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.