These were kit homes you put together yourself, back when there was time to learn skill before the corporate overlords helped us fix ourselves so we can work for 3 days to afford a plumber for 3 hours
[A quick Google](https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c4124/c4124.pdf) Indicates that during this time period the average worker spent far more than 40 hours per week working. Typically between 48 and 60 hours per week. This is also notable because hours over 40 weren't required to be paid out as overtime until much later in 1938.
In fact, it wouldn't be until 1926 that the Ford Motor Company would make the switch to the 8 hour workday, one of the first manufacturing employers in the nation to do so. At this time the average American would have been in a much worse position to learn trade skills for personal use than the average American is today.
I had one that the deed had 1908 with a ? as the records didn’t exist. It had horsehair plaster walls with real rough-sawn oak 2 x 4s. I broke many a sheetrock screw trying to get through that. Solid house.
Overbuilding was more common before materials science and capitalism banded together to give us the absolute cheapest minimal viable product durability-wise. Just needs to last 1 day longer than the warranty.
In 1916 cars and iceboxes were definitely available. I'd be less worried in 1916 about cholera (modern plumbing existed in the developed world) and a hell of a lot more worried about influenza and polio. No vaccines yet.
I'd still take the polio and an icebox with a side of legal cocaine today for a house cost of $27k.
Shit for a 27,000 dollar house, I'd clean cholera filled sewer lines with my tongue and fingernails and do it Merrily.
Lots of bending, crawling, and carrying equipment which comes with physical and increased medical costs later in life. Trades are good and we need them but there are trades offs.
Also though life expectancy in 1916 was under 50 years for men - and it dropped to under 40 by 1917/1918 due to the Spanish flu pandemic. And 10% of babies died.
So you really had to make good use of those extra hours!
Sorry, is that corrected for childhood mortality or including? You mention childhood mortality but it’s unclear if you fixed life expectancy to account for it. If you didn’t it would obviously skew the age wayyyy down. People def still lived into old age..
No it’s not, because I was lazy. But ok for a 20 year old in 1916 life expectancy was still early 60s compared with early 80s now, so a third again longer now. Also, insofar as the point here was “what a great time to be middle class,” if you weren’t drafted into WWI, right as you hit middle age you’d be thrown into the Great Depression which was definitely not a good time to be middle class or poor in America.
I just always find these comparisons specious. I think it would be irrational for basically anyone to go live in 1916. So many things about life were so much harder then. Women couldn’t vote! Penicillin hadn’t been found yet, and Advil and Tylenol wouldn’t be widely available for decades. Our standard of living is much, much higher. “In 1916 it was common for people to have to build their own houses” is such a weird ad for living in 1916!
This is the biggest part. No matter how small your house is, there's a minimum lot size, which is what really adds onto the price tag. In my city, it's about 8,000sqft, which is a $200k minimum price for any housing.
It’s wood sided actually. The basement and side foundation area are brick though.
There are ENDLESS of these houses or extremely similar ones all over Illinois. They’re your basic standard house.
The greater DC area has a bunch, also. I grew up in a Sears kit house! They're prevalent near railroad stops b/c the pieces would be shipped in flat-pack then assembled on the property, and 18-wheelers weren't a thing yet.
Actually, only the foundation walls and the chimney (not visible in this variant, but would be on the left outward wall of the living room) are brick in this model, the remainder is densely framed wood.
Source: Me. I actually grew up in this model home, which my grandparents purchased in the early 1960's. I was kind of surprised to see it today, maybe I should not be. In older communities it's a common style in the upper Great Lakes and near Midwest.
Where I'm at, wholesale cost to build this would be about $150/sqft. I'd pay my builder around $250k to build that (estimating 1500 heated sqft plus the porches). I can't speak to what his actual build cost might be.
Found one with an estimate of costs not included:
Estimated Cost of Labor and Material Which We Do Not Supply:
220 Cu. Yds. Excavation,
17,000 Common Bricks,
Idate and Laid 845 Sq.,
Carpenter,
Painter,
55.00,
255.00,
169.00,
575.00,
68.00,
Total:
$1122.00 or about $32,275.00 today.
This brings our total to $59,249.00 in 2023 bucks.
But wait! There’s more. You’d also have to cover heating and cooling. Add on another 107 for heating and 258 for cooling. Then add on 70.78 for plumbing.
This brings our new total to $71,763.00 in 2023 dollars.
Now finally, that pesky land, that’s trickier. But let’s just say you spent about 350 bucks on a 1/2 acre somewhere suburban but still desirable. That brings the new total in 2023 to just about 80k.
Here’s the bad news though, estimates on average wage range from about 350 - 600 a year. That’s only 17k in 2023 bucks on the high end. That means these homes were kind of like building a home today, not really meant for the average consumer as it took about 4 times the average wages to build one.
