Roseberry Model, Lebanon Model, and the Gladstone Model. And notably, the Carlin Model was actually named after Carlinville, by Sears, Roebuck & Co. for supposedly having the largest order on record for the houses. There are more Sears homes dotted throughout Carlinville. It took nine months to complete the building of Standard Addition which was completed in 1919.
Sears Homes in significant numbers can be found in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and a few have been found as far south as Florida and as far west as California. There are at least two Sears Homes in the old mill town of Newton Falls, New York, and the entire Town Site neighborhood in Bucksport, Maine, consists of Sears Homes in the Belfast model. While their locations today are not known due to variations in designs both during initial construction and subsequent renovations or modifications, most of those sold by Sears, Roebuck 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 42 in the Crescent Hills neighborhood, and Downers Grove, Illinois, with 27. Aurora, Illinois, has 136 documented Sears catalog homes giving it one of the largest concentrations in the country; the largest, at 152, is located in Carlinville, Illinois. Houston, Texas' historic Norhill neighborhood is known to have many of these homes.
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.
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Famous quotes containing the word heritage:
“Flowers ... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honoured as the jewellery of God only by them—when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.”
—Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)
“The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into the heritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony—unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe’s declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)