Sears Jeanette Spawns The Parkside: A Sears House Mortgage in St. Louis, Missouri

Sears Jeanette, floorplan A, later known as The Parkside • 8837 Blewett, Jennings, MO • 1931

What do Sears, St. Louis, the Olympics, and basketball history have in common? This little house in Jennings, Missouri, a suburb north of St. Louis.

On October 6, 1931, E. Harrison Powell (trustee for Sears), signed off on a $2,500 mortgage for Albert J. and Adele Kurland.  They had chosen to build the 2-bedroom Jeanette model, but that year, the Jeanette offered something new: an additional floor plan that included an entry vestibule, and that is what they chose. This was offered as Plan 3283-A.  Just two years later, in 1933, Sears discontinued the Jeanette, and replaced it with the vestibule version, renaming it The Parkside.

The vestibule-addition floor plan of the Jeanette, later marketed as The Parkside.

The Kurlands were a young couple, in their late 20s, with three little ones: their eldest, Robert, and his two little sisters, Mary Ellen and Delores.  Albert worked as a "furniture finisher" and furniture repairman for one of St. Louis' major department stores, Famous & Barr (which was owned by the May Company, which was bought out by Macy's in the 1990s), but by 1940, still living in the family's little Jeanette, he had moved on to Interior Decorator.

Famous & Barr's recognizable sign (to anyone from St. Louis!).
They had a fabulous, thick French Onion soup and everyone loved going to their restaurants for a cup, which was served simply with a big piece of French baguette, and creamy butter. Yummmmm.

The Kurlands, listed in the 1932 Saint Louis County city directory.  "Famous" is how everyone shortened "Famous-Barr".
The 1932 directory lists the Kurlands at 8840 Blewett, but their house was at 8837. I don't know if this was an error, or if there was a change in postal addresses for their block that year.

The 1943 city directory, listing by street name, shows the Kurlands still at 8837.

Despite the tree in front, you can see that this is the Jeanette-A / Parkside, with a bit of an addition off to the right, over the carport. The Parkside can be seen in the 1936 catalog, here.

8837 Blewett from the side.  Note the little window in the vestibule, which can be seen on the catalog floor plan.

The Jeanette, from the 1930 catalog.

The 1932 catalog listing, showing the original Jeanette, and its new option: adding a front vestibule.

In the 1930s and '40s, if Albert Kurland was working for Famous & Barr, he no doubt would have been going in every day to this wonderful location in downtown St. Louis, in the Railway Exchange Building.  Sadly, this location has now closed.

The Railway Exchange building in downtown St. Louis, was built in 1911, I believe. This was the location of Famous & Barr in the 1930s and '40s. Macy's eventually bought out the May Company, which owned "Famous", as we all called it. (Source: billburmaster.com)

A close-up of the entrance to Famous & Barr in the Railway Exchange Building. (source)

Other Jeanettes and Parksides
Fellow researcher Cindy Catanzaro ( Sears Houses In Ohio) is the one who clued me in about the evolution of the Jeanette.  I was perplexed as to how this mortgage that I had, for  a house built in 1931, could be for the Parkside (which it looked like to me), when the Parkside wasn't offered until 1933.  Cindy knows the Jeanette well, as she used to live in one, and I believe that is what sparked her interest in Sears homes.

A beautiful 1929 Jeanette at 803 Snowhill Blvd., Springfield, Ohio.
(Image courtesy of Cindy Catanzaro.)

This summer, Cindy did some traveling, and stopped along the way in Middletown, Rhode Island, to snap a photo of this beautiful Parkside:

Authenticated Sears Parkside at 43 Beacon Street, Middletown, RI. Notice the cute garage in back, and the original cedar shingle siding.  (Image courtesy of Cindy Catanzaro.)

I did a little checking, and found that the Beacon Street Parkside has recently been for sale. Let's take a look at a few of the inside photos (courtesy of the Zillow listing, found here.)

View from the living room, through the eating alcove, into the kitchen.
(click to enlarge)

A Sears front door!   Sears offered the option of choosing from
a variety of glass openings for their doors,
but many of the Jeanettes and Parksides seem to have this large, square opening.

Big beautiful windows in the living room, with that wonderful wood framing.

UPDATE:
The owner of that cute little Parkside on Beacon Street contacted me. She loves her Sears Parkside! Here it is with a fresh new paint job:

43 Beacon Street, Middletown, RI, freshly painted, in 2016 (photo courtesy of K. Lombardi -- credit her website if you use the photo)

 

The owner put together a great little website about the history of her Sears house. Take a look:

Click here to see the website about this cute Sears Parkside.