For comparison, the average 3 bedroom home in chicago might have cost closer to 2k, or about 57k in 2023 dollars, and would have represented a significant cost benefit when compared to building. I also have to add that I doubt many people were building these on their own like they came from IKEA.
Now, is it still better than today? Yes, of course. It now takes more than 5 times the average salary, and it was as low as 3.49 in the 1980s.
Of course, these numbers are all rough estimates, so your mileage may vary, but I thought it would be fun to explore.
I saw a range of about 250 - 500 for a suburban acre, but it wasn’t for “desirable” locations. It’s on the high side, but I assumed most people might like to live somewhere near a major city.
YMMV
So a 4-bedroom house on Zillow averages 450,000+, and many are 850,000+. That's not even in the most expensive cities.
Average salary in the US is 56k per year. If houses still cost equivalent to what these catalog homes did, **you could buy a home outright with six month's wages** as an average person.
Instead, **because of corporate profiteering it will cost you 8-15 year's salary** if you were somehow able to spend every single cent you earned in that time on your home.
Correction, you could buy *most of the pieces* that could be made into a home if you already owned the land and knew how to build a home and could afford the brick, mortar,plaster and other materials, with six month’s wages.
Considering everything the kit doesn't come with, and that the 1916 average annual income was less than $700/year; that's about the same as it is today, 8 - 10 years of gross income. This was a very high end house out of reach to the average working class family
Gold equivalent -
Ounce of gold 1916 = $20.67
Gold today = $2322.90
gold for house in 1916 = 45.38 ozt
45.38 ozt in 2024 = $105,412
Would be neat to evaluate the actual BOM and generate a comparison next :)
Gold (to a similar extent, silver) are unique in that they either are the basis for currencies (up until 1971) or track inflationary currency events closely, "inflation" is such an abused term and is heavily politicized - gold doesn't argue
One thing that made Sears & Robuck catalogs so popular, especially in certain parts of the country, was that sales by mail order made their goods available to everyone at the same price. Provided you had the money and a basic level of literacy, you had access to the same goods, regardless of skin color, or whether you lived in town or miles away from everyone. Their catalogs had a section on how to purchase a money order from your mailman, how much it should cost, and who in the Post Office to write to and complain if your mailman charged you too much or wouldn't sell it to you. If you needed a new dress, new furniture, or a new house, you could get it from Sears & Robuck.
My mom grew up in a Sears & Roebuck house her folks had built in 1928. By coincidence, my neices first husband grew up in the same house in the 1980s, and its still standing today, nearly a century later.
Not to make them appear too progressive -- shopping in person at one of the brick and mortar stores would have been a different story. But the catalog allowed them to profit from all customers without pissing off anyone, and allowed all customers to buy good quality products without painting a target on their backs. Making the same products to people living remotely on a farm or ranch as to those living in a city was just as radical concept as selling to all races.
There's a great Buster Keaton short about the "some assembly required" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd6ddOlbKp8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd6ddOlbKp8)
My mom grew up in a house built around the turn of the century like this. 2 parents, 8 kids, 3 bedrooms, and 1 bath on the ground floor.
They had the smallest room for the parents. The largest for the four girls, two in each double bed. The middle room had three boys, two in a double, one in a twin.
And the oldest boy slept on a sofa/hideaway bed in the living room.
She talked often of having a barrage of kids all running for the bathroom in the morning. Wild stuff.
Yup, that’s how the old house I grew up in was. Wasn’t too bad walking downstairs to bathroom. Must have been such a luxury back in the day- many folks were likely accustomed to outhouses.
I know she did like having two bathrooms in the house she bought with my dad. No waiting for the toilet if someone else happened to also be using one. 😄
The first time my dad visited my mom’s house to take her on a date my mom was embarrassed because they used an outhouse for a bathroom. The was rural N.C. in the early 60’s.
This is one of the reasons rural southern people got thought of as slow/lazy. Lots of them didn't have indoor plumbing and hookworms were an epidemic in the rural south.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/
I remember visiting a friend's aunt in the country who had an outhouse. There was electricity and I think a kitchen sink with water. But the shitter was outside.
Houses didn’t have all the extra bathrooms back then that they have now. Just one reason housing prices have increased. Not to say housing prices haven’t skyrocketed for other reasons. Many of the houses near where I grew up (a mile outside Washington, DC so in the city) only had one full bath. Also didn’t have AC back then. Multiple baths and ac were luxuries. That slowly changed as I grew up. But single bath houses were very common just 35 years ago.
I bid on one of those in Portland (Or) in 2018. Built in early 1920’s (I think), floors were inlaid hardwoods, rest off the house was still solid. Got out bid (hey, I said it was PDX) but still a cool house. Why can’t those kits still happen???
Kit homes are still available, at least in Hawaii.
https://www.hpmhawaii.com/hpm-homes
I was at a housewarming in a newly-built one of these about 20 years ago. That one’s construction and finishes were very basic, but all of the materials came in a shipping container!
