by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
These days one cannot go a day without seeing either an Amazon van or UPS or Fed Ex truck at least once, if not multiple times. The internet has made the movement of commerce extremely rapid. But just a few decades ago, catalogs served as the interface for placing orders for things people needed delivered to their homes.
Items that could be ordered from catalogs ranged from simple household items to the entire house itself. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, building kit homes from mail-order catalogs was a huge trend, especially in the Midwest and Seneca County was no exception.
The main three companies contributing to growing neighborhoods were Aladdin Readi-Cut Houses, Montgomery & Ward, and Sears & Roebuck Co.
Because kit homes flooded the market at the turn of the century, many of the models one could select from the catalog had features of the Neo-Classical style that was popular at the time. Other popular styles were Queen Anne and bungalows.
216 Jefferson Street was originally built as a parsonage home for First English Lutheran Church in 1912. It’s one of the many houses that were researched for “Building of the Week,” a document digitized on the Seneca County Digital Library.
The Seneca Sentinel: Building of the Week has a section of articles written by former Heidelberg College students describing wood frame houses built during this era. Each article includes who built the home and architectural features of the houses. and they note the similarities between houses chunked together on the same street.
The student who was assigned to research 167 North Sandusky Street, built in 1902 by Standard Pottery executive George Brian, exclaimed, “The verandah … is very similar to that on 175 North Sandusky St., immediately to the north. The similarity is even more interesting when one realizes that Brian’s employer, Fred Conradt, lived at 175!” The North Sandusky Street Historic District was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.
Another house, 216 Jefferson St., was built as a parsonage for the First English Lutheran Church and remained a parsonage until 1979. The student who researched this house compared it to the Methodist parsonage diagonally across the street.
Another rectory in Seneca County is also rumored to be a Sears kit home – that of the former St. Peter’s Catholic Parish in Alvada, built in 1914.
Kit homes were desired during this time as for their affordability and the onset of World War I ensured their continued popularity. “They provided housing for the thousands of workers and their families who moved to cities to work in war-related industries. To meet the demands of the war effort, these houses were made of wood and designed to be quickly and easily assembled. After the war, many of them were sold to returning veterans,” Built PreFab’s website states.
154 S. Monroe St. was a kit home designed by George Franklin Butler. The design was ordered through his “New Model Dwellings” publication in the late 1890s.
Once the war was over, the kit home market began shifting. While one could still order one via catalog, local lumber yards and hardware stores also provided the catalogs and assistance.
In the 1920s, Montgomery & Ward signed a 20-year lease on three store rooms in the Gottlieb block on Washington Street in Tiffin. Sears & Roebuck Mail Order Office occupied 78 S. Washington in the 1940s and 1950s (after Tiffin Hardware).
While both existed at one time in Tiffin, the city has a few unique mail-ordered houses from a much more niche company. George Franklin Butler, who “succeeded in one of the nation’s earliest mail-order house plan businesses,” was the architect behind 154 S. Monroe St. and 81 Main St., featured in his “New Model Dwellings” published in 1895.
To do your own kit home sleuthing in your own neighborhood, visit the section called “Identifying Sears Homes” on https://searshomes.org/.
Works cited:
Between the Eighties, Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65422
Built Prefab. “History of Prefab Housing in North America.” Jan. 23, 2023. https://builtprefab.com/the-history-of-prefab-housing-in-north-america/
Howe, Barbara. “Building of the Week.” Seneca Sentinel. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28318
Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Seneca County, Ohio History and Families”. 1998. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319
Huss, John. “Works of Nationally Known Architect Discovered in Tiffin.” Tiffin Historic Trust. Preservation Post. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/74354
Wikipedia. “Prefabricated Home.”