Sweet Lorain (In Landisville, Pennsylvania)

Sears Lorain • 270 Broad Street, Landisville, Pennsylvania

Sears Lorain, 1940 Sears Modern Homes catalog

With apologies to Cliff Burwell and Mitchell Parish, I present to you, a sweet Lorain, the model offered by Sears, not the song so sweetly sung by Nat King Cole. The song, My Sweet Lorraine, was published in 1928, and followed, the next year, by this cute little model by Sears, first seen in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs, in 1929. It made its last appearance in the final catalog, in 1940, and that's the image that you see here, to the right.

The Sears Lorain is a compact little house, and this one in Landisville, Pennsylvania, is in beautiful, almost-original condition (updated kitchen), with natural-wood Craftsman style trim, and beautiful, natural hardwood floors. Let's take a look at what the real estate listing has to show us, along with some info from the catalogs.

Here's the Lorain in the 1929 catalog 

That first year, the catalog included a list of what was offered, standard, with the Lorain, and what optional upgrades you could make.

You'll notice, in the second image, above, that the trim (for windows and doors) is referred to as "Back Band Style". Here is that style Craftsman trim, in the catalog:

From the 1930 Sears Honor Bilt Building Materials catalog

And, that's exactly the style that you see, around windows and doors in this Lorain in Landisville, Pennsylvania:

This house is said to have been built in 1939. Pennsylvania's assessor build dates are often wrong, but when the date does not end in 0 or 5 (1900, 1920, 1925, for example, are the usual dates we see, for this era), we have more reason to believe that the build year is accurate, in Pennsylvania. Also, the folks who are listing this house, know that it's a Sears Lorain, and, in this case, it may be that the house has been in the family since it was built, and that they know when their grandparents (perhaps!) built it. Who knows... but, it was still offered in 1939, so it could be accurate.

Here is the floorplan, as shown in the 1940 catalog:

Sears Lorain floorplan, in the 1940 Sears Modern Homes catalog

That year's catalog showed the floorplans with this cool sort of 3-D style, helping you visualize the plan. But, in 1929, the plans were shown like this:

Sears Lorain first-floor floorplan, 1929 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Sears Lorain second-floor floorplan, 1929 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Here's that nice, long stretch of living room and dining room:

More of the natural-wood Back Band craftsman style window trim and floor moulding, with oak hardwood floors in pristine condition.

The downstairs and upstairs bedrooms have the same window and door trim, and we see an interior door style that was shown in the catalogs for years:

first floor bedroom with mirrored closet door

upstairs bedroom

It's always interesting to see the doors and other elements, in the catalog. This is the 1930 Sears Building Supplies catalog.

There's our Sears one-panel door, in this upstairs bedroom, and that's the small front dormer

Ha! I'm sure that wasn't standard for the Lorain! I guess, rather than try to make a whole master bathroom, en suite, they came up with this compromise? It's funny... in Pennsylvania, they have the tradition of "The Pittsburgh potty", a toilet just kind of sitting out in the open, in the basement of a Pittsburgh house... purportedly to accomodate the miners or brick workers when they came home, before heading into the nice part of the house. I guess this is the Landisville Potty version!

Although the 1929 catalog says that Sears Stratford design door handle hardware came standard, this house does not look to have that. There are no real close up photos of the door handle hardware, but the design looks pretty rectangular, though slimmer than the Chicago or Shefton designs that Sears offered for many years (and other companies offered similar designs). I think that it may be the Elgin brand Tomorrow door handle design, with its art deco styling, that we see in the 1930 building supplies catalog:

1939 Sears Building Supplies catalog

To get upstairs, the Lorain had a nice staircase and railing, even though the upstairs was only a half floor. Here is a good view of the upstairs hallway and landing and staircase, with its chunky craftsman staircase newel.

The staircase actually comes up in the big dormer on the back of the house 

The staircase comes up to that big back dormer.

This is a nice design, to lead up to the upstairs bedrooms.

Craftsman style staircase newel offered by Sears in their 1930 Building supplies catalog

Did you happen to notice the nice blue shutters on the front of the house? They have a small urn shape cut-out, and that was one of the designs that Sears offered.

