Early 20th Century kit houses from Sears

I didn’t know this, but at one point in America, Sears sold material to build pre-fab kit houses with instructions printed in Popular Mechanics. The magazine has written up quite an interesting backstory about this short-lived phenomenon and even detail how some of those houses still exist today — built entirely by relatively unskilled would-be home owners.

If you’re curious, here’s a website that details some of the most popular Sears home styles you could buy at the time. Also, the Internet Archive has a fully scanned catalog you can look at.

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