Sears Walton in St. Charles, Missouri

622 Jackson St., St. Charles, MO • authenticated Sears Walton • 1929

Sears Walton, as seen in the 1929 Modern Homes Catalog
You can see that the Jackson Street Walton's porch railings
match the style shown in this 1929 catalog image.
A different porch railings design is shown in the catalogs before 1925.
(Image courtesy of Cindy Catanzaro,
with thanks to Lauren Russell of Antique Home.org for scanning.)

Though I live in St. Louis, Missouri, I work near our state's first capitol, St. Charles, a historic town on the Missouri River. And, I have friends there, who live on tree-shaded streets with an old neighborhood feel... hydrangea bushes, forsythia, oak trees, and all kinds and sizes of character-rich old homes. It's a historic old town, that served as our first capitol from 1821-1826, and it was the starting off point of the Lewis & Clark expedition.

Click here to visit the Historic Saint Charles website.

Most folks who visit St. Charles, make a point of spending an afternoon strolling along Main Street, seen here in this photo. It's a cobblestone street, lined with unique shops and restaurants, just a block up from the banks of the Missouri River.

More interesting info from
the Historic Saint Charles website.

So, this past summer, I decided that it might be worth my while to spend some time in the Saint Charles City Hall, to check out their mortgage deed books. I was planning to meet up for lunch (on Main Street!) with a good friend of mine,  a colleague in the Foreign Languages department (she teachers German, and I teach French and Spanish), who lives in a beautiful old Victorian house in St. Charles.  We had a nice lunch at Bradden's, a restaurant with its own historic background, and then I headed over to the modern building that houses the city offices. I was hoping to find pages worth of mortgage records, because the city offices there serve not just St. Charles City, but the whole of St. Charles County.  I was sure that there must be a good number of Sears houses out in the outskirts of the older communities of St. Charles County.

But... holy cow. I was wrong! And, so disappointed. I found only three mortgages -- and one of those was for a garage.  This Walton on Jackson Street, was my big hit for the day. 

In Missouri, mortgage records are filed as deeds (not the case in some other states).  When searching for the names of the Sears trustee, I have to look in the Inverted Index -- these white books in the photos to the left. Those books list the Grantees alphabetically -- the buyer is listed as the Grantor (I think this is the opposite in some other states' mortgage systems, because their mortgages are not deeds). If you had a buyer's name in mind, you'd look in the red books, where their names are listed alphabetically.

The system here is very neat, and easy to access.  The large books are on shelves with rollers, so the books slide in and out easily, and the pages of the books are heavy-weight paper, that are laminated. 

Once you find a listing in the index, you can go to another set of shelves, to pull out the actual deed books, to read the full deed. 

The Walton 

I love the Walton model. I have always thought it was a cool looking bungalow. I love its deep, wrap-around front porch-- kind of unusual on a bungalow. It's a really nice feature, and the split front gables, along with the porch, give the Walton a spacious feel. I stopped by one day later in the summer, and took photos of the house, as the Google map shots were pretty grainy, but I've included a few from from Bing maps, as well.  Let's take a look:

622 Jackson Street

This double window that juts out a bit, on the front of the house, is the front bedroom that you see in one of the interior
photos.  It has a little window seat built in, that you can see shown on the floor plan from the catalog.

This bump-out area here, is the dining room.

Original tongue-in-groove porch ceilings!

The original owner of 622 Jackson Street, was Charles Wiesinger, who was about 28 when he built his Walton.  He was born in Austria, and came to the U.S. in 1906, around the age of five.  German was his primary language, according to the 1930 census-- St. Charles and its neighboring towns, especially to the west, have a strong German background, as many Germans and Austrians came to live in this area, in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Two Waltons in Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, PA: Fellow researcher, Karen DeJeet, who lives in the Pittsburgh area, has found us a really nice-looking Walton, at 9643 Hilliard Road, in Pittsburgh.  She found it on her own, driving around Pittsburgh, but, fortunately, it also has a Zillow listing, that gives us two nice views of it. It's one that still retains its original cedar siding shingles... or... maybe not. That might be vinyl cedar-shingle-look siding. It does look nice, though! (EDIT: We've been in touch with the owner, who verifies that this is, indeed, the original cedar shingle siding, and, that the house has both Sears shipping labels and stamped rafters, making it now authenticated!)

Now that's a lovely Walton!
9643 Hilliard Road, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 

The real estate listing says that the house was built in 1926.  That jives with the look of the porch railings, which match the 1925-and-later catalog images.

Bethlehem, PA: One day, while perusing real estate listings, I found another Walton in Pennsylvania, this one in Bethlehem.  And, we're in luck with this one! It has some interior photos to show off the great interior woodwork. Its build year is given as 1924, and its porch railing matches the one shown in my 1922 and 1924  catalogs. Click any of the images to make them larger. 

933 Pennsylvania Avenue, Bethlehem, PA
(All images courtesy of the Redfin listing, here.)

From the 1922 catalog -- the 1924 uses the same image.

Here's the Walton's floor plan, to give you an idea of what you'll be seeing for the layout of the rooms in the interior views.

Sears Walton, 1925 catalog.

Nice comparison of the porch railings on the house, and on the catalog image. 

Spacious porch.

It looks like they chose the "Inverted 2-Panel Door" for the interior doors.

From the 1929 building materials catalog, available here,
on Archive.org.

Beautiful woodwork and wood floors throughout the house.

This is the front bedroom, with its window seat windows,
as shown in the catalog image of the floor plan.

Nice craftsman-style trim around even the small windows
(and there's that inverted 2-panel door, again).

I love when there is nice trim around even the bathroom window!

Two nice, big windows, with great trim, and nice wood floors. 

