These last few days, I’ve been putting up a new bookcase and organizing and re-organizing a whole lot of stuff. Amongst the hidden treasures I found was this 1926 Sears and Roebuck specialty catalog – for schoolhouses! I’d purchased it several years ago from eBay and then forgot about it.
My 57-year-old husband browsed through the yellowed pages and said, “I remember those desks.” I knew he was older than me, but I didn’t realize he was that much older! However he went to school in a small town in West Virginia. Apparently, they didn’t replaces functional items like schoolhouses and schoolhouse equipment as fast as we did here in Hampton Roads.
Enjoy the photos. And if you’re here to learn more about Sears Homes, click here.
Sears Schoolhouse specialty catalog from 1926.
Sears desks
Sears Recitation Desks. Somehow, just hearing the word "recitation" brings back the "wearing nothing but undies to school and being asked to take a pop quiz" nightmare.
Nice oak chairs for the teachers.
And nice water coolers, too.
And nice maps of our 48 states.
And of course, a school bell.
To read another fascinating article, click here.
To contact Rose, write thorntonrose@hotmail.com.
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Fascinating! I’ve learned so much since visiting the “searshomes.org” website. Worth bookmarking and visiting again and again and again. Thanks so much for your “enlightening” effort to make all this available to the rest of us. — David Renfro
Wonderful. I have had a pair of the desks shown on page five since the late 1980s. Any chance to scan page 4 since it seems to be a two-page spread.