Colin's Custom Sears House In St. Louis

5343 Winona Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri • Custom Sears house

I get lots and lots of emails about possible Sears houses, both at my email address for this blog, and at the email for our research group's website (SearsHouses.com). Unfortunately, the houses are often mistakenly identified as a Sears house. Sometimes, they are kit houses from another company. Sometimes, they are just Craftsman design houses that people assume must be what we mean when we say Sears House. Sometimes they are houses out on the west coast, where Sears didn't market their houses. Often, there is a long history tied to the house, of it being a Sears house... but, it doesn't match anything from Sears, and nothing inside the house appears to match anything from Sears... and we simply have no idea why the house developed the history of having been a Sears kit house.

And, then... sometimes... the house turns out to be questionable... but, the homeowner is able to show us something that ties it to Sears, and I say, "Bingo!". That's what happened after a couple of emails back and forth with Colin K., the very nice owner of this beautiful little brick-veneer catslide house, on a beautiful street, in a charming neighborhood of South St. Louis. 

What is a catslide entry vestibule?

Let's talk about that term, catslide . A catslide entry is one of those entry vestibules on the front of a house, that has this swoopy, partial-A shape, such as this one on the front of Colin's house. Sears had several models with a catslide entry, and many other companies also offered houses with catslide entry vestibules, especially in the early 1930s. The key to identifying which model, from which company, that you're looking at, is to assess the shape and size of the catslide, including looking at where it hits on the house, where the two sides start and stop, where the door is placed in the vestibule, and the overall size and slope of the whole vestibule. None of the Sears models with catslide entry vestibules, have this small size... they're all wider and larger, and start lower down on the short side. 

A Sears Maplewood (later re-named Ridgeland), one of several Sears models that have a catslide entry.
You can read about this specific one, in Glendale, Missouri, that I wrote about in 2015, here.

Another Sears model with a catslide entry vestibule, the Clifton. You can read the blog post here.

A Sears Dover in Shelby, Ohio, which you can read about in this Sears Houses in Ohio blog post by Cindy Catanzaro.

Because this is such a common style element on so many houses of this era, I decided it would be helpful to put together a blog post showing all of the models that we know of, from all of the different companies that we know of... so, I wrote that blog post in 2015, and here it is, if you'd like to read it. After I show and discuss this Sears Clifton (above), I show images of 38 other catslide entry models from Sears and other companies.

As you can see, if you compare the entry catslide on Colin's house, against these three from Sears, it is much, much smaller. Even compared to the smallest of the catslide-entry models from Sears, the catslide entry on Colin's house is smaller... just not as wide at all.

Is it maybe a custom Sears house?

So, when Colin wrote to me a few weeks ago, to ask what I thought about his house being a Sears model, my first reaction was to dismiss it, because of that small entry vestibule. But... as is so often the case, he had heard from others that the house was from Sears originally. And, it is the only one of its kind on his street, so he sought me out to ask me what I thought. I responded with an email explaining all of the reasons why it didn't match anything from Sears, and explained about it possibly being from a different kit company... I was thinking maybe Gordon-Van Tine, but I checked their catslide entry models, and it wasn't a match for them, either. 

I explained all of this to Colin, but... I wasn't ready to fully dismiss the house, as Colin's house is in the city of St. Louis, and I live in the St. Louis area, and have done extensive research on Sears houses here... and, I had found a number of custom Sears houses in south St. Louis, and I knew that some of them were not far from Colin's house, and all built in that same early-1930s era. I had also found newspaper advertisements from Sears, from the era of Colin's house (probably built in 1932), pushing the availability of their custom-design services, emphasizing that they were happy to help you with a design of any size and cost at all... from small and budget-friendly, to spacious and castle-like, if you wanted. One advertisement even said that they would design a solid-brick house for you... and this is unheard of in stock Sears models. Sears houses from the catalog, that have brick exteriors, are always wood-frame houses that simply have a single layer of brick on the exterior, for their siding (we call them brick-face or brick-veneer houses). Sears said that they didn't offer solid brick houses... but, in St. Louis, they actually did offer this as a possibility (though I'm not sure that I've ever found a solid-brick Sears house here). Colin's house is brick veneer, not solid brick (a solid brick house would not have the brick going all the way to the ground, it would have the brick starting above a visible several-feet-high foundation of something like rubble stone... Colin's house has a rubble stone foundation, but it is not visible above the ground, the brick veneer starts right at the ground level).