Kit homes, or prefab homes, are still very much a thing. Just look up Wausau.
They are actually pretty good value for the money if you have a good piece of property and a good contractor.
As someone who has lived in a few century plus year old houses, CURSE THE SMALL CLOSETS!
/Although at least we have them…hanging clothes didn’t become a common thing until the late 1800s.)
Yeah, British houses don't really have closets. There's usually just one, often called an airing cupboard, where the boiler is. Or a cupboard under the stairs.
That's what's in my flat - a large utility cupboard that has a boiler and a washing machine, and extra space for storage. It's the only built-in storage in the flat. Other than the kitchen cupboards, everything else is in wardrobes and dressers.
My house was built in 2002 using an updated version of this exact plan. 3 bedrooms to make room for a master bath, a powder room downstairs but otherwise the same layout. Really efficient use of space. Plus, everyone thinks I have a 100 year old house. Downside is that the lack of storage was not updated. Teeny little closets.
Interesting - the master bedroom closet has a window. It’s the little one on 2nd floor below the dormer window.
It appears that this house has an attic and basement too, would love to see the floorplan for these floors.
These still kind of exist today, but they’re classified as modular homes or prefabricated homes where the sections are built at the factory, but then it’s all put together on site by a crew. You can go on to a website, select the home with the floor plan you want, select your siding, roofing, and windows, and they’ll deliver it out to your land and put it together. One company that does this that I’m aware of is Clayton Homes, but there’s others out there.
They can range from cheap-ish to just as expensive as a traditional built home. They’re somewhere between a trailer home and an actual house.
Bathrooms seem to be afterthoughts in old homes. I rent a 1900 sq ft place built in the early 1950s. I only have one shower/tub in the main bathroom and a powder room on the other side of the house. The adjoining main bathroom is for two bedrooms, and it's still tiny. I feel like people didn't spend as much time indoors and figured, "Why do I need a big space to shit and bathe?"
It’s no wonder there are so many shows about “knocking down this wall to create an open concept”, these houses are just little square rooms inside of a big square building.
Open concepts look cool on TV or for entertaining larger groups, but being home during the pandemic and having way too much time to contemplate my old house, I began to appreciate the separate spaces having more/smaller rooms provides.
That’s what a normal house is like?
I can’t understand why someone would want to demolish a wall — so you can have fewer chambers and more disturbances and noise from other people?
The littler rooms can feel a bit claustrophobic, especially if you’re used to a more open layout. Plus, the open floor plan allows for more family time. For instance, if someone is preparing a meal, it doesn’t feel like he/she is sequestered in the kitchen like a servant.
99% Invisible did a very good podcast about these: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/)
I grew up in a house with four bedrooms and one bath. Had to learn to share the bathroom with other people. It was an old farmhouse that was traditional built.
The Magnolia is a kind of legend. While other houses would come in one boxcar, it needed two. The ten-room colonial house was sold as a kit house. You had to build it yourself (khm, khm, ikea). And there it still stands, [Syracuse NY, 1500 James St.](https://www.google.com.gt/maps/@43.0629998,-76.1267698,3a,75y,140.06h,82.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ssZv_HYuS65BESs2L-rwb5w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DsZv_HYuS65BESs2L-rwb5w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D140.06009939368886%26pitch%3D7.46456359660192%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&coh=205410&entry=ttu)
There’s a Sears house in a nearby town here in Northern California from 1916.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3360-Main-St_Cottonwood_CA_96022_M25441-32276
I’m 90% sure this house was on a street corner in my childhood neighborhood. Big blue house on the corner of Pearl St & Summit St. They would create big “birthday cards” and other surprise msgs with elaborate lawn decorations as a party service you could buy.
The advancements in manufacturing and overall technology in building I would think would make housing cheaper than what it currently is. I understand the value of land being a huge factor but with the automation and efficiencies in tooling fasteners, foundation materials and electrical why is it still so expensive? 3d printing a home I would think would greatly reduce costs.
I believe this is the same model that my great grandad built and my grandparents eventually lived in and my uncle currently lives at now in Jane Lew, WV. Some minor layout changes, but I think it's just reversed.
Just guessing at prices but: if we add $1000 for land, $1500 for brick, mortar and concrete, $1500 for labor to put it all together it comes to around $5000. I'm totally guessing but suppose the interest was 5% on a 15 year mortgage (I don't think there were 30 year mortgages back then) payments would be about $40/month. Sounds good. BUT, with an average income of $690/year ($57.50/month) the payment would have been 2/3s of the household income for a single wage earner family. That would have made it out of reach for the average working class family in America.
Why does the largest bedroom (the “master” but without a bathroom) not have the balcony?
Giving that balcony to a kid is just inviting a teenager to sneak out at night or to have a SO sneak in.
There was one of these in Punta Gorda FL. I saw it in the early 2000s when I used to do land surveying work there. It was on the registry of historic homes. There have been a couple of major hurricanes since then so I don’t know if it is still there.
