Sears Houses in the Concrete Jungle

A Sears Roebuck kit house included blueprints and almost all the materials a customer needed to construct the house. The biggest part of the order (and the largest expense) was the lumber because the houses were almost always of frame construction.

However, in the early years of the Sears Modern Homes department, the company decided to give customers a lower-cost option. Concrete block house kits.

Sears Modern Home No. 143 which was sold from 1909 to 1915.

At the turn of the century, the hollow concrete building block was a new technology. The first machine for making concrete blocks was patented in 1900 and the idea took off.

Concrete structures were billed as fireproof, waterproof, and vermin-proof. Concrete was a replacement for natural stone because it was much cheaper, and the blocks could be molded to look like rusticated stone, cobblestone, or other styles.

Sears sold different concrete block machines and even had a separate catalog devoted to these machines, various attachments, molds, and concrete mixers.

The Sears Roebuck Concrete Machinery catalog.

One of the concrete block machines Sears sold was the Triumph.

Sears extolled the virtues of concrete block homes in its Modern Homes catalog.

So it made sense for Sears to offer concrete block house kits. The company would not sell as much lumber as it did with frame houses. But for a concrete house Sears was selling the concrete block machines and other hardware, in addition to millwork, finishing lumber, roofing, pipes, gutters, windows, doors, paint, and lath, among other items.

Sears sold several concrete block homes, and I believe all of which were plans by architect Jens C. Petersen.

The tiny No. 59, in the 1908 Modern Homes catalog. The house was only sold in 1908 and 1909, and no one has ever found one.

The same house shown in Concrete magazine (January 1908), with the name of Jens C. Petersen on the illustration. Sears licensed the plans for its early concrete homes from Petersen.