When a Three‑Room Cottage Cost More Than a Sears Eight‑Room Home

In 1904, a man in Arlington Heights paid around $3,000 to build a tiny three‑room cottage with kerosene lights and no running water. Five years later, Sears would sell you an eight‑room house with an octagon tower (and a bathroom!) for half that price.

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 on North Mitchell. 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 compare Leark's cost for his conventionally-built three-room cottage with the cost to build a much nicer Sears catalog house five years later.

Modern Home No. 167 (later called the Maytown) was one of Sears’ popular early models. The catalog described it as “a well‑proportioned house which affords a great deal of room at a low cost,” and it delivered on that promise.

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

Unlike Leark’s modest three-room cottage, Modern Home No. 167 was an eight-room house with high ceilings. It featured an octagon turret, 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.

And the price?

With most of the building materials supplied by Sears, Modern Home No. 167 could be built for about $1,690 (including labor, cement, plumbing, brick and plaster).

An actual Sears No. 167 in the suburbs (720 N. 12th Ave. in Melrose Park), built around the same time as Leark's house. (Google Streetview)

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 a world before power tools, that was a massive labor savings — and it reduced waste to almost zero.

Stories like Leark’s highlight just how revolutionary Sears kit homes were. Local retailers couldn’t compete with a huge mail‑order company’s supply chain. 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.

Did Most Sears Homeowners Build Their Own Houses?

In the age of the social media, “facts” often get repeated without anyone checking the original source.  Sears homes are no exception. Over the next few posts, I’m revisiting some of the most commonly repeated claims.

Did most Sears homeowners build their own houses?
Online, you'll often see statements like:

• “Roughly half of the buyers assembled the homes themselves.” 
• “About half of the people who ordered Sears homes put them together themselves.”

But what do the actual numbers say? Since Sears destroyed its Modern Homes records, the only hard data we have comes from Sears’ own advertising — and those ads tell a very different story. Sears regularly published totals of "Honor Bilt" homes and how many were owner‑built:

• 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.

Across these ads, the percentage of owner‑built homes consistently falls around 65–76%.

Would Sears have a reason to inflate the number of homeowner-built homes in the advertising copy? There’s no clear incentive. When these ads were run in the late 1920s, Sears openly encouraged both approaches: homeowners could build the house themselves, or Sears would refer them to a local contractor. Sears profited either way.  In its catalogs, Sears also encouraged contractors to build their homes on a speculative basis.

What's the takeaway?

Based on Sears’ own published figures, we can estimate that the majority (roughly 70%) of Sears houses were built 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.