Sears has lately taken a roller coaster trip. They just announced that they will close another few dozen outlets as global sales drop. It’s a melancholy reality that the companies that once characterized America are gradually fading. General Electric, Ford, GMC, and Sears are trying to compete with the 21st century’s economic goliaths: Amazon, Google, and Apple, especially as several of these businesses invest in self-driving cars and other revolutionary technology.
While Sears as we know it may cease to exist, its legacy will endure. Sears was a key retailer during the 1900s, helping to shape the America we know and love today. They innovated in a variety of ways, notably through their mail-order business. They have offered a wide range of items through their catalogs, including appliances, home products, and even residences. While today’s corporations may not build products to last, Sears did an excellent job of making high-quality items in the early twentieth century.
Reddit user RealHotSauceBoss claimed that he is now restoring his grandfather’s home, which he purchased from a Sears catalog in 1916.
At the time, Sears sold the house this man bought for just over a thousand bucks. Not a bad price considering how much one could go for today. They had several models available for purchase and would ship them throughout the country. All you needed was a plot of land to plop the house down on, and you’d have a place to live. The house was shipped to the customer in pieces, complete with blueprints. Then it was the purchaser’s job to build it piece by piece. Talk about an innovative solution. Right? This idea sounds like it would be popular today. With the proliferation of tiny houses across the country, people are trending back toward simpler living. And a lot of DIYers would love to get blueprints and pieces to build their dream home.
Atlas Obscura indicates through its Sears Archives that the company sold about 75,000 mail-order comes between 1908 and 1940. The house that the grandfather from the Reddit post built was called Model No. 137. The house cost about $1200 in 1916, which translates to about $27,000 in 2016 considering inflation.
Despite being a mail-order home, the Sears product survived a century of hard living
“It has held up remarkably well, all things considered,” the Reddit user wrote. “Obviously, the wood wasn’t treated back then, so the exterior was in rough shape, but the house was structurally sound. To preserve the interior we essentially had to build a shell of HardiePlank over the old exterior, then we put storm windows over the original windows. The original roof was unrecoverable due to wear and leakage, so it was completely replaced. The basement is in unbelievably good shape considering that cement is a century old! It continues to be a really interesting project.”
In the year 2118, what do you believe future generations will wonder at from our time? Will it be our smartphones or computers? Or will it be something so ingrained in our lives that we barely realize it?