Sears, Roebuck Home Builder's Catalog - by Sears Roebuck and Co (Paperback)

About the Book

Reprint of rare original catalog includes huge illustrated selection of building materials, fixtures and trimmings, complete with descriptions, specifications, and prices. Hundreds of black-and-white illustrations.

Book Synopsis

All across America during the great building boom of the early 20th century, one of the most popular sources for home-building materials, fixtures, and trimmings was the Sears, Roebuck catalog for home builders. This fascinating volume, reprinted from a rare surviving edition of that remarkably comprehensive publication, offers a peerless view of how thousands of Americans approached the practicalities and aesthetics of homebuilding in 1910.
A huge selection of materials needed to build and finish an early 20th-century home -- lumber, siding, roofing, gable ornaments, interior moldings, oak-veneered front doors, art glass windows, chandeliers, stair balusters, bronze door locks, porcelain-enameled bathtubs, furnaces for hard and soft coal, ornate porch rails and Craftsman china closets among them -- are depicted in detailed line drawings with the original advertising copy, specifications, and prices.
Leafing through these pages, it quickly becomes apparent just how many readers -- and buyers -- this extraordinary book attracted. Many of the products and designs are still very much a part of the American landscape, easily recognizable in nearly every community in America today. Students and enthusiasts of American home and home-product design will find this unique publication an authentic and reliable sourcebook of early 20th-century Americana. Anyone interested in renovating houses of this era will find it indispensable.

About the Author

A self-proclaimed "mirror of our times, recording for future historians today's desires, habits, customs, and mode of living," the Sears catalog debuted in 1888.