As Marcie and I have been chasing (and writing about) kit houses for a while, we’ve always been interested in their history, or better: their connection to history. sometimes, I have found an old ad in the Washington Post that advertised a house we identified, or that promoted the local mail-order offices from Sears and Lewis. Sometimes information about the people who lived there in the early years can be found, about their successes or their death.
Most of the time, however, there’s a blank. We can only speculate (and we often do!). More often than not, current kit house owners have no idea their home was built from a kit, and sometimes they have no idea what that even means. (We’ve been asked whether that meant it was “kind of manufactured” or “prefabricated.”) Other people, however, who have heard of kit homes and are excited about them, frequently have come to believe their house is a kit when in fact it’s not.
That said, it’s always delightful to come across a real kit house history, like the one that’ so lovingly documented on this little website. The Troyers of Kansas are telling the almost 100-year old story of their Sears “Concord,” complete with lots of pictures. Gee, I love this. Really.