Last week, my friend Cynthia (a fellow old-house lover!) drove me around Hampton, Virginia searching for kit homes from the early 20th Century. We had a wonderful morning and a lot of fun, but after 3-1/2 hours, I was worn out!
We visited several early 1900s neighborhoods, but found nothing remarkable, and then we went to the Buckroe area. (Having been raised in Hampton Roads, I remember a little ditty from a radio advertisement: “Let’s go to Buckroe!” Advertising must be a powerful medium because I haven’t heard that jingle in 40 years, but still remember it clearly. And yet I couldn’t find it on youtube or google. Strange.)
I’d been through the Buckroe section before, but apparently, I’d missed the sweet spots. With Cynthia’s help, I found a surfeit of Sears Homes I’d never seen before.
Check out the photos below for a real treat, and if you know anyone who loves old Hampton, please send them a link to this blog! 🙂
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In the early 1900s and into the 1960s, Buckroe Beach was a happening place. I'm not sure what happened to Buckroe, but the area by the beach is now open field. I'm told that Buckroe Amusement Park was closed in 1985 and torn down in 1991. What a pity. This photo is from www.gardenrant.com, and is copyright Susan Miller.
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To see more vintage pictures of Buckroe, visit Susan’s website here. Lots of wonderful pictures.
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While driving down Seaboard Avenue, I spotted this darling little cottage and asked Cynthia to back up so I could get another look. Note the three windows down the side? That caught my eye, as did the cut-out shuters.
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Oh my stars, it's a Sears Claremont! (1928)
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Such a pretty little thing. And other than the door, it's perfect!
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I thought about asking Cynthia if we could come back after dark and steal the shutters. It was tempting. And yes, they're original too! As are the Cypress shakes on the exterior.
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Cute, isn't it? And such a nice match.
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Less than a block away on Seaboard, this Lewiston was just waiting to be discovered. That's the car window in the upper right of the frame. Oopsie.
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The Lewiston, as seen in the 1930 Sears Modern Homes catalog.
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Also found this pretty thing in the 900-block of North Mallory.
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It's a Sears Somerset, looking much like the day it was built.
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Aladdin was a company which, like Sears, sold entire kit homes through mail-order.
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Just around the corner on Atlantic Avenue, I found this Aladdin Madison with an altered front gable. Due to the trees, you can't see the side, but that little bumpout is present on the far right of the home (just as it should be).
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Here's a close-up of the Aladdin Madison from the 1931 catalog.
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Here's a photo from the Hampton Assessor's website. In this photo, you can see that bump-out on the side, and also see how that front gable started life as an arched entry.
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Last but not least is the Fullerton. I'd found this house in the Buckroe area several months earlier, but this time, there was no big red truck parked in the front yard, making it far easier to get a good shot of the house. This is in the 200-block of East Taylor.
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What a nice match, right down to the flared columns!
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To see an earlier blog I did on the kit homes of Hampton, click here.
To see more vintage pictures of Buckroe, click here.
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OT, but how is Teddy doing? Did you get his food and skin problem solved?
What a good looking dog. If they remake Lassie, Teddy should try out for the part. He’s a shoe-in.
Hi Laura,
She’s doing much, much better. The dermatitis is gone and her ears have stopped itching (which was the #1 problem).
BTW, “Teddy” is short for “Theodora Duncan Doughnuts Ringer”! That’s her full and proper name. 🙂
My apology for the gender mix-up. “Theodora” is a great dog lady name. So happy she is recovered.
I thought I was “off” naming my new Volvo “Vinny”, and the former one “Vixen” (had her 20 years).
I was going to name my new Volvo “Vincent Price” and my hubby put his foot down.
Vincent Price was a Yale grad, an art collector, a writer, actor, and a really neato human being.
“Vinny” will do. Btw, I am still fighting “dog flippers” (aka dog rescues) just trying to adopt a pound dog.
My car is also named – “Cammie” (it is a Camry), and even my laptops are named (although not too creatively). Currently, I’m using Lappy V. I burn through laptops at the rate of about one every two years, although Lappy IV lasted almost four years before falling over dead.
My daughter named her Camry “Moonpie” which is one of the great car names of all time. She named her father’s crappy mini-van “The Pooter Scooter” because when he’d accelerate hard, it made a staccato noise that was reminiscent of well, let’s just say it was aptly named. 🙂
Rose,
Another aspect of you I enjoy. Your sense of humor, and your daughter’s is delicious.
While doing car research I notice “Cammie”‘s lifespan is projected to be 200,000 miles.
A car is a depreciating consumable. The BMW and MBZ are either filthy rich, or idiots wrapped in a moron. 🙂
And think of all the heart-pounding hurricanes these houses have successfully endured over the decades!
Buckroe being where Buckroe is, it has had more than plenty of its share of flooding and hundreds of miles an hour winds to shake, rattle and roll that place. And still it manages to continue on. Amazing place it is.
I remember the hurricanes, and the fabulous summer fun times we had in Buckroe Beach when I was a kid.
We didn’t always get to go to the amusement park (which irritated me no end) but we went to the beach, and frequently fishing off the original Buckroe Pier. I saw some eye-popping catches come in out of that water, and had a few respectable ones myself.
After Don and I married in ’76, we had some friends who were young married couples with the husbands in the Air Force, like ourselves, and they rented small apartments in some of the cottages that had been divided up, or cottages themselves, and we spent time there visiting them.
We didn’t live there ourselves though. Being a native, I was well aware of the danger and potential damage that could come out of our hurricanes, including the frequent loss of many of the older cottages, so we lived a good bit further away from the beach area, in some very well constructed Spanish architecture apartments, with nice little courtyards with fountains and flowers, that were not facing the beach, waves and the surf in the front yard!
(Turns out, after comparing notes, we didn’t pay any more for our place considering our rent paid all the utilities except the phone, than they did for theirs, and in a couple of cases, we paid less.)
None of the friends we had who lived at the Beach were from anywhere nearby, and apparently hadn’t given the possibility of hurricanes much thought!
Fortunately, nobody had to put up with anything significant weatherwise while we were all still there. But, since leaving and coming back many years later, I was sad to find so much of what used to be public walkways to the beach area is now all closed up and marked private property where people have bought it all up and built great big beach houses, right square in the path of everything that might come up the coast. Sad.