Friday, May 25, 2007 - Shopping for a Sears Catalog Home?

A house recently came on the market here in Cheverly -- one identified in the "Sears, Roebuck and Company Mail Order House Survey in Prince George's County" (available through the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission) as the Crescent model. Priced at either $1,744 or $2,281, depending on which version of the floor plan was built.

I haven't been inside yet -- I plan to take a look over the weekend -- but I confess to a weakness for these mail-order homes. Cheverly has a fairly significant concentration of Sears catalog houses, along with homes built from other mail order catalogs. When the survey was done in 1988, 82 Sears homes were identified in the County, with 25 of them in Cheverly (20 different models).  Since then, others have been identified in the county and and more are suspected to be Sears houses, but they've had additions or alterations over the years and are not as easy to identify. Our own Mr. Ray Bellamy, former Historic Preservation Commissioner in the County, is responsible for compiling the list in the M-NCPPC book.

What's not to love with a description that starts out like the one in the catalog? "To the folks who like a touch of individuality with good taste..." What a great phrase! I may use it sometime on one of my listings.

(C) Susan Pruden.