Time to confess: we’re not always failproof when it comes to the authentication of historic kit houses. There’s the case of the “Vexing Vallonia” for instance, that Marcie called a possible “Sears knock-off.” It wasn’t vexing for too long, though. A few years later, we found a Sears mortgage for the original purchase and construction of the mail-order home.
So this time around, as the house is on the market again, renovated five years ago and quite obviously cherished by the new owners since then, there’s no doubt the house is the real deal! And while the fake “brick” sheet asphalt siding might have been original, the vinyl siding that replaced it is actually a lot more becoming (hard to believe I just said that, isn’t it?). The kitchen has been opened up to include one of the first-floor bedrooms, there’s an airy “morning room” addition, and the house overall is bright and inviting. It just hit the market for $1,200,000, and the listing‘s 3-D tour (courtesy of Redfin) lets you take a closer look at a lot of the little details, old or new. (You can find a 1920s catalog image and floor plan for comparison here.)
The deceivingly spacious, 4-5-bedroom “Vallonia,” was one of the more popular models from the Sears catalog, at least in this area. As of today, there are six known Vallonias still standing in Washington, DC. Another seven, including the Ridge Drive one, are on our list for the DC suburbs. Incidentally, one of my weirdest real estate moments years back occurred when I was trying to show this Vallonia in College Park, MD.
Of course, the puzzling Vallonia encounter also happened during the early years of this blog. The internet and lots of gadgets have brought researchers and resources much closer; we’ve learned so much more over the past five years. And the messages, emails, tips, and photos from our readers have educated us more, one house at a time. Just a couple of weeks ago, for instance, I got a message from a fellow Realtor, Simon Sarver, who told me he was the proud owner of a Vallonia in DC’s Langdon neighborhood. There was no mention of the home’s origins when he bought the house a couple of years ago. That it might be a kit house only dawned on him much later when he saw a similar house in a Pinterest post. There’s a lot of original detail in the house–hopefully, we’ll get to document it one day.
In the meantime, check out this DC Vallonia which just went under contract in the Foxhall neighborhood near Georgetown hospital. And here are a few more of our local Vallonias:
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Are you Interested in Kit House History? We can help!
Cati and Marcie are Realtors by day and house history enthusiasts by night. We specialize in NW DC and close-in Montgomery County, MD, but cover the entire Washington metropolitan area. House History–the hidden stories behind the walls of the homes we sell or walk by every day–has long been a passion of ours (In fact, for Cati, a former journalist, it was what ultimately brought her to the world of DC real estate).
We have written about many house-stories in our individual blogs over the years, and we sometimes have surprised (and delighted!) clients with our research findings. When the time allows, we love digging in archives, city records and historic collections. What we find, is sometimes funny, sad or scary, but it’s always a part of the DC area’s story as well. And when it comes to history of any kind, there could not be a better place for that than the metropolitan area of the Nation’s Capital!
If you have followed us for even a short while, you probably know that one of our special interests are the mail-order homes of the early 20th century. In many Washington, DC, neighborhoods and in the city’s older suburbs, we can find an abundance of those historic kit houses. (More often than not, the owners have no idea that some 90 or 100 years ago, their house arrived neatly packaged on a railroad car, in thousands of numbered pieces.)
You can learn more about catalog homes here, “like” our Facebook page for updates or email or tweet us with questions or suggestions for houses to write about.
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*Catalog images provided courtesy of Internet Archive.