by Tdarcos » Fri Jun 29, 2012 9:22 am
AArdvark wrote:( in movie-tone announcer voice)
The year was 1949. Thousands of world war II servicemen [ ] discovered 'the suburbs!' [ ] One company answered their cry: Sears, Roebuck and Co.
'Vark, you don't know the half of it. Sears sold people actual
houses out of their mail-order catalog. You paid what was a very reasonable price, for some reason the number $800 comes to mind (probably equivalent to about $20,000 today) and they shipped you everything, the lumber, the tools, the nails and fasteners, the house was pre-built and pre-cut, like build-it-yourself furniture from IKEA. The instructions told you how to put the house together or you could hire a contractor.
Those houses were sold from near World War I until about World War II and a lot of them are still in use, today.
Sears made great stuff back then, it was the reason so many people bought from them by mail order.
But Sears didn't change along with the times and fucked up so badly that they closed their mail-order catalog (JC Penney still has theirs) and ended up being bought by K-Mart.
http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/ Sears Mail Order homes story where I found out a few things. I knew sears sold a few houses, I didn't realize it was more like 75,000.
[quote="AArdvark"]( in movie-tone announcer voice)
The year was 1949. Thousands of world war II servicemen [ ] discovered 'the suburbs!' [ ] One company answered their cry: Sears, Roebuck and Co. [/quote]
'Vark, you don't know the half of it. Sears sold people actual [i]houses[/i] out of their mail-order catalog. You paid what was a very reasonable price, for some reason the number $800 comes to mind (probably equivalent to about $20,000 today) and they shipped you everything, the lumber, the tools, the nails and fasteners, the house was pre-built and pre-cut, like build-it-yourself furniture from IKEA. The instructions told you how to put the house together or you could hire a contractor.
Those houses were sold from near World War I until about World War II and a lot of them are still in use, today.
Sears made great stuff back then, it was the reason so many people bought from them by mail order.
But Sears didn't change along with the times and fucked up so badly that they closed their mail-order catalog (JC Penney still has theirs) and ended up being bought by K-Mart.
http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/ Sears Mail Order homes story where I found out a few things. I knew sears sold a few houses, I didn't realize it was more like 75,000.