The Cost of Building a House in Arlington Heights--in 1904

The Daily Herald today featured an article by columnist Margery Frisbie. She wrote about Henry Leark, who, in 1904, built his family's house in Arlington Heights near Walnut and Hawthorne streets. Leark paid for a house plan and then went to the local lumberyard to get the supplies for the three-room house. Frisbie wrote: "Leark built three rooms, which cost between $2,000 and $3,000 for lumber, roofing, sand, gravel and sewer tiles."

Let's contrast Leark's cost for his conventionally built cottage with the cost to build a much nicer Sears catalog house in 1909.

Modern Home No. 167 (later called the Maytown) was a popular model for Sears. "This is a well-proportioned house which affords a great deal of room at a low cost."

Modern Home No. 167 from the 1909 Modern Homes catalog.

In comparison to Leark's modest home, Modern Home No. 167 was an eight-room house with high ceilings. It featured an octagon tower, crystal leaded windows in the front parlor, and colored leaded art glass sash for the hall. The floors and trim were clear yellow pine, the siding was cypress, and the roof was cedar shingles.

With most of the building materials supplied by Sears, Modern Home No. 167 could be built for about $1573 (including labor, cement, brick and plaster).

This example clearly demonstrates the significant cost savings that homeowners could realize by buying a house from a catalog. Sears used economies of scale to provide top-quality lumber and materials for less. According to the Sears sales literature: "we buy raw lumber direct from the best timber tracts in America". Lumber was pre-cut to length and labeled for easy assembly. In the days before power tools, pre-cut homes represented an enormous savings in labor--no measuring or cutting--and no waste of lumber.

Sears and the other kit home manufacturers made it affordable for young, working-class families to have well-built, modern homes in neighborhoods like Arlington Heights.

Were Most Sears Homes Built by the Owners?

In the era of the internet and Wikipedia, “facts” are often restated on multiple sites without anyone checking the source information. Oft-cited information may be inaccurate and unreliable. In today’s post and some upcoming posts, I would like to re-examine some of the common “facts” about Sears homes that are frequently mentioned, but are likely incorrect.

Were most Sears homes built by the owners?
“Roughly half of the buyers assembled the homes themselves.” 
“About half of the people who ordered Sears homes put them together themselves.”
“About half of the kit homes were built by professional homebuilders.”

How many homeowners actually constructed the Sears homes themselves? Although Sears, Roebuck destroyed all their records about the Modern Home department, let’s look at the only numbers we do have--from Sears advertising.

• A display ad from May 1926 said that as of that date, 34,000 “Honor Bilt” homes were built, and of these, 23,800 were constructed by the owners. That is 70%.

• A display ad from October 1926 said that as of that date, 37,000 “Honor Bilt” homes were built, and of these, 24,500 were constructed by the owners. That is 66%.

• A display ad from June 1927 said that as of that date, 37,500 “Honor Bilt” homes were built, and of these, 24,500 were constructed by the owners. That is 65%.

• A display ad from April 1928 said that as of that date, 41,200 “Honor Bilt” homes were built, and of these, 29,300 were constructed by the owners. That is 71%.
  
• A display ad from the Spring 1929 Sears, Roebuck catalog said that as of that time, 44,200 "Honor Bilt" homes were built, and of these, 33,500 were constructed by the owners. That is 76%.

Ad from the Chicago Tribune, Oct 31, 1926.

Would Sears have a reason to inflate the number of homeowner-built homes in the advertising copy? Not really. When these ads were run (1926-1929), Sears clearly presented homeowners with a choice to build the homes themselves or to request a local contractor to assist or supervise construction of the house. Sears got the sale either way and would gladly refer customers to a contractor. In its catalogs, Sears also encouraged contractors to build their homes on a speculative basis, with articles like ”What contractors think of our Honor Bilt Ready Cut System”.

Based on these numbers provided by Sears, we can estimate that the majority (roughly 70%) of Sears houses were constructed by the homeowners themselves. The remainder were constructed by contractors hired by homeowners or speculative builders.

An Authenticated Sears Mitchell

It's not often I can authenticate a house as being from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Usually the best I can offer is an educated guess.

I identified a house in Mount Prospect as a Sears Mitchell.

3 S. Maple, Mount Prospect

Sure looks like a Mitchell (with a reversed floor plan)

Comparison of door at 3 S. Maple to door in Sears catalog

I learned that the house was built sometime before 1933, based on the telephone directories. Frederick G. Wille and his new bride Emilie were the first residents. Fred served as the Mount Prospect village treasurer for ten years, ending his tenure in 1946. His wife owned a beauty shop.

The Willes moved out around 1950 and the Linton family moved in. When Gertrude Linton died in 1999 the house changed hands again.

I then checked with the Mount Prospect Historical Society to see if they had a file on the house. To my surprise, they did and it had valuable information inside. Emilie Wille said that the house was actually built in 1930 (the year she was married) and it was a Sears Mitchell. Ms. Wille also mentioned that Fred Wille and his brother Elmer built the house at 3 S. Maple as well as Elmer's house next door at 1 S. Maple.

Emilie a few years before she married Fred. Photo courtesy of the Mount Prospect Historical Society.

Ms. Wille donated some archival material about the house to the historical society.

Sketch of the Sears Mitchell that Sears sent to the Willes. Photo courtesy of the Mount Prospect Historical Society.

The plan for the house at 3 S. Mitchell. Photo courtesy of the Mount Prospect Historical Society.

The architect of the Sears Mitchell was David S. Betcone.

Good Houses Never Grow Old

As much as we hear about Sears kit homes, Sears was not the first to enter the pre-cut house business. The Aladdin Company, based in Bay City, Michigan, started selling houses in 1906, two years before Sears. (Your new house would go up instantaneously, the same way Aladdin's genie built a castle overnight!)

Aladdin stayed in business until 1983 and sold more houses than Sears (about 140,000, according to their promotional literature). 

I was browsing through Aladdin's 1954 catalog and saw this:

 

This ad puts into perspective how old the catalog homes featured in this blog are. Back in 1954, Aladdin was showing "then and now" photos to demonstrate the durability of their houses and how they "survive the ravages of time". 

The house at the bottom left of the ad still exists today in Bay City and it is 112 years old!

 

2157 5th St., Bay City, MI. Photo from Realtor site.