What Came With The Jeanette?
The Sears Modern Homes 1929 catalog shows us what came standard with the purchase price of the Jeanette:

... and what options you had for your "extras":

You can see that plumbing fixtures were not part of the standard price, as the customers had a few options to choose from, and that was an additional cost.  For the bathroom fixtures, they could choose from the Delmar, Corona, or Plymouth sets of tub, commode, and sink:

Financing Your Sears Home
Sears explained, in the 1929 catalog, that you had three options when buying your home from them. You could pay the full price up front; you could secure a mortgage through a bank, and have the bank send a special letter to Sears, showing that they would be paying Sears on behalf of the homeowner; or you could arrange a 5, 10, or 15-year mortgage directly through Sears, at 6% interest per annum. This was the option that the Kurlands chose, which is why I was able to authenticate this cute little home as a Sears home, by researching mortgage deeds for Saint Louis County.

You didn't have to finance through a mortgage with Sears.

But, if you did take a mortgage, you had 5, 10, or 15 years to pay!

Sears reminded you that your mortgage was about the same as rent payments,
but you were actually buying something with your payments.

And, Sears wanted the homeowners to know
that they were simply offering their mortgage options to facilitate their home sales. 

In order to help the homeowner feel comfortable with inquiring about the full cost they would end up paying if they bought their home from Sears, each catalog included a form that interested buyers could fill in, choosing various options, and send in for a full-price estimate. This one is from the 1930 catalog:

(Click to enlarge.)

Olympics? Basketball?

Do you follow basketball history? I don't, but, apparently, our little Blewett Avenue Sears Jeanette, is the childhood home of legendary olympic and college basketball player, Bob Kurland! I found this by Googling "Albert and Adele Kurland"... and, up came a bio about 7-foot-tall Bob Kurland, who seems to have pretty much invented the slam dunk.  In this little video clip, he is mentioned as one of the top 25 basketball players, and is said to have been the first player to have dunked in a game.

This is a snippet from a little video about Bob Kurland
(source)

Though Bob Kurland grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended Jennings High School,  where he played basketball and ran track, he was lured away for college by Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State), and is considered one of the most important athletes in the history of their university's sports programs.

After college, Bob decided not to go professional, but this allowed him to be a member of the U.S. Olympic Basketball team (though it is not the case now, Olympic athletes used to be required to retain amateur status). He helped lead the U. S. team to two Gold Medal victories, in 1948 (London) and 1952 (Helsinki, Finland).  He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA, in 1961.  

To learn more about Bob Kurland, consult these sources that I used for my information:

• Bob Kurland's biography on Wikipedia

• Bob Kurland's write-up on the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame page

• Bob Kurland's obituary write-up in the Kansas City Star

• This video from the Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame Youtube channel:

Fairy Tales: More Sears Houses in St. Louis

Well, what do you know.  It turns out that the Sears model known as The Fairy, had two different "looks" between the 1920s and 1930s.  And, I didn't know it.

I'm not sure exactly which year was the first for version No. 2, because I don't have access to a 1929 Sears catalog, but my 1928 catalog shows the earlier look, and my 1930 catalog shows "look No. 2".
(EDIT: Cindy Catanzaro has a 1929 catalog, and she left a comment below, telling us that 1930 was the first year of the new style -- the'29 catalog still shows the old-style Fairy.)
 
Everyone's favorite "go to" Sears models book, Houses By Mail, only shows an image of the first version (page 50), but lists the catalog years through 1933, without mentioning the change in style. Curiously, HBM mentions that the Fairy is "similar to" the Culver, a 1933-only model, whose description matches the second version of the Fairy. In fact, though I don't have access to a 1933 catalog, I've seen the Culver shown in a blog post by someone else, and it was, in fact, the exact same model as the Fairy No. 2.  So, it seems that the "look" changed for 1930, stayed that way through 1932, and then was re-named the Culver for one year (1933)... and then discontinued.

No matter what the exterior looks like, the floor plan remained the same throughout the years this house was offered (with the exception of the front door and right-side front window being switched).

(EDIT: The 1929 catalog also has the old-style Fairy; the new style begins in 1930.)

Authenticated Fairy Models in St. Louis

I discovered all of this while I was looking for houses whose mortgages I had found in the city and the county of St. Louis (MO), this past June (2015).

