Elgin has 208 Sears houses, making it the community with the highest number in Illinois. (Rockford is second, with 202.)
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| 332 River Bluff, Elgin. For many years this was the only Sears house that anyone knew about in Elgin. |
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| Sears Crescent. |
Why Elgin?
Why does Elgin have so many Sears houses?
Hunter believes that there are three reasons:
- Elgin was serviced by three major rail lines so the shipments from Sears were convenient for the homeowners to pick up.
- Elgin was located near the Sears company headquarters in Chicago.
- Neighbors in Elgin who built Sears houses recommended Sears to their friends, who in turn built more houses.
I don't agree that those reasons make Elgin unique. Wouldn't they also apply to almost every Chicago suburb? Most were geographically near one or more train lines and near Sears headquarters. And I am sure Sears customers in every town told their friends how much they loved their houses.
I think the reason Elgin currently has more Sears houses than anywhere else is a simple one: teardowns.
In the Chicago area, the teardown phenomenon started in earnest in the 1990s. Western suburbs like Glen Ellyn and Hinsdale lost hundreds upon hundreds of older homes. To date, Hinsdale has replaced almost 20 percent of its housing stock, and the teardowns continue. Glen Ellyn and Hinsdale have high median incomes, easy commuter access to Chicago, little vacant land on which to build, and terrific schools.
I think the reason Elgin currently has more Sears houses than anywhere else is a simple one: teardowns.
In the Chicago area, the teardown phenomenon started in earnest in the 1990s. Western suburbs like Glen Ellyn and Hinsdale lost hundreds upon hundreds of older homes. To date, Hinsdale has replaced almost 20 percent of its housing stock, and the teardowns continue. Glen Ellyn and Hinsdale have high median incomes, easy commuter access to Chicago, little vacant land on which to build, and terrific schools.
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| A typical street in Hinsdale. Photo from Chicago Magazine. |
In contrast, Elgin is a less affluent community and did not experience the teardown phenomenon. I recently drove around Elgin for about an hour and saw one teardown. If you drive one block in Hinsdale or Glen Ellyn you might see 10. In Elgin, property values are not high enough for the value of the land to exceed the value of the structures on it.
Glen Ellyn or Hinsdale (or Elmhurst or Park Ridge or Downers Grove or any of a dozen other suburbs) could have easily had 200 Sears homes at one time, like Elgin. We'll never know, since many of their older houses were gone before researchers even began looking for kit houses.
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| 664 Oak, Elgin. If this Sears house were in Hinsdale, it would be gone. |
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| Sears Elsmore. |
Copyright Disclaimer: Photographs in this post (unless otherwise noted) are from real estate aggregate Redfin.com and are used in this post for the purposes of education, consistent with 17 USC §107.
5 comments:
I agree. The communities with the best collection of kit homes almost always fall in the sweet spot where land values aren't so high that they suffer teardowns but not so low that homes fall into disrepair.
Interesting. I guess there is no stopping that in some areas. I know of one area in Cincinnati where that is happening right now, but it is less common here in Ohio, where we have plenty of land for building outside the city centers. I asked Rebecca when I went to Elgin several years ago how all those Sears Houses got there, and she just smiled and said "on the train". :)
That really makes sense. In the area where I live, 4 communities bordering each other, that still have nice homes from the teens, twenties, and thirties, are now especially suffering from teardown fever. I shudder every time I walk by a bungalow or English cottage style house that is for sale, because I've seen all too often that they are bought, torn down, and replaced with McMansions. Great school districts and high land value apply to these towns, too. Yet, the majority of Sears mortgages that I have found, are for houses that are (or were) in these towns.
Judith
Sears-House-Seeker.blogspot.com
Elgin watch employees were also buyers .They were the middle class who could afford to have reasonably priced well built homes.
Dee, absolutely! We also see many Sears houses in communities like Aurora, Rockford, Joliet... all towns with well-paid workers in manufacturing.
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