Kit Homes in America: Ordered by Mail, Delivered by Rail

Kit Homes in America: Ordered by Mail, Delivered by Rail

The Robert W. Ingersoll House in Buffalo, New York, a Craftsman style bungalow, is one of over 70,000 Sears Modern Homes kits built in America before World War II. Photo credit: Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Homeownership has long been a cornerstone of the American Dream. During the first half of the 20th century, thousands of American families were able to realize the dream of homeownership by purchasing a kit home by mail. These mail-order kits included most of the materials, supplies, and instructions needed to build a house that, after being delivered by rail and truck and assembled on the purchaser's site, was virtually indistinguishable from a conventional home. After their introduction in the United States in the late 19th century, kit homes remained popular into the 1950s, with eight major kit home manufacturers nationwide, numerous local firms, and some noted architects involved in their production. The advent of standardized factory production, mail-order catalogs, and a mature national railroad network underpinned the success of the kit homes industry. With slogans such as "Save Your Rent Money," "Give the Kiddies a Chance," and "Built in a Day," kit home manufacturers marketed their products throughout the U.S. and Canada during a period of increasing demand for decent, affordable housing. Some manufacturers also offered mortgages in the early 1900s when they were not yet widely available, putting homeownership within reach of average families.

Kit Home Basics

The offsite prefabrication of building components has a long history, stretching back to ancient Rome. One of the earliest recorded instances of a more complete kit home is the "portable colonial cottage" sold in Australia in the 1830s. Also in the 1830s, the Manning Portable Cottage was fabricated and marketed by the Mannings, who were London carpenters. D.N. Skillings and D.B. Flint of Boston marketed a catalog of "Sectional Portable Houses" by 1861. The earliest U.S. kit homes were simple wooden structures with no provision for indoor plumbing or electricity; however, as the industry evolved in the 20th century, both features became standard offerings. Kits contained blueprints, assembly instructions, and as many as 30,000 parts made in factories. The parts were labeled and referenced on the plans. Wood framing pieces were already measured, cut, and ready for installation. Electrical and plumbing components, paint, nails, and other hardware store items were included. Concrete, brick, and masonry materials were sourced locally. Manufacturers typically shipped the components of kit homes by rail to the destination community and then trucked them to the building site. Homeowners assembled these kits themselves, often with help from friends, family, or local contractors.

Growing Demand for Kit Homes

Social and economic conditions in the early 20th century fueled the demand for kit homes. The period from 1918 to 1930 was a time of relative prosperity in the nation, which fueled demand for affordable and decent housing. After World War I, demand for kits spiked as returning veterans needed housing. This period also saw high levels of immigration from Europe. "Streetcar suburbs" began to emerge in 1888 with the construction of electric streetcar lines, which opened new areas for development on the urban fringe. Suburbanization accelerated even more after 1915, as automobile ownership rapidly grew. Manufacturers moved to the urban fringe and workers followed, creating additional demand for housing, and part of the housing demand triggered by continued westward expansion was met with kit homes.

Mail-order catalogs were a major part of American family life in the early 20th century, particularly in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. The major kit sellers' marketing strategies relied heavily on elaborate catalogs featuring descriptions and illustrations of homes and floorplans. This presentation offered kit buyers the opportunity to compare different housing styles and price points and visualize a new standard of living for their families.

This 1925 Arts and Crafts style Sears Marina bungalow kit in Amherst, Ohio is representative of more modest Sears kits. Despite its lower cost, it features interesting architectural details. It has replacement windows and siding. Photo credit: Warren LeMay, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Major Kit Suppliers

The first major American kit home company was Aladdin Houses of Bay City, Michigan. Aladdin offered Craftsman, bungalow, American Foursquare, Colonial Revival, and, eventually, ranch house kits. Aladdin's early innovations included sale of kits by mail order, machine-cutting wood components that were numbered and cross-referenced to blueprints, offerings that included a variety of styles, and the cultivation of an Aladdin "community" among their customers that offered customer assistance and design advice. The company also distributed the Homecraft catalog, which offered home furnishings, cookware, lighting, and plumbing fixtures. Many of Aladdin's later competitors adopted these innovations. Aladdin Homes sold an estimated 100,000 kits, including approximately 70,000 in the U.S. and approximately 30,000 more in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Africa.

Other major national companies were Sears, Roebuck and Company; Montgomery Ward and Company; Harris Brothers Company; Lewis Manufacturing Company; International Mill and Timber Company; Gordon-Van Tine Company; Ray H. Bennett Lumber Company, North Tonawanda, New York; and E. F. Hodgson Company. These major companies were primarily located in the Midwest, near rail and water transportation hubs. Smaller companies also existed to serve local markets.