I first showed the newspaper advertisements above, in this 2016 blog post of mine, about architect L. J. Steffens, the area architect for Sears, in St. Louis,  for a period in the early 1930s, and the custom and customized houses that he had designed. The blog post focuses on houses that I tied to him through newspaper mentions of the houses, however, there are surely many more custom or customized Sears houses in the St. Louis area, for which L. J. Steffens was the architect. We just don't have a way to look for houses via the name of the architect.

Earlier that year, I first wrote about custom Sears houses that I found in St. Louis because I tied them to a mortgage from Sears. You can read that January 2016 blog post, here. 

But, after searching the address, and the name of the original owner, in historic newspapers, I came up with no mention of the house at all... so, I had no way of knowing if Colin's house had been designed by L. J. Steffens (or some other Sears architect in St. Louis), and the house and original owner had not come up in my earlier research to find houses financed by Sears (through mortgages with Sears).

So... I tried one last thing, and asked him if he could send me a photo of the backplate on the door handles for the interior doors. Maybe...just maybe... it would have one of the designs that we know that only Sears offered. 

Bingo! It's La Tosca!

Here are the two photos that Colin sent:

Well, well, well! This door handle hardware is, indeed, from Sears, and we've only seen it offered by Sears. It's called La Tosca. Here it is in the building supplies catalog from 1931:

I can't link to the 1931 Building Supplies catalog, but you can also see La Tosca here, in the 1930 Sears Building Supplies catalog.

I need to clarify one thing: The presence of this La Tosca hardware does not authenticate the house as definitely being from Sears. But, it does categorize it, for us, as a house that we are highly confident is from Sears, because it also had a history of being from Sears, and there are other elements inside the house, that Sears sold. Since it doesn't look like any Sears model, the word-of-mouth history wouldn't be strong support, since that is so often erroneous. Sears also sold building supplies, so it's always possible that a house was not designed by someone from Sears, but the owners just bought some supplies from Sears... if the house doesn't look like any Sears model.  

But, in this case, in addition to the La Tosca, I also see a front door whose elements are all from Sears, a chandelier that Sears offered, and interior doors and door trim that Sears sold. So, considering how heavily Sears was advertising their custom design services, in St. Louis, in the time frame when this house was built (in newspaper ads, and in pages of the building supplies catalog... it is discussed on pages 61 and 62 of the 1930 building supplies catalog), and that this house is similar to the kinds of styles that Sears was designing, it all seems to add up that this is almost certainly a Sears custom house. (To read about what kinds of primary source documentation we need to see, to consider a house to be authenticated, go to this page of our research group's website.) 

Colin also has not found any marked framing lumber, the tell-tale sign of a kit house, because it indicates pre-cut framing lumber. However, even if he had found marked lumber, without the La Tosca, we would not know for certain that the house was a kit from Sears... it could have been a house from a different kit-house company, since it doesn't match a Sears design. And, in any case, even authenticated houses sometimes no longer have visible marked lumber, because the ink has faded away over the years, or the joists have been painted over. Most likely, in this house, if renovations were done, and a wall opened up, you'd find marked lumber still visible on the edge of some framing lumber that is inside the walls, as that ink usually stays dark throughout the years. You can see examples of what the Sears ink-stamped framing lumber looks like, here, on our research group's website (SearsHouses.com).

Elements Of Colin's Custom Sears House

Thanks to a real estate listing from a few years ago, when Colin bought the house, we have photos of most all of the interior of the house. I also took a few detail photos myself, when I visited the house last week (thanks, again, Colin!). I don't have a floor plan to show, because the house is not from the catalogs. Let's take a look at some of the exterior and interior photos. I'll put comments in the captions, when needed.

Let's start by looking at the details of that front door and entry area, into the living room:

In the Sears Modern Homes and Sears Building Supplies catalogs from this era (here's the 1930 building supplies catalog), Sears shows a number of different styles of front entry doors, but the catslide entry houses tend to be shown with these doors that they refer to as V-Joint doors. They describe them as being "...made of clear white pine, 1-3/4 inches thick, being of slab construction, having V joints cut into the extra thick veneer to give it the effect of planks nailed together... Back of door is plain" 

You could choose from any of the four door shapes -- the top of the door is shaped differently across the four options. In addition to that choice for the homebuyer, the doors could be solid, with no glass insert, or you could choose from any of the seven different styles of "lights", as Sears referred to the glass inserts. 

