When I visited Hopewell in 2003 (to give a talk), I was shown a well-publicized brochure touting 44 Sears Homes in Crescent Hills.
As mentioned in several other blogs (here, here and here), I feel strongly that they’re wrong about 36 of those houses.
In my personal (and professional) opinion The Crescent Hills neighborhood in Hopewell has eight Sears Homes.
One of the houses on that “list of 44” was this house (shown below).
The brochure claimed this was a Sears House: The Newbury. Uh, no, it's not.
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According to the brochure, the house shown above was The Newbury (from Sears) with some "differences. Take a look at the list of differences. Those are a LOT of differences!!
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Here's a picture of the Sears Newbury from the 1936 catalog.
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And here's a picture of a real Newbury (Elmhurst, IL) shown next to the catalog image. You'll notice that the house in Elmhurst actually looks like the catalog picture!
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And here's a picture of the catalog page compared to the house in Hopewell. You may notice that the house in Hopewell looks nothing like the catalog picture.
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Ah, but thanks to Rachel Shoemaker, we now know where this house in Hopewell came from! It's from "Standard Homes Plans" (1923, 1928 and 1929). You may notice that THIS looks a lot like the house in Hopewell!
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Close up of the house. Beautiful house!
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And, it looks a lot like the catalog picture!
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So that’s one more house properly identified in Hopewell’s Crescent Hills neighborhood, thanks to Rachel Shoemaker.
I wonder if the homeowners of this house know that their house came from a Plan Book?
To learn more about plan book houses, click here.
To read more about Hopewell’s houses, click here.
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Did you notice that even the trellises are still there??? QUITE the match!!
I saw that, Donna! It’s a beautiful match, isn’t it? 🙂
Maybe the “architectural historian” in Hopewell, Va needs a copy of the Dover reprint of the Standard Homes of the 1920s.
I don’t know what other houses are in that book but I do know that this house, the Monticello, is on the FRONT cover.
People who ID catalog homes need to remember that houses should be a spot on match or have stamped lumber or be ID’ed with the mortgage or deed.
You can’t have a house that looks sorta like a Sears – its like saying a hamster looks sorta like a gerbil.
This is all very interesting. I can understand why some people could make mistakes identifying the homes. I see the real Newbury in Elmhurst has a porch, but with the two photos side by side, it does make it easy to identify the house properly.
Maybe that brochure could be re-published someday?
It isn’t a Newbury, but it might be from Standard Homes.
The thing to do would be get into the house with the owner’s permission if possible and look for the clues which would tell you if it even was a kit home.I have an old original Standard Homes plan book,and can look to see if it’s in there.
I think http://www.antiquehomestyle.com has a couple of Lewis Homes books on line, you might look there too.
The problem is that sometimes companies borrowed from each other in regards to designs.
Sears had the Hudson, and Aladdin had their version the St.Clair. There is a house in Seguin,Texas which is like one in the book Journal Bungalows, by Ladies Home Journal, but I have also seen it in another plan book online.
Also, The Chicago millwork company catalog at Internet Archive has a couple of houses that look like Sears Houses. One is the Sears House with the second floor corner tower.
Hi, is there an online resource for Sears construction plans? Perhaps the blueprints are valuable and not shared readily. I’ve only found low resolution photographs of one page, for instance. Simple floor plans are everywhere, but I’d like to see complete plans with elevations and section cuts… Thanks!