MAIL-ORDER MANSIONS -- HISTORIC TREASURES by Pam North Denver has them, as do many other Colorado towns and cities. There's at least one not far from Nederland - a tiny cabin just west of Pinecliffe has the distinction of being a modest example of what was commonly called a "kit house." Its current owner has observed the numbered structural components, and was told by his grandparents that railroad workers helped the family assemble the house. There likely are other such homes in this area. Over 100,000 kit homes were built in the United States between 1908 and 1940, and many of their inhabitants have lived in them completely unaware of the historical and architectural significance of their domiciles. New interest has been generated in these interesting bits of Americana. The Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan originally premiered the concept in 1906, but it was Sears Roebuck that took the idea and ran with it. In 1908 the company's thick catalog, featuring over 100,000 items, offered 22 plans for moderately-sized houses, each to be accompanied by specifications and construction supplies. Sears' visibility in mass-merchandising quickly made it the leader in retailing houses by mail. Affordable housing, then as now, was a major concern, and the kit house concept changed home-building and buying habits for the next 32 years. The do-it-yourself structures offered by Sears gave their customers the opportunity to join the enviable ranks of homeowners.. Soon the Sears catalog featured 44 models from which to choose, ranging in price from $495 to $4,115 (about $9,900 to $82,300 in today's dollars). The process was simple; the customer just selected a house and placed the order. A few weeks later, two railway boxcars arrived at the nearest depot. Contained within the cars were 30,000 components ranging from pre-cut numbered lumber pieces, hardware, nails (750 pounds worth), paint and varnish, carved staircases, windows and doors, hardware - all that was necessary to construct a home with the exception of any required masonry or plaster. A 76-page leather-bound instruction book was also included, with the homeowner's name impressively stamped in gold on the cover. The logistics of getting the house kit from the depot to the building site were formidable, involving countless trips back and forth to transport materials, and the difficulty of this effort dictated that most Sears homes were built within a short distance from the railroad tracks (as is the case of the Pinecliffe home). If building sites were outside a town, trains would sometimes make a stop miles from the depot, at the closest point to the construction location, to allow a homeowner to unload his materials. These building projects were often family affairs, with neighbors and friends assisting during the weeks or months spent on construction. Although Sears promised that any man of average abilities could build a house, a carpenter could be engaged instead for the task, at a cost of about $450 (skilled labor was available for about $1 an hour back then). One asset of Sears homes was that they offered "sweat equity." Anyone who assembled those 30,000 pieces into a house instantly created a tidy nest egg of $1,000 to $2,000 of instant equity in the newly-built home. Other benefits extolled in the Sears catalogs included financial freedom, comfort, and improvement to the health, morals and well-being of the occupants. Kit houses had the advantage of being cheaper overall than traditional building methods; mass-production lowered the cost of materials and cut construction time. The term "modern home" in the early 1900s was a description implying that a house had such amenities as a centralized (although primitive by today's standards) heating system, electricity and indoor plumbing. The homes often proved to be more modern than the communities in which they were built, as electricity and municipal water systems often were not yet locally in place. Because of this problem, Sears marketed homes without bathrooms well into the 1920s, offering an accompanying outhouse that could be purchased for $23, and heating, plumbing and electrical components also were sold separately from the kit. Over the years Sears offered approximately 370 different models, in several price and quality categories, all designed by architects working for the company. The common bungalow was the best-selling model; it was a compact, affordable vacation-style home initially offered in the 1880s but it gradually evolved to become a major housing type in cities and suburbs in the years before World War I. Buyers of any of the homes could customize the various designs by choosing different rooflines, adding or subtracting the number of windows and doors, or raising the roofs to include two more rooms upstairs. Essentially any design could be changed to fit into the parameters of the buyer's budget and tastes. In 1911 Sears began offering mortgages for its houses; easy payment plans and lax loan qualifications made home-buying more easily affordable to the masses. A 1920s Sears mortgage application asked a few simple questions about the house and lot, but asked only one financial question, "What is your vocation?" Filling in that blank allowed the applicant to obtain the necessary mortgage. Many single women, new immigrants and people of ethnic minorities, who ordinarily might have had difficulty qualifying for mortgages, were able to build homes of their own because of Sears. Sales of Sears homes peaked in 1929 with a volume of more than $12 million. The Depression brought economic woes, and sales dropped. The American housing market as a whole was in trouble. During the early days of the Depression, Sears continued to sell houses, but these primarily were more modest ones. In 1932, Sears Modern Homes department began operating at a loss for the first time since 1912, marking the beginning of the end. Compounding the problem was the necessity of foreclosing on hundreds of Sears' mortgage customers; impacting the company's image and its public relations, and causing the demise of both easy-qualifying mortgages in 1933 and the Modern Homes department in 1934. In 1935, the Modern Homes department reopened, but the company no longer actively pushed its catalog homes, continuing to quietly sell about 15,000 to 20,000 more houses only as customers sent in their order forms. When the last Modern Homes catalog was issued in 1940, Americans had purchased an estimated 75,000 Sears homes since 1908. Kit homes traveled to all 48 contiguous states, a few even making it over the Canadian border. The largest collection of Sears homes seems to be in Carlinville, Illinois, where an entire tourism Christmas event showcases a major group of 152 Sears homes in a 12-block area. After kit homes ceased to be offered in Sears catalogs, these houses were slowly forgotten. They have endured over the years, however, and renewed interest in them is beginning to emerge, leading to efforts to locate, identify and preserve them. Sears' sales records were destroyed, lending difficulty to the tracing of the destinations of the home kits. Identifying the houses is also tricky because of the customizing aspects granted to customers. Stamped lumber and other marks and labels on trim moldings and hardware, or a lucky find of a set of blueprints tucked away in an attic can help identify one of these homes, along with recent books which provide other helpful clues. Sears homes were often built in groups, so communities are often aware of their existence. Shipping records of materials unloaded at a railroad station sometimes may be accessed to find a Sears load containing a house, and Sears' mortgages on the houses may be revealed by a search of deed records. Despite their modest origin and the unskilled labor that often built them, mail-order homes have become a fascinating part of American history.