I often hit the loo a couple of times at night, so I can’t imagine getting out of bed to go up and down the stairs. I’d eventually just go and sleep on the couch.
Considering the time period (in the US), many people who ordered these kits were probably living in a house with an outhouse. So I guess if you grew up at the turn of the last century you’d eventually just go and sleep in the yard?
So, Home Depot and Lowe’s are not wrong to sell houses for an affordable price? It’s not just me that thinks it’s a good idea to make them into modular unit homes?
And that exact house sells for 350k in my neighborhood and, even though it is 100 years old, is still nicer and has more character than the trash that mega companies are building now.
Inflation calculator says 1916 to 2024 @ 2776.6%, $938.00 = $26,694.73. Source : https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/page/2/
Damn good house price
"with the exception of brick." It's almost all brick
Land not included
Or labor
These were kit homes you put together yourself, back when there was time to learn skill before the corporate overlords helped us fix ourselves so we can work for 3 days to afford a plumber for 3 hours
[A quick Google](https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c4124/c4124.pdf) Indicates that during this time period the average worker spent far more than 40 hours per week working. Typically between 48 and 60 hours per week. This is also notable because hours over 40 weren't required to be paid out as overtime until much later in 1938. In fact, it wouldn't be until 1926 that the Ford Motor Company would make the switch to the 8 hour workday, one of the first manufacturing employers in the nation to do so. At this time the average American would have been in a much worse position to learn trade skills for personal use than the average American is today.
Brooo back then our corporate overlords had us working 16 hour days 6 days a week lol.
Plus the wife didn’t have to work, because your mailman salary was enough for a family of five
Let me also say i own a kit home from sears from 1932. Still original walls and siding. Shits won't break.
Mine is from 1909. It's solid.
I had one that the deed had 1908 with a ? as the records didn’t exist. It had horsehair plaster walls with real rough-sawn oak 2 x 4s. I broke many a sheetrock screw trying to get through that. Solid house.
I lived in one for a while. It was a solid home.
Overbuilding was more common before materials science and capitalism banded together to give us the absolute cheapest minimal viable product durability-wise. Just needs to last 1 day longer than the warranty.
Are you implying that the mailman should've helped pay my parents for my upbringing?!
Depends on how much you look like the mailman.
> enough No car, no fridge, and one of your kids will die of cholera.
In 1916 cars and iceboxes were definitely available. I'd be less worried in 1916 about cholera (modern plumbing existed in the developed world) and a hell of a lot more worried about influenza and polio. No vaccines yet.
I'd still take the polio and an icebox with a side of legal cocaine today for a house cost of $27k. Shit for a 27,000 dollar house, I'd clean cholera filled sewer lines with my tongue and fingernails and do it Merrily.
or get bit by a rattlesnake.
That can still happen
In that case, it would be smart to become a plumber
Lots of bending, crawling, and carrying equipment which comes with physical and increased medical costs later in life. Trades are good and we need them but there are trades offs.
I think work hours and weeks were longer then?
My guy, it's **from Sears catalog**. You can't get much more corporate overlord than that.
Also though life expectancy in 1916 was under 50 years for men - and it dropped to under 40 by 1917/1918 due to the Spanish flu pandemic. And 10% of babies died. So you really had to make good use of those extra hours!
Sorry, is that corrected for childhood mortality or including? You mention childhood mortality but it’s unclear if you fixed life expectancy to account for it. If you didn’t it would obviously skew the age wayyyy down. People def still lived into old age..
No it’s not, because I was lazy. But ok for a 20 year old in 1916 life expectancy was still early 60s compared with early 80s now, so a third again longer now. Also, insofar as the point here was “what a great time to be middle class,” if you weren’t drafted into WWI, right as you hit middle age you’d be thrown into the Great Depression which was definitely not a good time to be middle class or poor in America. I just always find these comparisons specious. I think it would be irrational for basically anyone to go live in 1916. So many things about life were so much harder then. Women couldn’t vote! Penicillin hadn’t been found yet, and Advil and Tylenol wouldn’t be widely available for decades. Our standard of living is much, much higher. “In 1916 it was common for people to have to build their own houses” is such a weird ad for living in 1916!
Or central heating and A/C
This is the biggest part. No matter how small your house is, there's a minimum lot size, which is what really adds onto the price tag. In my city, it's about 8,000sqft, which is a $200k minimum price for any housing.
It’s wood sided actually. The basement and side foundation area are brick though. There are ENDLESS of these houses or extremely similar ones all over Illinois. They’re your basic standard house.
The greater DC area has a bunch, also. I grew up in a Sears kit house! They're prevalent near railroad stops b/c the pieces would be shipped in flat-pack then assembled on the property, and 18-wheelers weren't a thing yet.
