Richard Warren Sears (1863-1914)

Richard Warren Sears and his partner, Alvah Curtis Roebuck founded the first large-scale-mail order business in the U.S. and one of the world's largest retail stores.  The company's extensive catalog eventually became a fixture in U.S. homes and changed the way people shopped .. even for homes! 

The Westly

1912-1929

This Sears home was featured in catalogs and was one of the most popular designs.  It still shines in countless towns across the country by the hundreds, if not the thousands!

Do you know the name, Frank W. Kushel?  No?  Well, you're not alone. Yet Kushel may have had as much impact on American housing as his famous contemporary architect,  Frank Lloyd Wright. 

Kushel wasn't an architect.  He was a merchandising genius credited with inventing Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Home program which provided well designed, well constructed, economical shelter for perhaps 75,000 American families between 1908 and 1940! Today, buyers are still snapping up vintage Sears homes just as eagerly as they did 80 years ago!

Kushel was managing china department for Sears in 1906 when he was given the dismal task of overseeing the dismantling of the building materials department.  Sales were down and there was too much inventory sitting in expensive warehouses.  Then, Kushel had an idea!  

He was convinced that the building supplies could be sold at a profit if storage could be centralized and the goods distributed more rationally with a little extra incentive for buying them. Instead of abandoning the sale of millwork and other building parts, why not change the way these goods were sold? 

What if customers could pick a plan for their dream house from a Sears catalog?  Then, instead of selling building materials in random bits and pieces, Sears could market them in a coordinated package.  One containing exactly what was needed to build a particular house and shipped directly to the railroad station nearest the building site.  One order could include everything .. nails and screws, paint and roof shingles, windows and doors, woodwork, staircases, dining nooks and mantelpieces! The Sears house was often equipped with the most sought after conveniences of its time from built-in china cabinets, ironing boards, mirrored closet doors, telephone niches and medicine cabinets. Some of these amenities came as part of the package while others were options.

Kushel's boss, Richard Sears himself no slouch at merchandising recognized the plan's potential immediately and so did the buying public!  Sear's reputation for quality, low prices and reliability carefully nurtured since the company's founding in 1886 was like 'money in the bank' for its customers. The company's first 44-page Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans issued in 1908 brought an immediate and enthusiastic response!

Kushel wasn't the only or even the first person to come up with a scheme to sell houses by catalog and ship them, by rail.  In 1906, the North American Construction Company (later to become known as the makers of "Aladdin Houses" and "Readi-Cuts") of Bay City, Michigan had begun selling rail-shipped pre-cut buildings (small cottages, garages and boathouses) out of a mail-order plan book.  It wasn't until 1911 that Sears included framing lumber in its package and the company didn't begin to offer pre-cut and factory-fitted lumber until 1914.  Before then, the lumber still had to be cut to fit at the bulding site.  

"The Sunshine"

A Page from the Book of Aladdin Home$

Price of thi$ Beautiful Home

$1045.00

Montgomery Ward which was Sears and Roebuck's foremost catalog competitor in general merchandise was even slower to jump on the bandwagon waiting until 1918 for ready-cut houses.  Sears and its competitors all depended on rail service which by the early 20th century covered most of the continent and regional lumber mills where the wood could be centrally processed.

In 1911, Sears added an irresistible new twist!  The company decided not just to sell house-building packages, but to finance them as well.  the nation's booming population was straining the seams of a tight housing market, yet the huge and fast-growing middle and working classes (many of which were recent European immigrants) had been largely ignored by a conservative banking community.  If Sears could offer reasonable interest rates and low down payments, the market seemed endless.  Although the financing package initially included only building materials, it soon expanded to cover the building lot.

Not only were the terms easy .. a down payment of 25% of the cost of the house and lot, as little as 6% interest for 5 years or a higher rate for up to 15 years, but the application form contained no questions about race, ethnicity, gender or even finances. Thousands of formerly ineligible buyers were absorbed into the new housing market.

The Woodland 

1913-1923

Staircases were often the visual centerpiece of the two-story models.

The Arts & Craft design reflected the era in which the houses were constructed in 1910 as seen in the Woodland's porch columns.

The Avondale (1911-1922)

Sears debuted its long-running bungalow 

with a promotional postcard and a model at the 1911 Illinois State Fair

Modern Homes catalogs were issued most years (sometimes twice a year) from 1908 until 1940 although there are a few years for which no catalogs are presently known.  In the beginning, Modern Homes designs were assigned numbers rather than names though soon titles (styles) began to accompany the attractive illustrations.  Sears knew its audience well and its designs were those most popular at the time.  The styles were deliberately conservative rather than innovative.

Beginning with a simplified Queen Anne, Modern Homes styles ranged from Arts & Crafts bungalows and Foursquares in the 1910s and 1920s through the various European revivals of French, English and Spanish (Mission) styles in the 1920s, to the Colonial Revivals, Cape Cods and Dutch Colonials found mostly in the 1920s and 1930s.

Modern Homes catalogs often carried designs well past what was generally considered their peak years.  Bungalows were among the most frequently built Sears homes. Sears houses were often built in multiples creating entire neighborhoods. 

The Bellewood (1931)

Pocket-sized English Cottages were a Sears Staple.

A Personal favorite with its distinctive curved red entrance door.

The Crescent Hills subdivision in Hopewell, Virginia (M.T. Broyhill, developer) contains 44 Sears, Roebuck and Company designed and numbered homes that were originally built during WWI for employees of the DuPont Corporation.

By the time the Modern Homes project folded for good, Sears houses were a staple of the American landscape!  Frank Kushel continued to head the Modern Homes program until the end by which time he was still hardly any better known than he had been in 1906. And Frank Lloyd Wright?  Interestingly enough, Wright who always had a strong interest in designing houses for every customer entered the pre-cut home market, himself, when he produced a number of designs for prefabricated houses in 1911 and 1916.  Who knew?