Image from the 1931 Sears Building Materials catalog. You can see almost the same images and information in the 1930 Building Materials Catalog, however this 1931 image shows the rounded top door (later called The Chelsea) with the door handle hardware that Colin's door has.

You'll notice that the catalog doors are all shown with the decorative iron strapping added on, and that, too, was available in different designs, depending on the shape of door that you chose. This was optional, apparently, because some doors have it, and others, like the door on Colin's house, do not have any iron strapping. (You'll also notice that the edge of the iron strapping that is usually on the hinge side of the door, has a distinctive double curl, that we researchers refer to as the Sears curlicue... I think that I'm the one who started calling it that, and I guess I should have used a different term, like "Sears curls", because it's not really a curlicue :)... but, what we do know, is that we have never seen any other company offer decorative iron strapping with this double curl design. There is another building supplies company of the era that offered a decorative iron strapping with a similar double curl, but it's a little less curled, and the noticeable difference is at the tip at the other end... the Sears iron strapping has a sort of three-part pointer, whereas the other company's tip is a hook.

You can see the Sears curlicue on the left edge of the decorative iron strapping at the top of the image.
On the right of the image, you see the front-door hardware style sold by Sears, also on Colin's house.

Here is a closeup of the front door handle hardware on Colin's house. As you can see, it's a great match for what is shown in the catalog image:

And, this is the door handle on the "back" of the door, which is the part you see from inside the house. And, as the catalog desribes for these V-joint doors, this side of the door is plain, with no joints to suggest panels.

The handle on the inside (or "back") of the front entry door on Colin's house.

Here is that solid-look, no-panel, plain side of the front door. 
And, to the left, we see the door that opens into a small, rather shallow coat closet, and that's one of the
La Tosca door handles I showed, above.

Colin went to considerable trouble and expense to have a custom-made glass panel storm door made for the house, once he owned it. You can see from the real estate photos, from before he bought the house, that there was no storm door. Sears sold storm doors, but I'm not sure that they sold a style that was made for these V-joint front doors, to match their different shapes. I think that these were meant to just be unprotected doors.

The trim around windows, doors, and doorways, in this house, is Sears Craftsman style "Back Band" design. Certainly other companies sold this kind of simple, nice, wide Craftsman style trim, but here it is in the Sears 1931 Building Supplies catalog:

And, here is the bedroom, with that kind of trim, painted white, on the windows, and around the doors (and, remember, not all trim wood was top quality oak... often, trim wood was paint-grade yellow pine, and it was intended to be painted-- you can see this trim unpainted and stained, all over most of the rest of the house):

The original design of this house is as a one-bedroom house, and this is that lone bedroom. However, knowing that most people looking for houses want at least two bedrooms, the real estate photos showed the original dining room area with a daybed in it, and it has French doors to close it off, so it is suggested that there is an additional possible bedroom space.

The interior doors are the Sears "One-Panel Subframe Design Door"... you can see it, just barely, at the entrance of this bedroom, but you also get a good view of one at the entry to the house (the closet door... see photo of that area, above). Here it is in the Building Supplies catalog:

A Sears "Princess" Chandelier

In the kitchen, hanging near the back of the room, in the eating space, is an old chandelier that is painted white... and, I think that Colin said something to me like, "I guess that's not anything from Sears"... but, I said, "Oh, yes, yes, it is, actually! That's one of the two chandeliers from the Princess line of lighting fixtures!" It most certainly used to hang in the dining room area, the space next to the living room, that Colin now uses as an office, and the previous owners showed with a day bed. Colin has a really nice, modern hanging light fixture there, now, but I didn't get a photo of it. He doesn't have the unusual, modern fixture that is shown in the old real estate photos.

Here is Colin's "Princess" chandelier, as it hangs in the kitchen, and, after the catalog images, there are two photos that show the chandelier seen in the distance, in the kitchen, from the real estate photos:

Colin's original Sears "Princess" chandelier, now painted white

And, here it is in the 1930 Sears Modern Homes catalog:

One of two "Princess" line chandeliers from the "Princess set" from Sears. The other chandelier has the light fixtures hanging down, instead of sitting in their holders, pointing up.