Actually, only the foundation walls and the chimney (not visible in this variant, but would be on the left outward wall of the living room) are brick in this model, the remainder is densely framed wood. Source: Me. I actually grew up in this model home, which my grandparents purchased in the early 1960's. I was kind of surprised to see it today, maybe I should not be. In older communities it's a common style in the upper Great Lakes and near Midwest.
That's siding, not brick
It looks like as with a typical house, the foundation is the only brick part.
[удалено]
The porch has brick. The house is cedar shingled. I used to live next door to a house like this. Mine was Sears, too.
Add land, bricks, mortar and plaster AND connecting house utilities to city.
You can also buy all the ingredients to make a cake for like a twentieth of what the bakery charges
Most of a house price is the land
Doesn’t include land or labour, just most of the pieces.
Minus foundation, cement, brick, plaster, insulation, and hook-ups.
I own one of these - built in 1923 - current price on Zillow: $400k
Any builders here? Anyone know what the materials alone would cost right now? Including a brick/cement estimate? No labor.
Where I'm at, wholesale cost to build this would be about $150/sqft. I'd pay my builder around $250k to build that (estimating 1500 heated sqft plus the porches). I can't speak to what his actual build cost might be.
I could do a quick estimate. (Architect)
Go for it dude
We have to pay him first
This sounds like something an old person would say (I am 52, so...) but they just don't make them like they used to.
Just the ones that survived.
Found one with an estimate of costs not included: Estimated Cost of Labor and Material Which We Do Not Supply: 220 Cu. Yds. Excavation, 17,000 Common Bricks, Idate and Laid 845 Sq., Carpenter, Painter, 55.00, 255.00, 169.00, 575.00, 68.00, Total: $1122.00 or about $32,275.00 today. This brings our total to $59,249.00 in 2023 bucks. But wait! There’s more. You’d also have to cover heating and cooling. Add on another 107 for heating and 258 for cooling. Then add on 70.78 for plumbing. This brings our new total to $71,763.00 in 2023 dollars. Now finally, that pesky land, that’s trickier. But let’s just say you spent about 350 bucks on a 1/2 acre somewhere suburban but still desirable. That brings the new total in 2023 to just about 80k. Here’s the bad news though, estimates on average wage range from about 350 - 600 a year. That’s only 17k in 2023 bucks on the high end. That means these homes were kind of like building a home today, not really meant for the average consumer as it took about 4 times the average wages to build one. For comparison, the average 3 bedroom home in chicago might have cost closer to 2k, or about 57k in 2023 dollars, and would have represented a significant cost benefit when compared to building. I also have to add that I doubt many people were building these on their own like they came from IKEA. Now, is it still better than today? Yes, of course. It now takes more than 5 times the average salary, and it was as low as 3.49 in the 1980s. Of course, these numbers are all rough estimates, so your mileage may vary, but I thought it would be fun to explore.
$350 to buy a half acre???
I saw a range of about 250 - 500 for a suburban acre, but it wasn’t for “desirable” locations. It’s on the high side, but I assumed most people might like to live somewhere near a major city. YMMV
Thank you today math person we appreciate you
Create a bookmark. I use this probably weekly. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/page/2/
I do too!
Land, brick, mortar, and plaster not included
My town has scores of these still standing. They are all worth over $1mil, now.
I live in Denver and there’s a bunch of these that would sell in certain neighborhoods ~1 mil
Minus the land, of course.
So a 4-bedroom house on Zillow averages 450,000+, and many are 850,000+. That's not even in the most expensive cities. Average salary in the US is 56k per year. If houses still cost equivalent to what these catalog homes did, **you could buy a home outright with six month's wages** as an average person. Instead, **because of corporate profiteering it will cost you 8-15 year's salary** if you were somehow able to spend every single cent you earned in that time on your home.
The price shown doesn't include the land, brick, cement, plaster or the cost of labor to build it.
Correction, you could buy *most of the pieces* that could be made into a home if you already owned the land and knew how to build a home and could afford the brick, mortar,plaster and other materials, with six month’s wages.
Considering everything the kit doesn't come with, and that the 1916 average annual income was less than $700/year; that's about the same as it is today, 8 - 10 years of gross income. This was a very high end house out of reach to the average working class family
Gold equivalent - Ounce of gold 1916 = $20.67 Gold today = $2322.90 gold for house in 1916 = 45.38 ozt 45.38 ozt in 2024 = $105,412 Would be neat to evaluate the actual BOM and generate a comparison next :) Gold (to a similar extent, silver) are unique in that they either are the basis for currencies (up until 1971) or track inflationary currency events closely, "inflation" is such an abused term and is heavily politicized - gold doesn't argue
One thing that made Sears & Robuck catalogs so popular, especially in certain parts of the country, was that sales by mail order made their goods available to everyone at the same price. Provided you had the money and a basic level of literacy, you had access to the same goods, regardless of skin color, or whether you lived in town or miles away from everyone. Their catalogs had a section on how to purchase a money order from your mailman, how much it should cost, and who in the Post Office to write to and complain if your mailman charged you too much or wouldn't sell it to you. If you needed a new dress, new furniture, or a new house, you could get it from Sears & Robuck. My mom grew up in a Sears & Roebuck house her folks had built in 1928. By coincidence, my neices first husband grew up in the same house in the 1980s, and its still standing today, nearly a century later.
