A lot of homes in town have a very interesting story to tell, you just have to look in the right location to find its story. Take for instance this elegant house that sits at the intersection of Maryland Avenue and Seventh Street in Shenandoah. It draws your attention with its Queen Anne-sash windows, a 3-bay porch with Modern Ionic columns, and a fine red corner octagonal turret on the second floor. What you may not have known is that it’s a Sears and Roebuck mail order catalog kit! Catalog houses were like a model kit. There was a 75 page how-to instruction book that proceeded step-by-step from the foundations up.
This house that sits at the intersection of Maryland Avenue and Seventh Street in the Town of Shenandoah is a Sears and Roebuck mail order catalog home Model No. 167 or Maytown. The company sold its first house kit in 1908 and continued selling them until 1940. Tens of thousands were sold. A dedicated rail car would arrive in the buyer's town carrying the 30-40 tons of lumber and other building materials necessary to construct the house. Trucks or wagons would carry the materials from the depot to the building site. Catalog houses were like a model kit. There was a 75 page how-to instruction book that proceeded step-by-step from the foundations up. Sears labored to make the process foolproof. Each piece was numbered and labeled to indicate where in the building it went. Each step was described in detail and illustrated. Every piece was pre-cut to the correct dimensions to fit in its appointed spot. Once the foundation had been built, the builder needed little more than a hammer and a screwdriver to assemble the rest of it. The Maytown from the 1912 Honor-Bilt Modern Homes catalog and at that time, The Maytown cost $645 ($14,000 in 2007 dollars) for the basic version or $2,038 ($43,700 in 2007 dollars) with all the amenities.
On page 20 of the National Register of Historic Places Shenandoah Historic District we find the following:
One of the best-preserved examples of this style in the district is the house at 623 Maryland Avenue (069-5209-0279). The 2½-story house, constructed around 1910, features a gable roof clad in pressed tin shingles, Queen Anne-sash windows, a 3-bay porch with Modern Ionic columns, and a fine corner octagonal turret on the second floor (Photo 25). Other examples of the style from this period were noted at 306 Second Street (069-5209-0039), 206/208, 210, 317, 408, and 501 Third Street (069-5209-0080, 0081, 0109, 0097, and 0017), 403 and 407 Fourth Street (069-5209-0143, 0144), 505 Fifth Street (069-5209-0172), and 613 Denver Street (069-5209-0244).
In your travels around town be on the lookout for other Sears Homes, as stated in the National Register of Historic Places Shenandoah Historic District, page 21 Some of these may in fact be mail order houses, which were popular during this time period and would have been easy to obtain due to Shenandoah’s location on the railroad.
Some Information obtained from University District History, Columbus, Ohio
http://www.univdistcol.com/maytown.html
If you google Sears catalog houses, you will find several websites, blogs and folks that have written books about catalog houses. Listed below is just two website we found that had a lot of pictures and information regarding this subject.
Sears Archives:
http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm
Sears Modern Homes
Here is a link to the Shenandoah Historical District Report- National Register of Historic Places. It is a very will written report and goes into detail in describing the homes that are in the Shenandoah Historical District.
NR_Page_ShenandoahHD_069-5209_text.pdf
