Darcel Rockett
Once upon a time, you could purchase a home for less than $5,000.
The Barrington. The Lexington. The Sheridan. The Hazelton. The Malden.
From the early 1900s until 1942, Sears, Roebuck and Co., more commonly known as Sears, sold thousands of mail-order kit homes, which buyers could pick from a catalog. The Barrington, for example, cost $2,606 and came with everything from trim, windows, millwork and flooring — some 30,000 pre-cut and numbered parts shipped by rail for assembly by owner or a local contractor. Housing styles were in the hundreds, floor plans customizable and prices from around $100.
While the Hoffman Estates-based retailer filed for bankruptcy in October, many of its iconic kit homes still stand, evoking a sense of nostalgia for better times in the department store’s history.
“I think the reason Sears houses are important is because homeownership is the quintessential American Dream,” said Lara Solonickne, Arlington Heights resident and researcher and blogger behind Sears Homes of Chicagoland. “Sears sold affordable houses in their catalog, and that gave all Americans — including women, minorities and immigrants — the chance to become homeowners. We need to recognize these hidden stories and the people behind these old Sears houses.”
Mary Beth Turek, a Downers Grove resident, is one of those people. She and her husband, Joseph, have owned their Barrington model since 1982. They were completely clueless about the home’s origins, she said.
“I just thought it was a cool, old house,” said the former engineer-turned-therapy dog trainer. “This was our first house, and our only house, and we’ve had relatives say: ‘When are you moving to your real house? This is a starter house.’ But this is our real house.”
Maintaining the home, which was built on a hill in 1928, means fixing cracks in plaster walls, replacing windows with duplicates of the originals, and adding insulation and siding, which homes built in that era didn’t have, Turek said. All worthwhile to enjoy her favorite spot: A window seat that was part of an addition built in the 1970s.
“There’s no closet space, but that’s true of every old house because Americans have too much junk,” she said. “But I love it, the charm, the character. I think there’s a place for small homes — not everyone needs a McMansion.”
Barrington resident Wende Dau has lived in her three-bedroom 1926 Sheridan-model Sears home with her husband and two children since 2007. The couple have renovated some — they finished the basement and added two bathrooms, increasing the space from 1,700 square feet to 2,100. Dau would recommend buying a Sears home if the opportunity presents itself.
“It’s just a novelty,” said the former Lake Zurich village clerk. “It’s a small home. It’s easy. They’re very buyer-friendly. There’s nothing nutty about the layouts, they’re very practical.”
Ohio has the largest number of Sears kit homes, followed closely by Illinois, according to Solonickne, who started researching the topic seven years ago thanks to her daughter’s school project. Because many of the original sales records weren’t easily accessible, Solonickne decided to take on the task herself.
But she’s not a one-person fan club. A number of blogs and websites are dedicated to locations and history of Sears homes, including one specific to Park Ridge and one to Ohio. At one point the company even kept a national list of Sears kit homeowners and enthusiasts.
As of late summer, Solonickne counts 213 Sears homes in Elgin, 149 in Carlinville, 146 in Rockford and 69 in Downers Grove.
“I decided to start the website devoted to Sears houses in the Chicago area so we could better preserve and protect them to educate people,” she said.
Solonickne gives lectures and walking tours of Sears homes throughout the year. She said people from around the world have reached out to her — a recent email came from a man in Quebec who wanted to know if his residence could be a kit home.
“Sears houses are hidden in plain sight. … You could be driving by one every day on your way to work and not really notice. So finding these houses is much like a scavenger hunt. It also teaches you to pay very close attention to all the residential architecture around you,” Solonickne said.
They aren’t always easy to identify either. Rebecca Hunter, an architectural researcher and author who lives in Elgin, offers a few tips on her website, including checking wood with part numbers stamped in dark ink — usually with a capital letter followed by one or more numerals, (e.g. A159, L23, C2). The numbers are usually near the end of a board, on the wide side (for example, the 4-inch side of a 2-by-4). A model number or order number may be handwritten in grease pencil.
Still, there’s no quick and easy way to prove your house is from a Sears catalog.
A number of companies — such as Aladdin Co. of Bay City, Mich., and Chicago-based firms Montgomery Ward and Harris Brothers — produced and sold mail-order homes. Each of these companies, including Sears, offered large luxury models (around 10 rooms) as well as two- and three-room vacation cottages, Hunter said.
According to Solonickne, people living in Montgomery Ward homes have thought they were living in Sears homes.
Solonickne recommends curious homeowners look at county and mortgage records, land deeds and building permits to see if Sears financed the house. She also said some building permits may list Sears Roebuck as the architect.
“Sometimes people have the original blueprints in their house; sometimes people have the original paperwork from Sears. So there’s different ways to authenticate things, and sometimes there’s a little luck involved in doing that, but it’s always worth investigating,” Solonickne said.
“I think the reason Sears homes has become a synonym for any mail-order home is much the same way we call any facial tissue, Kleenex, or soda, Coke,” Hunter said. “So ‘Sears homes’ has become inaccurately used to describe all sorts of things that are not Sears mail-order houses.”
Michael Montana’s Malden-model Sears house in Rockford was built in 1941, and is one of only a handful of that particular design known nationwide, according to Solonickne’s blog. The new father has lived in the home since 2016 and says he wants to keep it as original as possible.
He and his wife always thought the exterior of the house felt like a home, but the small details, like original glass doorknobs — things you can’t find with “cookie-cutter, general construction” — put the house over the top for them.
“If you’re getting something like this today, you’re paying a pretty penny,” Montana said. “The folks that have heard of Sears homes, they think 500-square-foot house, a cardboard kind of deal, but the fact is they were some very high-end homes. It’s pretty impressive. Sears was the Amazon of their time. They were ahead of their time, for sure.”