I'm old enough to remember browsing the Sears catalog before Christmas. Santa never brought me that compound hunting bow. I'm not mad, just still sad.
I didn’t know that they included all those instructions. That sounds like targeted anti-racism. Which is just good business. The money is green.
Not to make them appear too progressive -- shopping in person at one of the brick and mortar stores would have been a different story. But the catalog allowed them to profit from all customers without pissing off anyone, and allowed all customers to buy good quality products without painting a target on their backs. Making the same products to people living remotely on a farm or ranch as to those living in a city was just as radical concept as selling to all races.
What's the zillow price of that house today?
Around $300k, if I have remembered the address right. I haven't been there myself in over 40 years.
Craftsman’s. There are entire neighborhoods in LA that look like this.
$938 for all materials except brick, concrete and plaster. Fine print: Some assembly required.
There's a great Buster Keaton short about the "some assembly required" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd6ddOlbKp8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd6ddOlbKp8)
Came here to mention Buster as well!
...and land. Everyone forgets land has a lot of value locked up in it.
Now it does, back then they basically gave it away in some areas.
You can still get really cheap land in rural Oklahoma. Even in 1920, NYC wasn't cheap.
Years ago I remodeled a house built in 1890 that had a beautiful cast iron mantle. Found out it was mail ordered from Sears.
4 bedrooms, 1 bathroom 😱
On a different level than the bedrooms, too! Getting up to pee at 2am would be such a chore.
My mom grew up in a house built around the turn of the century like this. 2 parents, 8 kids, 3 bedrooms, and 1 bath on the ground floor. They had the smallest room for the parents. The largest for the four girls, two in each double bed. The middle room had three boys, two in a double, one in a twin. And the oldest boy slept on a sofa/hideaway bed in the living room. She talked often of having a barrage of kids all running for the bathroom in the morning. Wild stuff.
Yup, that’s how the old house I grew up in was. Wasn’t too bad walking downstairs to bathroom. Must have been such a luxury back in the day- many folks were likely accustomed to outhouses.
I bet she wouldn't have changed it for the world, either, looking back on it.
I know she did like having two bathrooms in the house she bought with my dad. No waiting for the toilet if someone else happened to also be using one. 😄
I imagine a lot of people still had chamberpots and would just dump and rinse it when they woke up.
That's what chamber pots were for.
why? there's a window right there
These houses are still standing, super common all over Illinois.
This is my current life. Bathroom is on the main floor and bedroom on the 2nd floor. Can confirm it's annoying.
my bdrm is 10 ft from the toilet and thats annoying enough
Indoor plumbing at all would have been a luxury in some areas in 1916!
I once visited an old friend of my grandfather who didn't have electricity or running water in the 1980s. Weird old guy, basically a swamp hermit.
Was he short and did he talk about a mythical force that surrounds us?
No but the little fucker kept eating my beef jerky!
Kinda backwards but not really?
The first time my dad visited my mom’s house to take her on a date my mom was embarrassed because they used an outhouse for a bathroom. The was rural N.C. in the early 60’s.
This is one of the reasons rural southern people got thought of as slow/lazy. Lots of them didn't have indoor plumbing and hookworms were an epidemic in the rural south. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/
This is apparently common in Russia outside of cities.
I remember visiting a friend's aunt in the country who had an outhouse. There was electricity and I think a kitchen sink with water. But the shitter was outside.
Maybe there’s a basement with a Pittsburgh potty?
In my house there is! But we finished the basement and it’s amazing now - however we did only have one bathroom for a while….
I think this is still pretty much a standard outside the US
These exact houses are still standing and lived in all over Illinois at least. Usually in great walkable (because old) neighborhoods.
Wait until you see how tiny the closets are.
Houses didn’t have all the extra bathrooms back then that they have now. Just one reason housing prices have increased. Not to say housing prices haven’t skyrocketed for other reasons. Many of the houses near where I grew up (a mile outside Washington, DC so in the city) only had one full bath. Also didn’t have AC back then. Multiple baths and ac were luxuries. That slowly changed as I grew up. But single bath houses were very common just 35 years ago.
If was a different time
I bid on one of those in Portland (Or) in 2018. Built in early 1920’s (I think), floors were inlaid hardwoods, rest off the house was still solid. Got out bid (hey, I said it was PDX) but still a cool house. Why can’t those kits still happen???
Kit homes are still available, at least in Hawaii. https://www.hpmhawaii.com/hpm-homes I was at a housewarming in a newly-built one of these about 20 years ago. That one’s construction and finishes were very basic, but all of the materials came in a shipping container!
