Stanhope is the name of a city in Iowa and New Jersey. And it’s also the name of a car that was sold from 1904-1906, by the Twyford Motor Car Company of Brookville, Pennsylvania.
But for this blog, we’re going to talk about the Stanhope that was sold by Aladdin of Bay City, Michigan.
The Stanhope was a fairly popular house. In 1920s America, it was an ideal home in both size and price. And unlike so many of these diminutive bungalows, it had three bedrooms (most had two).
Yes, they were only 10 x 10, but for the family with four girls and three boys, it was probably a whole lot better than fold-out cots in the living and dining rooms (another popular option at the time).
Aladdin, like Sears, offered kit homes through their mail-order catalog. Sears sold about 70,000 kit homes during their 32 years in the building business. Aladdin sold more than 75,000 homes. The Sears Modern Homes department was in business from 1908-1940. Aladdin started selling houses in 1906, and didn’t close until 1981, a full 75 years!
Here in Norfolk, Virginia (where I live), we have many more Aladdins than Sears. Aladdin had a large mill in Wilmington, NC which explains why there are so many Aladdin kit homes in the Southeast.
Thanks to Dale Wolicki for providing info on Aladdin!
To learn more about Aladdin, click here.
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Aladdin (based in Bay City, Michigan) sold kit homes through mail order. This is my favorite graphic from their catalog (1919).
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The Stanhope was one of Aladdin's most popular little houses.
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It had three bedrooms, but it was a very small house.
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The catalog page featuring the Stanhope, as it appeared in 1919.
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"Are you not pleased with the Stanhope?"
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Aladdin was famous for their "Dollar a Knot" guarantee.
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The Stanhope can be tough to identify because it looks like every little early 20th Century bungalow and is rather nondescript.
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And yet, they can be identified if they're in original condition. Here's a perfect Stanhope in Scotland Neck, NC (near Roanoke Rapids).
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Nice match, isn't it?
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And here's one in Norfolk, Virginia. This house is very close to ODU, and is on 51st Street. It's a perfect example of the Aladdin Stanhope and one of my favorite finds!
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To learn more about how to identify kit homes, click here.
Have you visited Roanoke Rapids? It’s a town FULL of Aladdin kit homes. Click here to learn more.
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YIKES! No closets. Not a single one. I guess I would NOT be pleased with The Stanhope.
It is very rare that they did not have closets like this. The plans that didn’t have closets are very small like this house.
Even the early Radford plans and such have closets. Maybe this was intended as a “first buyers home.’
Page 106 of the 1919 catalog, for example, offers the Aladdin Closette. Perhaps those were offered for these small kits that did not have a closet in the plan. People did not have huge wardrobes of clothes like we do today.
The lower income families, like those who probably lived in a house like the Stanhope, just didn’t have many clothes…..no need for all of that hanging space. They could put another bed in that room in place of that closet! They lived much simpler back then. We are very spoiled!