Sears No. 124 in Tillamook, Oregon

Possible Sears No. 124 • 7050 Fairview Avenue, Tillamook, Oregon • 1913

Folks, we've got another Sears model No. 124 on the list! At least, we think it's one. This is number

Sears No. 124 as shown in Daily Bungalow's 1916 catalog. 

eleven on our national database of Sears houses in the U.S., and of those, only two (testimonial houses) are authenticated. But, this is such a unique home, that we're pretty confident when we find one. Even the "lookalike" model by Keith's magazine has easily identifiable differences, so we're usually pretty comfortable with the ID.  County tax site records tell us that this house was built in 1913, and that seems plausible:  Houses By Mail tells us that the No. 124 was offered as early as 1911, and continued in the catalogs through 1917, though we've seen it listed in the 1909.

Here's a big concern, though: Sears didn't really market to the west coast. Why? Because they did not have access to any lumber mills/lumber processing plants, in the west. True, they did buy raw material woods (west coast varieties of fir) some years (definitely discussed here, in the 1926 catalog), but they then had to ship that raw lumber all the way to their lumber processing mills... far, far east (in the upper and lower midwest, south, and east coast). Those processing mills then prepared that wood for finished product, and it was from THOSE locations, that the entirety of a kit's wood contents, would be shipped. 

It would be completely cost prohibitive for Sears to ship finished product wood alllll the way back to the west coast, in those famous kit bundles. So, Sears didn't market their houses to the west coast. What does that mean for this house? It means that it is quite possible that this is not from Sears. 

It could be:

• Maybe its blueprints were purchased from the original architect, before he licensed his design to Sears, for their exclusive use.

• Maybe they had bought and built a Sears No. 124 kit from Sears, while living somewhere in the Sears marketing area... the midwest, the east coast, some parts of the south... and, brought those blueprints with them when they moved to Oregon. 

This is TOTALLY SPECULATION on my part (as is any thought of it being a kit from Sears), but I do question Sears having shipped the materials for this house, all the way to Oregon. (Update December 18, 2025)

I learned of this house through a comment left, early in February, on my blog post about the Sears No. 178 in Guthrie Center, Iowa.  The commenter mentioned that the 178 looked just like a house that she drove past every day on the way to work, in Tillamook, Oregon.  Thanks to that comment, I looked around Tillamook (using Google maps streetview), and, amazingly, came across this house.  (Hey, here's a request: if you know of a Sears house you'd like to tell us about, could you give us a street, and a nearby cross street? I had no idea where in Tillamook to look for this house.) Since it was on the commenter's way to work everyday, I decided to focus on a main road, first, and eventually found it. 

Sears No. 178 on the left (from my 1914 catalog); Sears No. 124 on the right, with its drastic dip front porch roof.

The No. 178 and the No. 124 are sisters. Or cousins. Or half-siblings. Or something :) The No. 178 is a full two stories, including front windows on the upper rooms -- one being a bay window, to top the bay window on the first floor front -- and the No. 124 is two full stories, but with an overhanging front porch roof that dips very low in the front, obscuring the upper front windows that the catalog's floor plan says are there.  You can't see them at all, if they are there. Take a look at this image:

You can see from these two front elevation views, that there is much more upper front to see, on the No. 178.  If you look at the floor plans for the two models, next to each other, you see very little difference in the main rooms at all... just the upstairs front right bedroom having a bay window on the 178, that is absent from the No. 124:

Sears No. 178 and No. 124 floor plans.

The No. 124 vs Keith's Magazine's Lookalike

The only lookalike model to the No. 124 that we're aware of, is a plan-only model (not available as a kit) put out early in the 1900s by Keith's Magazine.  The two are remarkably similar, but the side view of our Tillamook house shows clearly that it contains features only seen on the Sears model, and not on Keith's: two full-size upper windows on the upper left elevation, and a small square opening in the side of the porch roof overhang:

The dormers are obviously different, too, but there is another view of this Keith's model,
with a dormer similar to the Sears dormer.

Unfortunately, I don't have any interior photos to show you, of the Tillamook house, but here's a view of the other side of the house (all house views are thanks to Google maps streetview):

However, a Sears No. 124 in Rensselaer, New York came up for sale in the past few years, and we were treated to some beautiful interior photos (click to enlarge):

Here is the Trulia listing for this house.

Gleaming, gorgeous floors and woodwork.

Here's the front bay window.

Our Western U.S. Sears Houses
What is exciting about locating this Tillamook, Oregon Sears house, is that it is so far west in the United States.  We don't believe that there are many Sears homes west of the central part of the U.S. Those we've been able to find are few and far between.  This No. 124 in Tillamook is, in fact, the most far west we have found any Sears house, except for one that we know of in Alaska.  

I'll leave you with a look at the very impressive map that researcher Andrew Mutch (Kit House Hunters) put together for us, with all of the over 6,500 Sears homes that we've located to date:

Our actual map is interactive, so we can zoom in and out, and click to get an address.  This is just a screenshot.

To see the No. 178 that I located in Guthrie Center, Iowa (including interior photos from a real estate listing), go here.

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

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