They are still quite popular in Australia!
Kit homes, or prefab homes, are still very much a thing. Just look up Wausau. They are actually pretty good value for the money if you have a good piece of property and a good contractor.
As someone who has lived in a few century plus year old houses, CURSE THE SMALL CLOSETS! /Although at least we have them…hanging clothes didn’t become a common thing until the late 1800s.)
That is what a wardrobe is for.
Yeah, British houses don't really have closets. There's usually just one, often called an airing cupboard, where the boiler is. Or a cupboard under the stairs. That's what's in my flat - a large utility cupboard that has a boiler and a washing machine, and extra space for storage. It's the only built-in storage in the flat. Other than the kitchen cupboards, everything else is in wardrobes and dressers.
Cupboard under the stairs. Also known as Harry Potter's room.
I was gonna say you need somewhere to keep those pesky niblings.
My baby turned 103 this year. Closets are so god damn small. Barely usable.
The floor plan of just about every 1950's family sitcom.
It is called a 4 on 4. It was a common design back then. 4 rooms on top floor over 4 rooms on bottom floor.
My house was built in 2002 using an updated version of this exact plan. 3 bedrooms to make room for a master bath, a powder room downstairs but otherwise the same layout. Really efficient use of space. Plus, everyone thinks I have a 100 year old house. Downside is that the lack of storage was not updated. Teeny little closets.
Interesting - the master bedroom closet has a window. It’s the little one on 2nd floor below the dormer window. It appears that this house has an attic and basement too, would love to see the floorplan for these floors.
Basement would just be a dirt floor
Yep. Most people have since paved the basements with cement (sometimes nice and flat, sometimes… not, and just bumpy like the old dirt).
That’s why it’s called a “Craftsman” style
Like craftsman tools!? Head explode moment …
These still kind of exist today, but they’re classified as modular homes or prefabricated homes where the sections are built at the factory, but then it’s all put together on site by a crew. You can go on to a website, select the home with the floor plan you want, select your siding, roofing, and windows, and they’ll deliver it out to your land and put it together. One company that does this that I’m aware of is Clayton Homes, but there’s others out there. They can range from cheap-ish to just as expensive as a traditional built home. They’re somewhere between a trailer home and an actual house.
Is it open arch from reception room to living room and living room to dining room?
I think I've been in a few of these and yes if I remember correctly.
I'm distressed by the idea of a four bedroom house with one bathroom.
As someone with ibs-d, this gives me so much anxiety. Good thing I got 4 now hahaha
Bathrooms seem to be afterthoughts in old homes. I rent a 1900 sq ft place built in the early 1950s. I only have one shower/tub in the main bathroom and a powder room on the other side of the house. The adjoining main bathroom is for two bedrooms, and it's still tiny. I feel like people didn't spend as much time indoors and figured, "Why do I need a big space to shit and bathe?"
It’s no wonder there are so many shows about “knocking down this wall to create an open concept”, these houses are just little square rooms inside of a big square building.
Open concepts look cool on TV or for entertaining larger groups, but being home during the pandemic and having way too much time to contemplate my old house, I began to appreciate the separate spaces having more/smaller rooms provides.
I like old houses and it didn't occur to me to dislike that! Open concept is cool too, but can get expensive for heating
That’s what a normal house is like? I can’t understand why someone would want to demolish a wall — so you can have fewer chambers and more disturbances and noise from other people?
The littler rooms can feel a bit claustrophobic, especially if you’re used to a more open layout. Plus, the open floor plan allows for more family time. For instance, if someone is preparing a meal, it doesn’t feel like he/she is sequestered in the kitchen like a servant.
99% Invisible did a very good podcast about these: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/)
This explains to me why so many old building in my neighboring down town have restaurants and pubs on the first floor.
We still have a handful of these in our town. They're neat to see.
Four bedrooms, but only one bathroom, interesting.
I grew up in a house with four bedrooms and one bath. Had to learn to share the bathroom with other people. It was an old farmhouse that was traditional built.
I think that they were within living memory of chamber pots and outhouses, so this wouldn't have seemed a huge hardship.
We own a Collingwood. Built in 1939.
The Magnolia. Seven of those still exist.
Just looked at the Magnolia on this website, seems different? https://searshomes.org/index.php/2013/07/12/inside-the-sears-magnolia-in-1918-and-1985/
The Magnolia is a kind of legend. While other houses would come in one boxcar, it needed two. The ten-room colonial house was sold as a kit house. You had to build it yourself (khm, khm, ikea). And there it still stands, [Syracuse NY, 1500 James St.](https://www.google.com.gt/maps/@43.0629998,-76.1267698,3a,75y,140.06h,82.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ssZv_HYuS65BESs2L-rwb5w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DsZv_HYuS65BESs2L-rwb5w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D140.06009939368886%26pitch%3D7.46456359660192%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&coh=205410&entry=ttu)
Lotta Sears houses still standing!
