A Split‑Level Before Split‑Level Was Cool: Meet the Sears Normandy

1100 N. 13th Ave., Melrose Park.

Sears Normandy. The French Normandy housing style rose to popularity in the 1920s. These houses feature a small round tower topped by a conical roof. The tower usually contains the front door and serves as the vestibule. 

Undated photo of the Normandy in Melrose Park. It once had diamond muntin windows.
The Normandy differs from the catalog illustration: the dining room has a bay window, the weather vane is missing, the decorative half-timbering is absent, and there is a dormer in a front bedroom.  There is also a fireplace in the living room, and every Normandy I have ever seen has that option. Photo courtesy of  the book Melrose Park by F. Marbella.

 

The majority of the houses in Melrose Park were constructed in the 1950s, but the village does have its share of kit houses.

I believe this Sears Normandy was built around 1934 by Angelo and Frances Pinnella. 

The Sears Normandy is an uncommon model. To date we have found six in the Chicago suburbs. The house was only offered from 1933-1935, and Sears sold few houses during the Great Depression.

Sears gave homeowners the option to build out a third bedroom above the living room (see illustration below). I don't know whether the Pinnellas added the bedroom with the dormer when the house was first built or sometime afterwards.

The Normandy in Melrose Park is reversed from this cutaway (the living room is on the left rather than the right). The Sears Normandy is a very early example of a split-level house. In a split-level home, the floor levels are staggered, so that the "main" level of the house (that is, the level that contains the front entry), is positioned between the upper and lower floors. In the catalog, Sears referred to the Normandy as having a "stepped-up floor plan", since the term "split level" had not yet been coined in 1933. Scan from Old Houses for Sale.

In the Normandy, the main level contains the living room, kitchen and dining room. There are two short sets of stairs, one running upward to a bedroom level, and one going downward toward the recreation room and laundry/utility area.  

The Normandy was a deceptively spacious house. The architect of the Normandy was Alexander Bacci.

The house was owned by the Pinnella family until 2007. The current homeowners are only the second owners since the house was built.