As is often my practice when confronted with issues outside my control (Covid-19, the weather, potty-training a recalcitrant toddler), I turn either to a good book or to musings about historic homes. Today I am fixing my thoughts on this 1911 design of a quintessentially quixotic dwelling from Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Modern Home No. 137 was featured in the 1911 catalog.
The two-story house has a distinctive cross gambrel roof, which causes the architectural historian to exclaim” “Ah hah! A Dutch Colonial Revival style house!” But those gambrels are clad in faux half-timbering, which is a characteristic of the Tudor Revival style in America.
The house was advertised as costing $1,140.00 to build, which included the following: mill work, siding, flooring, ceiling, finishing lumber, building paper, pipe, gutter, sash weights, hardware, mantel, painting material, lumber, lath, and shingles. That price did not include labor, cement, brick, and plaster – but Sears estimated that with those additional costs, the house would still end up costing just around $2,750.00.
Can you imagine being able to buy such a well-built house for that today? (A gross estimate of that price today would be around $88,000.)
A cross gambrel house of the same basic form (minus the overhang and Tudor Revival detailing) as the Modern Home No. 137. Lexington, Kentucky.
I am partial to a gambrel roof – especially this design with the overhand of the second story forming a nice deep porch. The bay windows on the first and second story are also another very nice touch.
The house was advertised as frame on the first floor (narrow bevel edge cypress siding) and the second story was frame sided with stonekote – a type of cement stucco finish. Most cross gambrel roof houses I can think of in my mental filing cabinet are brick on the first floor and frame on the second.
First and second story floor plans of Model No. 137.
The floor plan will no doubt horrify many people used to the conveniences of new construction. There is only one bathroom – and it is on the second floor, along with the bedrooms (a chamber in this case means a bedroom). There are actually walls separating the individual rooms on the first floor (no open floor plan here)- although I find the circulation patterns to be most pleasing (but I am a historic house nerd).
Another cross gambrel roof house with a partially overhanging second story. Lexington, Kentucky.
Modern Home No. 137 could be built on a lot only 28 feet wide, making it perfect for emerging suburbs clustered near historic downtowns. I hope someone out there will alert me to this Sears design still standing in their town – I’d love to see it!
I don’t remember the design exactly and it’s gone now anyway but I remember the S&R house in Bourbon Co on the corner farm at US460 and Clay-Kiser Pike looking really similar. We lived just up the road. My grandfather told me when he was a boy (he was born in 1904) it was shipped on train cars to the depot on Elizabeth Station (or Russell Cave, I can’t recall now?) and they hauled the kit to the site on horse drawn wagons.
It sat up on the hill off the road and seems like it had a Gambrel roof. It was torn down in the early 2000s probably and is replaced with a nice, proper modern cookie cutter now…