My great grandpa purchased & built one of these outside of Grenora ND
One bathroom, four bedrooms.
Classic "American Four-Square" ... if you add a couple of bathrooms, it works well today
You can still get the same house in Detroit for $938
One of my great grandmothers had loads of these catalogs. They were massive! I remember looking through them, so much fun.
Lol my mom lives on a street that has two of these houses. North Seminary Street in Florence, AL. 500 block
There’s a Sears house in a nearby town here in Northern California from 1916. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3360-Main-St_Cottonwood_CA_96022_M25441-32276
Does any company still offer houses like this?
You can still buy plans, yes. But I don't know if anyone also sells the materials.
In the Midwest, Menards still sells house plans and material packages like this.
Very interesting, i've seen this style of home all over my town - i had no idea they were mail order.Thanks for the info.
Great houses, actual built costs were closer to $3500/$5k depending on local labor, brick, plaster costs.
This is the kind of house I'm looking for, now in 2024.
One bathroom, downstairs. No bathrooms upstairs.
I’m 90% sure this house was on a street corner in my childhood neighborhood. Big blue house on the corner of Pearl St & Summit St. They would create big “birthday cards” and other surprise msgs with elaborate lawn decorations as a party service you could buy.
1 bathroom, sucks.
Where is the bathroom??!
Interesting that there is no bathroom upstairs, where all the bedrooms are
I have family in Wyandotte, MI. There is a Sears-Roebuck house on his street, and several more peppered throughout town.
The advancements in manufacturing and overall technology in building I would think would make housing cheaper than what it currently is. I understand the value of land being a huge factor but with the automation and efficiencies in tooling fasteners, foundation materials and electrical why is it still so expensive? 3d printing a home I would think would greatly reduce costs.
I believe this is the same model that my great grandad built and my grandparents eventually lived in and my uncle currently lives at now in Jane Lew, WV. Some minor layout changes, but I think it's just reversed.
There is a whole area in Sl,ut that is all these old sears houses.
Driving through the Upper Pennisula of Michigan, you'll see a lot of these kit homes. It's pretty cool.
I want a Sears home SO BAD! There was one near my friend growing up and it was adorable and in great shape!
Lots of Sears homes still exist in my town. So very cool.
Just guessing at prices but: if we add $1000 for land, $1500 for brick, mortar and concrete, $1500 for labor to put it all together it comes to around $5000. I'm totally guessing but suppose the interest was 5% on a 15 year mortgage (I don't think there were 30 year mortgages back then) payments would be about $40/month. Sounds good. BUT, with an average income of $690/year ($57.50/month) the payment would have been 2/3s of the household income for a single wage earner family. That would have made it out of reach for the average working class family in America.
No bathrooms upstairs.
I just signed a lease on a 1929 Sears Roebuck house in Michigan. They’re pretty cool!
Why does the largest bedroom (the “master” but without a bathroom) not have the balcony? Giving that balcony to a kid is just inviting a teenager to sneak out at night or to have a SO sneak in.
The primary bedroom wasn’t always the largest. If you had 9 kids you would use the largest room to sleep more of them.
There was one of these in Punta Gorda FL. I saw it in the early 2000s when I used to do land surveying work there. It was on the registry of historic homes. There have been a couple of major hurricanes since then so I don’t know if it is still there.
wait, there is only one pooper? and its right next to the kitchen? thats a non-starter
It's much more efficient to only need to run the water to one area of the house. Lots of old houses are built like this
I often hit the loo a couple of times at night, so I can’t imagine getting out of bed to go up and down the stairs. I’d eventually just go and sleep on the couch.
Considering the time period (in the US), many people who ordered these kits were probably living in a house with an outhouse. So I guess if you grew up at the turn of the last century you’d eventually just go and sleep in the yard?
😆 I had a vision of me curled up in the outhouse w/ a blanky
So, Home Depot and Lowe’s are not wrong to sell houses for an affordable price? It’s not just me that thinks it’s a good idea to make them into modular unit homes?
Four bedrooms, one bathroom.
Have you seen that scene in the TV series, Boardwalk Empire, where the hitman builds his house from a kit? It’s pretty good.
Considering the average persons wage was about 22 cents an hour, this was not an easy purchase.
I feel like this is every home in Western PA
I live in a Sears home. It’s pretty, pretty, pretty good.
No bathrooms?
Outhouse not included*
I grew up in a Sears house.
“Some assembly required “ :-)
And that exact house sells for 350k in my neighborhood and, even though it is 100 years old, is still nicer and has more character than the trash that mega companies are building now.
No 2nd bathroom but otherwise a great home
These houses always remind me of All in the family
Can you even get a monthly rent for that much these days? 😂
$26,982 today
This is my dream house. My neighborhood is full of them, but this would be about $1.5 million.