1930 Sears Modern Homes building supply catalog

UPDATE October 2023:

The current owners of this nice Lorain have found stamped lumber in the house, so we are now excited to list this house as an authenticated Sears Lorain:

This is the stamped lumber that the current owner found.

That's it for our sweet, sweet Lorain... by Sears. Let's finish off with a little of "My Sweet Lorraine", sung by Nat King Cole, with Oscar Peterson on piano, Ray Brown on bass, Herb Ellis on guitar, and Coleman Hawkings on sax:

Here it, watch it, on YouTube, Nat King Cole, circa 1958

Ahhh, but here's a realllllly smooth, remasterd version... just wonderful! This is the one that I used to hear my sweet dad singing, walking around the house :)

See it, hear it, here, on YouTube -- a really nice version... very, very nice

A Clutch Of Columbines

Today, I'm going to present a small group of Columbines. A clutch... of Columbines.

Not this Columbine:

Which, according to Martha Stewart Weddings, looks nice in a bohemian clutch, with pansies and brodiaea....

But, rather, the Sears Columbine... a nice little house that they offered from about 1918-1929:

The Sears Columbine, as shown in the 1929 Sears Modern Homes catalog.
Bedrooms on the upper floor were an available option, for about $220 more, in 1925.

I've been doing a good bit of mortgage research in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania of late. I've run across a couple of examples of a model that I really like, and then my co-researcher, Andrew, ran across one, too... and then I realized that we've found a good number of this little model, especially in Pennsylvania. This model is the Sears Columbine, offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs from about 1918-1929.

So, let's take a look:

We've found them in stucco:

40 W. Wissahickon Avenue, Flourtown, Pennsylvania (Springfield Township).
This house is authenticated. Frank and Emily Sanson took out a $4,800 mortgage with Sears, in 1924, to build this house. 

same house, at 40 W. Wissahickon Avenue -- The wrought iron eagle may have been added in the 1960s, when Early American design elements were very popular in the east. My family had one over the fireplace.

Another authenticated Columbine in Flourtown, Pennsylvania: 6332 Arlingham Road (located by Andrew Mutch)

 We've found them in wood:

This one is in Delaware, Ohio, at 248 West Lincoln Avenue, and is also authenticated. The earliest catalog examples included the dentil trim along the curved roof of the porch.  Both Andrew Mutch and Cindy Catanzaro brought this beauty to my attention.

This one is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at 205 Irene Street, found for us by Karen DeJeet.

 We've found them with wings:

Karen located this Columbine, as well: 921 Fawcett Avenue, McKeesport, Pennsylvania

another view

...and without:

Another example with the triptych window upstairs, in the front gable: 849 Edkin, West Chester, Pennsylvania

And, we've even found them in brick (veneer, that is):

Sears Columbine at 205 Parkside Avenue, Reading, Pennsylvania

Another view of that same house, and, again, this house was located by Andrew Mutch.

Inside The Columbine
Here is the floor plan, which didn't change over the 11 years that the Columbine was offered:

And, bedrooms could be finished off upstairs, for an extra fee:

This is from the 1925 catalog. This option cost $236 in 1929.

And, here's what the standard price included:

This is the base price that the Sansons would probably have paid for their Flourtown, PA, Columbine, in 1924. Their mortgage of $4,800 probably included the extra cost for stucco, and the price of construction labor. I believe that wiring and bathroom fixtures were an extra fee, as well.

The Other Porch Option
The Columbine is one of the few Sears houses that offered a different style porch as a standard option, not a specialized customization. If you ordered the B model of the Columbine, you got this look to your front porch:

This is from my 1929 catalog (actually, it's Cindy Catanazaro's catalog, scanned for me by Lauren, of Daily Bungalow ).

The catalog shows an off-set gabled porch roof for option B. But, we've found an authenticated, 1925 Columbine, in Maryland, with a wide, centered gabled front porch roof. It looks great:

7719 Carroll, Takoma Park, MD • 1925
This house was located through mortgage research by Andrew Mutch, and is an authenticated Sears house.

To close up, here's the view of the Columbine that was shown in the earliest years that it was offered. This is from the 1922 catalog:

As Cindy always says: Thanks for following along!

And, if you're interested in seeing a collection of Sears Clyde examples, check out her latest blog post, here, at Sears Homes in Ohio.