At our September 17th meeting, Judy Gauntt delivered an oral history of the Sears Modern Home Program and explain how to point out all the characteristics of a Sears Roebuck Home. Here are several homes in our area:
A-1 Appliances on Route 130 North is The Crafton Style Home. Joe Peditto commented that it had the porch on it when he lived there
A house at 208 Rancocas Ave in Delanco that was identified as a Sears kit house, ALADDIN model, built in 1950. (photos and information provided by Peter Fritz)
A Sears kit house at 524 Burlington Avenue in Delanco; a WINONA model from about 1940. (photos and information provided by Peter Fritz)
Miscellaneous Homes
The above homes are from the 1916 Sears Home Catalog. They shipped the entire house to you by railroad car. Sears was like Ikea before Ikea. Friends and family would come from all around to help the owner build it.
From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company’s count.
Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line’s 34-year history. Most included the latest comforts and conveniences available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, telephone, and electricity.
Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Once delivered, many of these houses were assembled by the new homeowner, relatives, friends and neighbors, in a fashion similar to the traditional barn-raisings of farming families.
Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them.
