By Ken Chrusz & Richard D. Smith | August 21, 2025
What if you could get the house of your dreams delivered right to you — but with assembly required?
That’s the background of the “kit houses” — more than 70,000 of them, by one estimate — sold in America and Canada by the Sears, Roebuck & Company between 1908 and 1942.
Excellent examples abound right here in The Montgomery News readership area, most notably in Rocky Hill.
The program was inviting.
The Sears’ “Modern Homes” division produced components and the architectural plans to assemble them for some 370 models, ranging from cozy cottages to two-story homes.
A page from the Sear, Roebuck catalog
The models were given attractive names, such as the Avondale, Collingwood, Hathaway, Hampton, and the Maplewood.
The components were clearly numbered with references on the blueprints and building instructions. They were much like today’s IKEA furniture sets. But these were not comparatively simple desks or cabinets: They were full-sized homes designed to feature the conveniences of plumbing, heating, electrical power and utilities. Telephone lines were state-of-the art tech back then.
Advertisement
Sears primarily sold these homes through its famous mail order catalog (a bounteous bazaar of consumer items, which was the Amazon.com of its day).
The kits were loaded into boxcars and shipped to the railroad freight depot closest to the buyer’s property. From there, the buyer would haul them to the construction site via horse and wagon or, later, by truck.
The end users often assembled the homes themselves with help from their families and neighbors, in the spirit of rural barn-raising assistance. However, local professional builders were also hired for the task.
Starlight model built in Rocky Hill
Among the outstanding examples in Rocky Hill are at 81 and 170 Washington Street.
And there’s a notable cluster at numbers 14, 22, 24, 25, 29 and 31 Crescent Avenue.
An intriguing possibility: the Rocky Hill branch railroad line, with its freight depot, was quite active during the time Sears was producing these homes.
The station and freight yard stood on Washington Street at the intersection of Canal Road, directly across the D&R Canal Park.
Sears, Roebuck & Company eventually offered truck delivery of the kits within a 35-mile radius of its Port of Newark lumber yard. Today, the distance between Newark and Rocky Hill is usually measured as 38 miles.
Advertisement
Perhaps Sears was fine with relaxing the 35-mile limit for Rocky Hill, especially because the borough was bringing in a good business. If so, many of the house kits, especially in the 1930s and early 1940s, arrived not by railroad box car but by truck.
While the final Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940, advertisements for Sears Modern Homes appeared through May 1942.