Sears, Roebuck and Company was one of the nation's most prominent producers of kit homes, which it sold from 1908 to 1940. Sears sold nearly 75,000 kits ranging from small cottages to multistory homes with portes cochères (roofed structures connecting a driveway to a home's entryway) and sleeping porches. Sears' first kit catalog, the Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans, listed 22 designs. By 1940, Sears offered more than 400 different home styles. Sears Modern Homes were truly modern, with features such as electricity, indoor plumbing, and central heating that were not yet standard in American homes. Sears' top-of-the-line kit, the 10-room Magnolia, was showcased with a foldout page in the 1918 catalog and featured a Neoclassical design, two fireplaces, two baths, a grand staircase, and a two-story colonnade front façade.

Sears also offered financing for kit homes from 1911 to 1934. Mortgages as we know them today were rare at that time. Sears offered loans with terms of 5 to 15 years for building materials and, eventually, land and labor. Unlike traditional lenders, Sears did not ask borrowers for information about finances, which allowed borrowers who might have been rejected for bank loans to become homeowners. Sears left the kit home market by 1940 because of the declining profitability of mortgages and supply line difficulties. Montgomery Ward also offered financing but stopped in 1931 because of rising mortgage defaults during the Great Depression.

Manufacturing, Building, and Transportation Technology

American balloon framing technology, which provided a standardized method of fabricating wood framing, was a precursor of the mass-produced kit home. Wood framing was a departure from earlier European home construction techniques, which typically required stone, complex joinery, and specialized craftsmen not widely available in America. Balloon framing allowed people with basic carpentry skills to assemble kit homes.

This 1923 Sears Mission Revival style Alhambra model is in Cincinnati’s Westwood neighborhood. The Alhambra was one of Sears’ higher-end kits. Photo credit: Warren LeMay, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Standardized production, pioneered by Henry Ford's automobile plants, also affected the kit home industry. The Aladdin Company corresponded with Ford Motor Company to better understand standardized factory production techniques. Frank Lloyd Wright's American System-Built Homes and Konrad Wachsmann's and Walter Gropius' Packaged House system for the General Panel Corporation are examples of renowned architects of the era recognizing the promise of kit homes. The buildout of the national system of freight railways facilitated the large-scale production and distribution of kit homes. By 1902, more than 200,000 miles of freight railroads connected manufacturers and distributors to customers. As with other mass-produced goods, the nationwide reach of the railroads created a vast market area and industrial economies of scale. Sears asserted that a purchaser of a kit home would reduce construction time by 40 percent and would save 30 percent in total costs. Kit homes were more affordable because of the massive buying power of the kit manufacturers; the lack of a middleman; and precise, standardized production, which reduced the amount of wasted material.

Surviving Examples

Although detailed sales records are not available, researchers have found and documented thousands of surviving kit homes throughout the country. Reportedly, many of the current owners were not aware that their vintage homes were built from kits. The largest concentrations of documented Sears kit homes may be in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and its suburbs, with approximately 1,000 homes, and Cincinnati, Ohio, and its surrounding communities in southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky, with more than 700 homes. Concord and Roanoke Rapids in North Carolina reportedly have many Aladdin homes, possibly because they are near the former Aladdin mill in Wilmington, North Carolina. Surviving kit homes such as the 1925 Sears Martha Washington colonial-style home in Washington, D.C., that sold for $1.06 million in 2016, sell for 21st century prices. Many individual kit homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register Eastwood Historic District in Cincinnati, Ohio, features 10 kit homes, and Old Town College Park in College Park, Maryland, includes a Sears Alhambra.

Kit Home Manufacturers in 2025

Today, several U.S. firms offer prefabricated kit homes. Modern technology, including computer-aided design, computer numerical control manufacturing (using machine tools controlled by pre-programmed computer software, often called CNC) and 3D printing have taken kit manufacturing to new levels. Generally, modern kits offer greater freedom for customization, but the kits are not as all-inclusive as some of the golden age kits because modern homes and building codes are so complex. DC Structures of Damascus, Oregon, offers a line of customizable kits, and each kit includes prefabricated components and instructions. DC Structures can even create a kit from a customer's architectural plans. Lindal Homes of Seattle, Washington, has been manufacturing and selling post-and-beam home kits since 1945. Pacific Modern Homes offers computer-designed kit homes in a range of styles and sizes. The company's kits feature preframed wall sections and trusses with preinstalled windows and wall sheathing.

Impact on the American Housing Landscape

Aside from advancing homeownership, the kit home movement, with its reliance on standardized plans, prefabrication, and mass production, helped lay the groundwork for today's large-scale suburban homebuilding industry as well as the production of modular and manufactured housing. Sears' early introduction of mortgage financing was an important step in the emergence of modern mortgage products. The appealing traditional architecture and generous amenity packages of the higher-end kit homes may have raised the bar for what buyers expected in a middle-class home. Today's early efforts to mass-produce 3D-printed housing is the latest evolutionary step in the industry that began nearly 200 years ago with the portable cottage kits sold by London carpenters.

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