A Sears Sherburne That Escaped Its Fate

7601 S. Bennett Ave., Chicago. 

The Sears Sherburne.

The Sears Sherburne is a Craftsman style house that is "strikingly handsome", according to the description in the Modern Homes catalog. 

This Sherburne in South Shore has had its porch enclosed, lost its original wood shingle siding, and lost a couple windows on the second story, but the left side reveals it to be a Sherburne.

(All photos are from the sales listings unless otherwise indicated.)

One of the distinguishing features of the Sherburne is the bumpout for the stairway (compare to the illustration). There is a door underneath. The small double windows on the upper left are in the stairwell and the very corner of the rear bathroom. Capture from Google Streetview.

The Sherburne floor plan. The Sherburne in South Shore sits on a double lot.

Once inside, we can see what were spaces for the original front four windows and front door. 

The first floor has been opened up a bit. The dining room is on the right side. I assume that is a newer replacement column on the left side.

How Sears showed the living room of the Sherburne.

The Sherburne has a unique stairway! You can see the tiny window on the second floor. 

One of the bedrooms has a door that leads out to the front deck.

There is that small window in the corner of the second-story bathroom. 

I am not sure when this Sherburne was built. There was a mention in the 1919 Modern Homes catalog about a Sherburne being built in "South Chicago, Ill." (Thanks to researcher Matthew Hendrickson for noting this.) Is this the same Sherburne? Nobody knows.

 

In June 1914, the lots that the Sherburne sits on had not yet been developed. The model was sold from 1911-1923.

 

In 1923, Olivia and David L. Bengson lived in the house. They may have been the original owners. David, a tailor,  owned a nearby business.

Olivia died in 1924 and David died in 1930. Other Bengson family members lived in the house for a few more years.

Beginning in the 1930's, the house rapidly changed owners, until around 1944. Russell Roberts then purchased the house. (Russell's daughter, Delores, had a daughter who told me about the existence of the Sherburne. "Family lore" said the house was from Sears.) The Roberts sold the house in 1965 and that's when the Sherburne slowly fell into decline.

By 1973, kids from nearby South Shore High School were dealing drugs in the backyard of the house. Was it abandoned?

In 1976, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took ownership of the house. When someone uses an FHA loan to purchase their home and fails to repay it, HUD takes the property back after it has gone into foreclosure.

The house was repeatedly listed for auction in 1976 and 1977. Nobody wanted it. You can imagine the condition it must have been in. The Sherburne was in big trouble.

The owners who were foreclosed on reacquired the house somehow. But their financial woes continued.

In 1992 the county took possession of the house due to nonpayment of taxes. The Sherburne had now been in decline for almost 30 years. But still it hung around.

In 2010, the city flagged the house as an "imminent danger to the public." An inspector reported:  "Premises now dangerous as vacant and open, uncompleted and abandoned, or vacant and boarded." During this period, the house was owned by Mellon Bank.

Mellon sold the house to a developer in 2011. The Sherburne just quietly sat there for years, but somehow never got demolished.

The house in 2015. The house originally had the double windows on the second story. Capture from Google Streetview.

After 2018, a company finally restored the house to the way it is today. It's astonishing that the Sherburne was able to escape its fate and reclaim its position as the prettiest house on the block.

Pure Research

I was driving through Aurora and saw this adorable Tudor-style service station. What was it originally and when was it built?

260 S. Lake St., Aurora. 

According to the city of Aurora's website,  the structure was originally a Pure Oil gas station. 

Pure Oil gas stations in this style were built across the country from 1927-1946, and there were many in the Chicago area besides this one in Aurora. And much like Sears homes, Pure Oil stations are still standing today, just waiting to be discovered!

This is a Pure Oil station in Charleston, WV soon after opening. This photo captures many of the original details, and gives you an idea what the stations looked like after construction. The rustic English style design was copyrighted by the company. The exterior walls were rubbled stone. The roof was blue clay tile, which was the same blue as the Pure Oil logo. Gutters were made of copper.

401 St. Charles Rd., Maywood. 

516 4th St., Wilmette.

 

950 River Dr., Glenview. This station appears to have the original blue tile roof, which made it easy for customers to identify it as a Pure Oil station. The flower box is rotting, but hanging on.

2786 IL-387, Zion. This station was built in 1937 and is a coffee shop today.

502 Lincoln Highway, Geneva. This station is a bank today, and the bays are now ATM lanes.

If you look closely, you can see the Pure sign inside, as well as two old gas pumps.

This was what the customer waiting rooms looked like. The photo is of a now-demolished Pure Oil station in downtown Evanston. Looks a lot nicer than my local Jiffy Lube!

The architect of the Pure Oil English cottages was Carl August Petersen. The Pure Oil executives believed that the stations' pleasing appearance would draw motorists, and, as an added benefit, the attractive cottages could blend into residential neighborhoods. 

"It was the finest station ever built, setting the style for those that followed," said Petersen in a 1979 article in the Orlando Sentinel. Petersen died in 1982.

Sears Houses in the Concrete Jungle

A Sears Roebuck kit house included blueprints and almost all the materials a customer needed to construct the house. The biggest part of the order (and the largest expense) was the lumber because the houses were almost always of frame construction.

However, in the early years of the Sears Modern Homes department, the company decided to give customers a lower-cost option. Concrete block house kits.

Sears Modern Home No. 143 which was sold from 1909 to 1915.

At the turn of the century, the hollow concrete building block was a new technology. The first machine for making concrete blocks was patented in 1900 and the idea took off. 

Concrete structures were billed as fireproof, waterproof, and vermin-proof. Concrete was a replacement for natural stone because it was much cheaper, and the blocks could be molded to look like rusticated stone, cobblestone, or other styles.

Sears sold different concrete block machines and even had a separate catalog devoted to these machines, various attachments, molds, and concrete mixers.

The Sears Roebuck Concrete Machinery catalog.

One of the concrete block machines Sears sold was the Triumph.

Sears extolled the virtues of concrete block homes in its Modern Homes catalog. 

So it made sense for Sears to offer concrete block house kits. The company would not sell as much lumber as it did with frame houses. But for a concrete house Sears was selling the concrete block machines and other hardware, in addition to millwork, finishing lumber, roofing, pipes, gutters, windows, doors, paint, and lath, among other items.

Sears sold several concrete block homes, and I believe all of which were plans by architect Jens C. Petersen. 

The tiny No. 59, in the 1908 Modern Homes catalog. The house was only sold in 1908 and 1909, and no one has ever found one.

The same house shown in Concrete magazine (January 1908), with the name of Jens C. Petersen on the illustration. Sears licensed the plans for its early concrete homes from Petersen.

No. 64, sold from 1908 to 1913.

No. 70, sold from 1908 to 1913.

No. 52, sold from 1908 to 1914.

No. 152, sold from 1909 to 1918. There is a testimonial for one in Aurora but no one has located it.

A No. 152 IRL at 80 S 4th Ave., Beech Grove, IN. Photo from Redfin, and discovered by Matthew Hendrickson.

Photo from Redfin.