07/17/2026
Kit homes in Lake Orion! For a first-time or middle-class buyer in the early 1900s, buying a kit house (via catalogs from Sears, Roebuck & Co. or Aladdin Homes) was generally much easier and far more affordable than hiring a local architect and builder for a fully custom "build new" project.
From the 1916 Sears Home Catalog. They shipped the entire house to you by railroad car. Sears was like Ikea before Ikea. Friends and family would come from all around to help the owner build it. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. Most included the latest comforts and conveniences available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, telephone, and electricity. Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Once delivered, many of these houses were assembled by the new homeowner, relatives, friends and neighbors, in a fashion similar to the traditional barn-raisings of farming families. Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them.-Courtesy Trey Ellis
These kit cottages were also sold by Lake Orion Lumber. Precut pieces were pulled by horses across the ice in the winter and were built in the spring. Below is a link to the Sears catalog of kit houses. In the 1930s these cost around $1097 ($27,000 today).
https://archive.org/details/SearsModernHomes1927Pg00
Check out our Where Living is a Vacation history popup inside Broadway Embroidery & Screen Printing in Downtown Lake Orion
