Between 1908 and 1940 Sears, Roebuck sold more than seventy thousand mail order house kits through its Modern Homes catalogue, in something near four hundred and fifty designs, and from 1911 until the Depression ended the practice in 1933 it lent the buyer the money as well. A kit arrived by rail as a boxcar of numbered parts: precut and fitted lumber, plasterboard, asphalt shingles, a carved staircase, and the nails and varnish to finish it, with a bound instruction book for the buyer or a local builder to work from. Plumbing, wiring and heating cost extra. Downers Grove took an unusual number of them. Careful counts put sixty six to sixty eight confirmed Sears houses in the village, the fifth largest concentration in Illinois. Local pride has repeatedly inflated that. Claims of 150, of 168, and of more than 200 have all been published, built by volunteers counting any house with arched doors and multi paned windows, and researchers who have checked the deeds and the catalogue plans keep arriving back at sixty eight. Elgin, with about 212, is the real leader in the Chicago area. The other durable local story, that the boxcars stopped here because Downers Grove was the end of the railhead, does not survive checking either: Sears shipped to virtually every suburb and withheld nothing from particular depots. What is true is quieter. Forest Avenue carries a Cornell at 4605 and an Avondale at 4808, with a Lexington at 1240 Chicago Avenue, an Arlington at 4817 Linscott Avenue and a Brookwood at 4905 Parkway Drive, and the village publishes a tour map of more than twenty.
Getting there
41.8017, -88.0122
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
