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Like milkmen and rotary phones, 20th-century catalog houses quietly went about their business for decades, pretty much taken for granted. But, unlike the phones and milkmen, these houses persevered into the next century, sheltering generations of middle-class homeowners.
Today, these elder statesmen of American architecture are basking in the limelight. Once considered pedestrian, they are now prized by homeowners, architects, and builders everywhere for their handy built-ins, generous woodwork, intricate tilework, and sensible designs. Patinated, these anti-McMansions still ooze with charm. More than 100 years ago, companies shipped their catalog (mail-order) houses as kits by boxcar and customers hauled them off to their sites via horses and wagons or, later, pickups. Although a few of the catalog-house companies lingered past World War II, the bulk of the homes were sold from 1925 to 1930. Their manufacturers included Sears, Roebuck and Co., Montgomery Ward, "Aladdin Company, Gordon-Van Tine Co., Harris Brothers, Sterling Homes, Bennett Homes, Pacific Homes, and Lewis Company. • Slide Show: Catalog Homes Today
photography: Central Michigan University
The Rossley plan from the 1916 Aladdin sales catalog. |
"Sturdily built with top-quality materials" is how Rebecca L. Hunter describes the thousands of catalog houses she's seen in her travels. An author of two books on the subject, Rebecca surveys municipalities for mail-order houses and lectures on their origins and historical preservation. "Aladdin, for example, guaranteed its lumber to be knot-free and paid buyers $1 for each knot they found bigger than a quarter. Imagine what that lumber would cost today, if you could even find it."
photography: Matthew Gilson
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Each kit came with instructions and basically everything required to complete the house, including precut and numbered lumber, shingles, doors, windows, hardware, nails, and paint. Many of the houses' original buyers were first-time homeowners. "Save your rent money. Give the kiddies a chance. Get close to nature. Have real friends and neighbors. Be independent in old age," promised a 1926 advertisement for Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog houses. Though these houses are sprinkled all over the country, many are clustered in commuter suburbs built during the kit-home heyday, like Lombard outside Chicago and Norwood outside Cincinnati. "The intention was to sell lots of houses, not to sell the most unique designs of the time. The catalogs copied the architects and vice versa," explains Rebecca. So plans featured the popular styles of the day, such as Tudor Revival, Cape Cod, Arts and Crafts, and American Foursquare, with minor differences among their models. The Sears Mitchell, for example, is a dead ringer for the Aladdin University. "Cape Cods are the bane of my existence," she adds with a smile, "because there is so little differentiation of this style, especially from one catalog to another." Despite the unabashed copying, the catalog-house companies' ads touted design expertise. "Where else is a house plan given the careful study and the benefit of such experience?" asked the 1926 Sears catalog. | 
