Kit House of the Week- 2/26/16
Facts & Figures:
Manufacturer: Sears
Model Number or Name: Fullerton
Year Built: 1923
Neighborhood: Montgomery Knolls, Silver Spring, MD
Link to Sears Fullerton Catalog Page
Verification, if any: Visual, original hardware, and unique molding detail[space]
The House
Sitting on an enormous 1/2-acre lot, this former beauty has seen better days. And, better sales prices, too. It sold for just under $760,000 back in 2006. Today, far worse for wear, it’s listed as a bank-owned property at $179,900. What a fall.
One of us thinks it’s a great opportunity. The other (no names, here) thinks that might be a tall order. It needs everything except maybe a new roof. Regardless, to buy a half acre property in Silver Spring with a Ride-on bus just outside your door is a pretty good thing. If you’re interested in owning your own Sears kit house, including this one, please give us a call! We’re real estate agents AND kit house enthusiasts!
One odd-ball discovery we made had to do with the main stairway. Sears originally provided “plinth blocks” to ease the transition at tricky corners most often found on stairwells. The builder of this particular Silver Spring Fullerton either didn’t want the look, or forgot about them until the last minute. We located them at the top of the stairs looking a little forelorn (this is a real kit house nerd detail).[space]
Check out the photo of the bench at the bottom of the stairway in comparison to the catalog detail. It’s exact! (click on images to enlarge)[space]
[space]Washington DC Area Sears Fullerton Photo Library
Click here to see photos of other Fullerton catalog houses in the DC Metropolitan area.
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 the Wahington, DC 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.