There are scores of Sears kit homes that I have never laid eyes on, and Sears Modern Home #303 is one of them.
This particular model is of special interest because it is so grand and ostentatious. It has many unique features, so it’s easy to differentiate #303 from your garden variety Queen Anne manse.
And this was offered by Sears Roebuck as a “Kit Home.”
What a kit!
I don’t know that any of these were ever built. The sale of Sears Homes didn’t really take off until after The Great War ended (1919), and this house was only offered in one year (1910). It does not appear in “Houses by Mail.”
My dear friend and co-author Dale Wolicki posits that it was just a carryover from a pattern book house that Sears added to their catalog in 1910. That’s a pretty sound theory, and very likely.
Modern Home #303 was offered only in the very rare 1910 Sears Modern Homes catalog. It was the most expensive house offered in the catalog, and was intended to be built with solid brick walls. Sears estimated that the finished cost would be about $6,700.
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Would you pay $6,700 for this house?
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One of the towers is a polygon (not circular).
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And the other is round.
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And there's a toilet on the first floor! No sink, just a toilet!
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Close-up of all that busyness on the back of the house.
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Check out this floorplan! Notice the trunk room over the kitchen area? Back in the day, it wasn't fittin' to put a bedroom over the kitchen. Too much heat and too many odors.
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And it's even better than a Barbie Dream Mansion!
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To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.
To read about Wardway Houses, click here.
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OMG I swear I have seen this house along the Hudson River here in Yonkers, NY. The area of mansions started to be built here in the very late 1880s until 1930s before the middle class started to build homes in that area.
Now I will have to go back to my old stomping grounds, camera at hand, and see if I can spot it.
And I think I said it was a “really ugly house” too.
@Dale Wolicki
LOL. Yes, I’d forgotten that part but you’re right, you did say that.
There are many of these homes in Buffalo, NY.
They’re all still in great shape, assuming the owners painted them several times since their construction.
Not the exact same model, but: http://imgur.com/a/Fxo0M#0
Mobile, Alabama has a Sears House at Government Street and Ann Street. This one’s a beauty and has been in same family for 5 generations.
This is the original design of the Barnes-Stevenson House in Idabel, Ok which was built in 1910.