Home Catalogs

With so many catalogs being dropped off at our front doors or into our private mail boxes and with so many online catalogs on the Internet, we are all aware that just about every product, large and small, and every service can be acquired through at least one catalog if not through a large assortment of them.  But did you know that there was a time when you could have purchased your entire home through a catalog?  I do not mean simply home decorations, I mean the whole house; from floor to ceiling, from wall to hallway, from door to window and everything else.  It is true and let me tell you a little about it.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century the United States still consisted of only thirty eight states and a very large bulk of its population resided in rural areas and on farmsteads and ranches that were spread out over vast expanses of land.  Shopping at the rural stores to sustain the agrarian lifestyle was largely inconvenient as well as expensive.  Richard Sears, an agent of the railroads at the time who closely observed the farmers’ comings and goings, entered a partnership with Alvah C. Roebuck and thus in 1893 the famous Sears, Roebuck and Co. was formed.

The Sears, Roebuck and Co. offered farmers and ranchers the option to purchase all that they needed through mail-order catalogs, which by 1894 had grown to 322-page volumes, at much reduced prices and free delivery.  Soon, the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogs included everything from groceries to household appliances, sporting goods, children’s toys, iceboxes, tools of various trades and so much more.  The Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order catalogs gained favorable reputation for good quality products as well as reliable serve and they were greatly trusted in just about every home in America.

Frank W. Kushel, a manager at Sears, Roebuck and Co., recommended that build-it-yourself kits be assembled with all the parts that were required to construct an entire home and sold through the company’s mail-order catalog.  The recommendation was taken seriously and by 1908 the first issue of the “Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans,” a Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order catalog that exclusively displayed homes, featured twenty two styles ranging in price from $650 to $2,500 (equivalent to $13,000 to $48,000 in 2008 dollars) began its distribution.  The first mail-order home was purchased in 1909 and the kit weighed 25 tons and included more than 30,000 parts as well as electric, gaslight and plumbing fixtures and a heating system.  Due largely to the Great Depression, the build-it-yourself home kits part of the Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order business was discontinued in 1940.  By that time, however, more than 70,000 such homes had been sold in the United States and they were available in 447 distinctly different styles.

Today’s real estate world is quite a bit more complex and no 21st century home could ever fit into a pre-packaged kit.  But you can still do your initial shopping for homes through a bi-annual (April and October) catalog that is issued by United Country Real Estate and features homes which have been entered into the National Register of Historic Places as well as other vintage homes and old mansions.

Happy shopping!