Obviously, the kitchen has been modernized (very nicely).

The back section of the kitchen.

This is the dining room area, where this chandelier would have hung, originally (and, not painted white):

Original dining room space for Colin's house. He no longer has this modern, white lighting fixture, and uses the space as more of an office space. Wonderful windows! The opening on the right is the doorway into the kitchen.

Looking into the original dining room space, from the living room. I believe that Colin said that these French doors are not original to the house.

View, again, from the living room, into the original dining room area.

The Living Room

From the nice little entry vestibule, you walk into the living room. It, like all of the rest of the house, except for the bathroom, has the original hardwood flooring, in very nice condition. I believe it's oak. Sears usually offered oak for the first-floor main living areas, and then offered maple or pine for kitchen and upstairs bedrooms. You could usually upgrade to oak throughout, as well. Since we don't have a catalog page for Colin's custom house, we don't have that information, but it looks likes oak to me.

Colin has different furniture that also really suits the room beautifully, but this is from the older real estate photos.

The fireplace is a working fireplace. The brick-red tile in front of it, and the brick surround, and brick structure, are typical of a fireplace in a Sears house of the 1920s and 1930s, with a kind of colonial look-- the mantel and wood surround is almost like the colonial fireplace surround shown in the catalogs, but it has unexpected, added wood details, and isn't structured exactly as the Sears colonial mantel and surround are (earlier Sears houses, from the 19-teens, for example, sometimes have more involved, all-brick structures for their fireplaces, or fireplaces with an iron insert firebox, as you can see in this 1910 catalog featuring fireplaces and mantels). 

I was showing these photos to my architect sister, Elizabeth Chabot, and I mentioned that I thought that the fireplace looked awfully shallow for a working fireplace... and, she gave me a new piece of information! She explained that this is what's known as a "Rumford fireplace", and that it is called that, because of Count Rumford, who first designed this angled, shallow style fireplace, in the 1790s. Rumford was, as Wikipedia says, "... an Anglo-American physicist best known for his investigations of heat." and, of the Rumford style fireplace, it explains, "It's shallow, angled sides are designed to reflect heat into the room, and its streamlined throat minimizes turbulence, thereby carrying away smoke with little loss of heated room air." Who knew!? Apparently, architects, that's who :) Very interesting new piece of information for me... I honestly learn new things every time I write a blog post. Here is the Wikipedia article about the Rumford fireplace.

My photo of the current look of Colin's lovely living room, focused on the fireplace.

This flue damper control handle is not the type we usually have seen on Sears houses, and an owner of a Sears Hamilton bungalow (Andrew Mutch) says that he has a much simpler control handle. This one certainly looks original, and may have been from Sears, but I don't see it in the catalogs that I have looked in. I haven't checked a regular Sears merchandise catalog of the era, though, only building supplies catalogs.

I just grabbed a quick photo of the oak flooring at one point. The photo, for some reason, doesn't do it justice... it's in beautiful condition, and is definitely the original wood flooring.

Back to the kitchen for a moment: Colin was curious about this doorway at the back of the kitchen, that leads to the back stairway to the basement, where there is also a back entry door. He wondered why it was there (he has the actual door removed, so it's just an open doorway, but the trim and the area from the hinges, is still visible), since there is a back entry door right there if you step down a step, toward the basement stairs. 

Back area of Colin's kitchen, showing the doorway (with door removed) that leads to the area that has the back entry door for the house, and a staircase to the basement.

Since we don't have a catalog floor plan for Colin's house, I couldn't tell him if it was part of the original design, but it seemed kind of typical to me... Colin, let me tell you, that, yes, this is typical. We see the exact same kitchen set up in this authenticated 1930 Sears Winona, in Affton, Missouri, that I wrote about in 2017. If you scroll through to the photos of the kitchen, you see that the original door is still there (and, Colin, this Winona has the same style interior doors as your house), also with a back wall window right next to it, and the door leads to exactly the same setup that your house has... back entry door, and stairs leading to the basement. It makes sense for the extra door to be there, because it helps guard against letting in cold air from outside, and from the basement, and allows the homeowner to avoid spending money on heating an area that is not part of the main living space (in fact, you'd probably save money on your heating and AC bills if you put the door back in place there). To me, this kitchen design is also a bit more support for knowing that this house is, indeed, a Sears-designed house (not just Sears building materials), because this kitchen is really the same layout (windows and doorways and galley style) as the Winona model from 1930 had (though I believe that Colin's kitchen is a little deeper, allowing for that eat-in space).

