Oh, give me a home from catalog by phone

My son lives in a century-old house he has been rehabbing in Crystal Lake for the last four years or so. It’s a solid little house with great bones — and he recently told me that it’s a Sears house.

Sears! Of course! The low-tech Amazon of a century ago, with the mail-order catalog from which you could buy a hat, a hammer, or even a house.

I had always heard of Sears ready-to-assemble houses, ordered by catalog and delivered by rail from 1908 until 1940, and had always wanted to see one. Early catalog models included all building materials necessary, though later models (known as kit homes) made it even easier with pre-cut lumber and every nail, screw or bolt you would need—along with an inches-thick instruction manual that probably began with the ironic words: “Some assembly required.”

The houses were so affordable and adorable, local lumberyards decided to get into the business of selling pre-cut kit homes, saving the buyer the cost of rail shipping fees from New York, New Jersey, Ohio or Pennsylvania where Sears homes were manufactured. Many were direct copies of the original Sears homes, and only subtle clues could tell them apart.

Sadly, when my son started unraveling those clues, he learned that his 1920s house was one such kit, an exact copy of a Sears house, but not technically from Sears.

But along the way, both he and I did enough research about Sears catalog homes until details were oozing from our ears, so I thought I would share some of it with you rather than let it go to waste.

You’re welcome.

Richard Sears sold goods (originally only watches) by catalog as early as 1886, and he quickly expanded inventory. By 1895 his “Big Book” spanned 532 pages.

The Sears catalog was a game-changer, because now the two-thirds of Americans who lived in rural areas could enjoy the best that the modern world had to offer without traveling to big city stores and manufacturing centers to get it.

And for urban minority groups whose race or ethnicity denied them entry to nearby city department stores, it was a way to access the same amenities that any more privileged white American might enjoy.

Sears opened his first retail store in Chicago in 1925, but even with brick-and-mortar Sears stores popping up all across America, the catalog was still a loved American icon, in part because it was a pioneer in providing goods that catered to both men and women.

And best of all, last year’s catalog always found a new use in the outhouse.

During World War II, catalogs left by American soldiers in the Philippines introduced a whole new international audience to Sears. Similar markets also blossomed in places like Cuba and Mexico, and the company flourished. By 1973, the Sears name topped the tallest building in the world—Chicago’s 110-story Sears Tower.

By then, pretty much any shopping mall in America was anchored by a Sears store. All through my youth and young-adulthood, Sears—or its catalog—was the go-to place for anything you needed.

And yet, when my son told me that his house might have come from Sears, I wondered to myself: When was the last time I ever shopped at a Sears store? The Woodfield Sears—the last remaining in Illinois—closed in 2021, and it had been years since I shopped there.

And now? How far would I have to travel today if nostalgia moved me to go shop at a Sears store?

Well, following the closing of the Tukwila, Washington, store on December 15, there are now only seven Sears stores left in the mainland United States, and one in Puerto Rico. So if your bucket list includes shopping at Sears, you might want to gas up the car (or boat) and hit the road pretty soon.

But how did an American giant like Sears become a fading history footnote?

The great Sears decline began in the early 1980s, when company executives decided to diversify out of retail sales and into non-retail entities like Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker in 1981. And then Prodigy and Discover in 1985. Entities that have nothing to do with selling hats, hammers or houses.

By the early 1990s, with their stores closing all across America, Sears had relinquished the title of the world’s largest retailer to Walmart.

And then in 1999, Amazon expanded its online catalog inventory beyond books and started offering home goods — and then pretty much everything else.

America now does its shopping in pajamas by computer or phone, changing forever our notion of what a “store” might be. Today, as with Sears long ago, you can have a Walmart or Amazon kit house delivered to you for as little as $16,000.

And that marvelous Sears Catalog? When was the last time I saw one of those? It had to have been more than 30 years ago, because the “Big Book” went bust in 1993.

And so Sears, the mighty king of American retail, has diminished to the verge of extinction, leaving behind only memories and scattered details pulled together by extinction-adjacent columnists.

But what about Walmart and Amazon? Have they learned the lesson well enough to guarantee their existence eternally? What could possibly bring today’s retail kings down as low as Sears has fallen?

Will the day come when some young pup in your family asks you: “What was the big deal with ordering stuff from this ‘Amazon’ you talk about?”

And you can tell them about the agonizing old days of the 2020s, when you had to wait until tomorrow for curbside delivery of hats, hammers, or houses.

That is, if you can get them to turn away from their 3D laser printers long enough to listen.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.

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