It's not often that we get to see the back of the Walton! 

Of course, the last home shown here is not officially authenticated. But, it matches pretty well spot-on the look of the exterior and the interior of the Sears Walton. 

Hope you enjoyed the Sears Walton!

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Lewis Homes San Fernando in Syracuse, New York

251 Grant Blvd., Syracuse, New York • Authenticated Lewis Homes San Fernando • circa 1924

A month or so ago, I did a very long blog post about the Lewis homes built by contractor and Lewis Homes sales manager, Emil F. Kotz, in Syracuse, New York, in the 1920s.  Most all of those homes were found through research in Syracuse newspapers of the era, and I've since found another: this "comfy cozy" bungalow, known as the San Fernando model.  Kotz showed it in one of his many newspaper ads.

From the Lewis Homes "Homes of Character" catalog,  1924
(see it here, on Archive.org)

Another Emil F. Kotz ad, showcasing a model he had already built for a customer. 
This ad shows the home on Grant Blvd. (it now sits at 251).
(Syracuse American, May,13, 1928 ). 

Here is a Google maps image that more clearly shows
how well the side view of the house matches the catalog image.

The San Fernando was offered in two slightly different sizes: 24' X 40', and 24' X 42' with the same layout of rooms (hardly seems worth the bother to make a second model, doesn't it?). Here are the floor plans, as shown in the 1924 Lewis Homes, "Homes of Character" catalog, on Archive.org. (Click any image to enlarge it.)

I ran across a Zillow real estate ad for this San Fernando on Grant Boulevard (the source of the lovely image above).  Here are a few more photos, which you can click to enlarge:

Love to see those cedar shingles!

New Evidence About The History Of Lewis Homes?

In my previous blog post, I first focused on simply showcasing the 15 homes I had found newspaper ads for.  These were examples of Emil F. Kotz' excellent marketing skills, and they appeared in Syracuse newspapers from 1922 through 1928.  But, now... let's think about those dates.

With more reflection and continued research, I've come to realize that these homes in Syracuse are an indication that the history regarding the era of Lewis Homes may have been misunderstood. It seems clear, now, that Lewis's large, colonial homes were still being marketed, and built, through 1928-- they did not cease production in late 1924. Emil F. Kotz's homes in Syracuse are testament to this.

Most of the resources available about Lewis Homes (based in Bay City, Michigan), state that the company had a drastic change of marketing after their planing mill suffered a severe fire, in November of 1924.  All evidence up 'till now, was that Lewis Manufacturing Company completely, and forever, discontinued the marketing, and building, of their large colonial and four-square homes after that, and switched their focus to small, basic, cottage-type homes, re-branding themselves as Liberty Homes.  And, it's true that, beginning in about 1925 or '26, the only home catalogs that Lewis Manufacturing Company produced, were under that new name, and no longer offered those large colonial and four-square homes. 

This comes from an article in the Syracuse Journal, April 22, 1926,
and refers to several of the homes I showcased in my previous blog post.

However, my research shows that Emil F. Kotz continued not only to market, but to sell and construct Lewis' large colonial models right through 1928.  Of the 15 homes I showcased in my previous blog post, I was able to establish -- using primary sources, such as newspaper articles and newspaper mentions of building permits-- that seven of those were built between 1925 and 1927 (I've gone back to edit that blog post, and include the build date for each of those models).  In fact, even as late as 1928, Kotz was still focusing his marketing on the large homes, as witnessed by a late 1928 ad in the Syracuse Journal, offering five of the big models, along with their prices for construction through his company:

This is taken from my previous blog post.

The catalog cover below, comes from an excellent set of images of Lewis Homes catalogs from 1917-1925, on Daily Bungalow's Flickr feed (Daily Bungalow also offers the informative

AntiqueHome.org website, which provides background and images of house plans by a variety of companies.)

Above, we see the cover of the last known "Homes of Character" catalog put out by Lewis Homes. Its date is 1925, but it was surely put together and published before the November 14, 1924 fire that devastated the company's planing mill in Michigan.

The price list from the 1925 catalog shows all of the  many large models Lewis offered:

You can see this more clearly,
if you're interested,
in the Daily Bungalow Flickr album.

And, here we see an example of one of the Liberty Homes catalogs that Lewis Manufacturing Company offered, beginning in 1926, showing their new focus on small, basic, cottage-style bungalows:

You can see this complete catalog, here,
at Archive.org.

No Longer Ready-Cut?

One possibility to consider, is this: I'm not sure that the term "Ready-Cut", or the words, "the Lewis Method", were included in Kotz's ads after 1924. I see them there in the 1922 and 1923 ads, but, it seems to me that the post 1924 ads use phrases like, "We save you money", or "less expensive", and refer simply to "Lewis lumber". If Kotz was no longer including the term, "Ready-Cut" in his ads, I wonder if that means that, though he was offering Lewis models, and building them, he may have been doing so selling the traditional standard-length boards that were cut to fit on site-- even if they were supplied by Lewis (the 1928 ad shown above, referred to "Lewis lumber prices", and said that they could "beat any local lumber prices", so the lumber was not coming from a local lumberyard).

This is from a March 30, 1922 newspaper ad.
Notice the term "Ready-Cut", nice and big,
at the top of the ad.

Here is an ad that appeared in the Syracuse American, in March of 1928,
without any mention of "pre-cut lumber" or "The Lewis Method".

We may never know for certain exactly how these Syracuse Lewis homes were cut and constructed, but one thing is certain: some of the original large colonial models by Lewis Homes, from the pre-1926 catalogs, were built in at least one town in America, after 1924, thanks to Emil F. Kotz and his construction company.