The first Fairy mortgage I found was for this older-style one, at 318 W. Rose Hill, in Kirkwood, MO. Oddly, though, the mortgage was in 1930, when the new style was in place, but this is the old-style "look".

Authenticated Sears Fairy • 1930 • 318 W. Rose Hill, Kirkwood, Missouri

This house has had a small addition on the back, but you see the expected 3 side windows on this side of the house.

You can see, by looking at the difference in the texture of the foundation, that the extra length in the back of this house, is due to an after-initial-construction addition.

Just past the AC unit, you can see a change in the texture
of the foundation, showing us that the back part is an addition.
(The image is from Google maps, which accounts for the little blip 
in the continuation of the house... that's not actually there, 
it's the change in foundation material that I am pointing out.)

I am always interested to see a woman's name as the sole owner on the mortgage deed for an old Sears house.  In this case, the 1930 owner was Mary Lacy, a black woman, born in Alabama in the 1870s, who was already in her 50s when she took out the mortgage for this house.  She had been living in the city of St. Louis, and supported herself as a "laundress", doing laundry for private families, according to the census.  She was already a widow by 1930, but, unfortunately, by 1940, she was listed in the census not as the owner and resident of this house, but as a boarder in a home across the street.  I suppose that this could be an error, and that possibly this block was re-numbered after 1930, and it was actually in this house that she lived. Still, she is listed as "renter", instead of owner, but, of course, that could have been an error based on assumption by the census taker.

Mary Lacy in the 1930 census.

Mary Lacy in the 1940 census.

The next two Fairy models I found mortgages for, were also in 1930, and were the newer style, with the gabled-roof porch, off to the side a bit.

First, we have 936 Simmons, in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb in St. Louis County.  Simmons is just two streets away from Evans, where I found a mortgage for a beautiful Sears Cedars that I had read about a number of years ago.

Authenticated Sears Fairy • 1930 • 936 Simmons, Kirkwood, MO (St. Louis area)

The mortgage for this house was taken out by John H. Scott. And, let me tell you, there were a bunch of John Scotts in the world in 1930.  And, oddly, I couldn't find a census or city directory listing that linked the John H. Scott who signed a mortgage for this house in 1930, to this address.  Nonetheless, he paid $2, 800 for the house, and $500 more, which I'll bet was for the garage. It looks like it may be the Bartlett model garage, though with a different style door.  EDIT: On further investigation, I find that the garage cost would only have been $171, so, I'm guessing (appropriate word!) that perhaps the other part of the $500 might have included the heating and plumbing packages.  I don't believe that those were included in the basic house cost.  We've often seen these "junior mortgages" accompanying the major mortgage, and haven't been certain what they are for.

Sears Bartlett model garage, maybe?

The little half-moon vent window in the peak, was another small difference when the model's "look" changed.

And, here's the right side of our Fairy. The fireplace wasn't a standard feature of this model.

When I found the mortgage, I still did a footprint check against the tax records, and posted about it in our Facebook group.

And the last Fairy that I found a mortgage for, was this one in the city of Saint Louis, at 3470 Macklind Avenue.

Authenticated Sears Fairy • 1930 • 3470 Macklind Avenue, Saint Louis, Missouri

The windows are right.

The columns holding up the front porch should be
doubles on each side, but they must have changed that over the years.

The mortgage was for Lot 12, City Block 4747, and that's what we've got here. 

The couple who signed the mortgage papers for this house, were Jason M Henry, and his wife, Dela. Once again, they were not easy to find in the census records -- they are not listed at this address in either 1930 or 1940.  Interestingly, the city directory for St. Louis in 1932 does show the Henrys moved to this street, but their address is given as 3468, instead of 3470.  Maybe a shuffling of addresses on this street around this time?

1932 City Directory fo the City of Saint Louis, MO

What came with the Fairy?
Here's what the catalog says came standard with the little Fairy model:

From the 1928 catalog: "What our price includes."
I'm guessing that "eaves trough" is a gutter?

You had to pay more for some things, including all of the plumbing, heating, wiring, and electric fixtures.

When you're scouting around the streets in these neighborhoods, you see other small, simple little bungalows like these, and they may be Fairys, as well. They're pretty hard to say for certain, however, without something like a mortgage deed, or marked lumber, I'd think. The little Fairy was only about 620 square feet, so you'd have to be happy with a small amount of space!  While, at first glance, this may seem like a pretty non-descript little house to worry about identifying, I'll bet that it was a big seller for Sears.