Customer Reviews

Houses by Mail: A Guide to Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A "must have" for the Sears home owner! Not only did I find my house in this exhaustive resource, I found many of my neighbors' as well! This is a great read for anybody interested in kit houses of the past. If you know somebody with a Sears house, this would make an excellent, unusal gift for the upcoming holidays.

...I'd give it five stars. This book is a treasure trove for old-house mavens, especially those interested in early 20th-Century domestic vernacular architecture. Houses of all sizes and styles are included, most with full floor plans--which, unfortunately, you often need a magnifying glass to view clearly--and all with an illustration showing the exterior, as well as the dates sold, price, and other useful information. Many of the writeups also show interior suggestions. A very useful book.

I was happy to see all the different style and enjoyed all the photos. BUT I really wanted to see the house size and the floor plans they were so small you could not really make out what size the rooms were. I wanted to see the sq. footage of each home. I also would have like to see what each floor plan size was. So if each page had been the floor plan so you could read it I would have enjoyed it more. What was hard is all the info was there just so small could not make out what numbers were.I think all the info in the book was good I guess I just wanted a little bit more out of it.

This book probably provides useful information for persons otherwise unfamiliar with this genre of house and architecture, but personally I found two things about it particularly annoying: first, its small size. Many plans are reduced to the point where they might just as well be heavy line diagrams, and second, I find direct reproduction of original text to be far preferable to the uniform re-typing found here. Original text tends to be just as legible and lets the reader know with no uncertainty what is, in fact, original text. In all fairness, I have to say that since I am an architect and very familiar with house plans in general, my review may not apply to all readers. I much prefer the direct reproductions, and without a doubt favor a larger format.

This is an excellent resource for amateur preservationists and architectural historians alike. The introduction is an excellent background into the how, why and where of these houses as well as containing some great turn of the century interior shots. I am privileged enough to live in a neighborhood filled with the sturdy beauties from this book and plan to use it to educate my neighbors about their 1900-1910 architecture.

This is a magnificent volume of historic treasures by Sears, Roebuck, and Company. The charming residences in this book are fascinating to anyone who loves old houses or bungalows. The introduction is an interesting lead-in to the dozens of houses with floor plans and some with interior drawings as well. There are houses of many styles: bungalows, colonials, craftsmen style, and others such as Dutch Colonial and multi-units. Very cool!!!

This book is a great collection of designs and illustrations but what disappointed me most was that some houses did not have floor plans at all while some only had a downstairs and no upstairs floor plan illustrated. I was especially disappointed about those without any floorplans since I have seen floorplans elsewhere on the internet on various archive lists, the same goes for interior illustrations which I really expected to be many more of. I hoped it would be a 'Bible' or ultimate reference book to Sears homes but I guess I need to complement it with my own internet research.
I am not sure if I would recommend it to somebody who has high expectations and such a great love for these old homes like me.

I'm the author of "The Houses That Sears Built" and my love of Sears Homes was ignited by this wonderful book.

The first 43 pages are photos and stories about real people and their real Sears Homes. This section makes for a delightful and easy read.

And it is also a great reference on historic architecture. Sears Homes were patterned after the most popular architecture and housing of the day, so once you get a feel for the dates on Sears Homes, you'll be able to "date" many houses with some accuracy.

Also has specific info on how to tell if you own a Sears Home.

Rose Thornton
author, The Houses That Sears Built

After renovating our house and finding odd codes on it, I found a book at the library that displayed my house was a Sears mail-order home -- very interesting read on history of how homes were ordered and shipped in pieces like the Lincoln log toys of my childhood very cool and informative.
WES

If you're a budding Sears Home fan with the urge to go one step further, you have to get this book. As the only book with an example of each and every Sears Home, you can't feel confident in your Sears Home search without this book in hand. Nonetheless, the quality of the printing is disappointing. The illustrations from the Sears Catalog are reproduced so poorly as to lose much of their usefulness. If the picture is so blurry that you can't discern whether the house is clad with shake shingles or brick, then why bother? The Rosemary Thornton book does a much better job in that area, but, as it lists only a sampling of Sears designs, it is not definitive. Therefore this book, though flawed, is essential.