This is an iron ceiling light fixture back in that area that leads from the back entry door to the basement stairs. It is also most likely original to the house, but I don't find it in the building supplies catalogs... it still may be from Sears, perhaps from a general merchandise catalog.

By the way, this is the view of the kitchen, from the back of the kitchen, toward the front of the house. This door leads into the dining room area.

That door leads to the dining room area in the front of the house, and, again, we see the original wood flooring in the house.

Since I've been mentioning the basement, here are two basement photos from the real estate photos... they had a bed down there, as well, to show, I guess, that you could accommodate another sleeping space down there, if you needed to:

The basement is spacious and clean and dry. Colin had already looked over all of these exposed joists, to try to find marked lumber, and I looked a bit, too, while I was down there, and neither of us saw anything (which, as I explained, above, is not unusual... this is awfully clean wood, and may have been power washed during some renovations to the house, to make the space more useable... you can see that the basement floor is also painted). You can see ductwork running between some of the joists... the house does have central AC.

The bathroom has been nicely refreshed. It has lovely new tile around the tub, and new tile on the floor. Colin wondered if the floor was original, but I had a feeling it wasn't. It looks great, and it's very appropriate for this house, but I am sure that it's not the original tile, because I see it offered at Lowes, and it's too white and clean to be about 95 years old.

I'm pretty sure that this pedestal sink is not the original sink, and the toilet is new, as well.

I believe that the bathtub is the original iron tub with porcelain coating (probably re-coated recently, because it looks fresh and new), because no modern bathtubs are as deep as this. I suppose that it could be something like a "Bath Fitter" tub placed over the original, but that would probably have to have been custom, because of the size and depth. I'm certain that no one sells bathtubs as deep as this, now, however. Also, Colin noted that it's a very short length tub, so it's not even a length for an adult man to do more than sit in... it's clearly meant just to be the space to shower, or bathe children. It looks great.

Can you see how deep the tub is? And, here is the floor tile.

This is my photo of the floor tile. I found the exact porcelain floor tile at Lowe's.

This is the "Metro Penny" floor tile at Lowe's, shown with the choice of a dark charcoal grout, like Colin's bathroom floor tile has. This is a screenshot of the little video on this page of the Lowe's website, where they offer this floor tile.

The Original Owners

Research on Ancestry.com led me to learn the name of the original owners of Colin's house: Otto Spinden and his wife, Norma. They were 34 years old in the 1940 census, so would have been about 26 when they ordered their little custom house from Sears. The 1933 St. Louis City directory shows them still living on Cleveland Place, so their new Sears house on Winona Avenue was probably not yet finished being constructed when the directory was together that year (and, no house is shown at 5343 Winona Avenue yet, that year). The 1936 directory does show them at this address. Otto's 1942 WWII registration shows him, and his wife Norma, listed at this address on Winona Avenue.

More Sears Houses In St. Louis

That's it for Colin's really lovely custom Sears house in South St. Louis city! I thank Colin for contacting me, and for inviting me to come over and see his house. 

I have done extensive research in St. Louis (city, county, and surrounding areas) looking for Sears houses, and have found a few kit houses from other companies, as well, but the majority that I have looked for, and found, are from Sears. Additionally, fellow researcher Matthew H. has done some good street-by-street searching (using Google Maps Streetview, and other mapping resources), and added about 8 or 10 houses in the St. Louis area, to our national list of Sears houses. You can see my blog post listing all of the Sears (and other kit company) houses we've found, here.

Click HERE to see this blog post, which lists all of the St. Louis area kit houses we have on our national list (Colin's house has not yet been added to that blog post).

                                          •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

For more information on who we are, and what we do, visit our website: SearsHouses.com

      (NOTE: This blog is best seen in WEB view, to access the many informational links in the side bar.)