Architects had been selling house plans via catalogs and books (for example the Palliser Company, and architects George F Barber and DS Hopkins in the last quarter of the 1800s) for decades before but it wasn't until the early 1900s when companies started selling both a blueprint and the materials in a vertically integrated business model. Sears Homes is probably the most well known. >Sears, began in 1908 and sold to over 70,000 builders until ceasing in 1942>Aladdin Homes peaked in 1928 but finally ceased manufacturing in 1982 and was defunct by 1987 after years of declining sales.>Gordon Van TineWhat brought about the end of this business in the middle of last century? Suburb developers? It was a pretty good way for people to build and own a home. Also personal anecdote, it's also a great way to build a house in the Sims.
>>18294512My Great-Grandfathers first home was one of those homes that he bought with his GI Bill loan after World War II, it was built by Kaiser, and it still stands to this day>What brought about the end of this business in the middle of last century?Because the quality of their construction and material varied considerably, and many of them got a bad reputation of being made of the cheapest untreated wood and drywall that had a tendency to mold. It gave American suburban homes of this era a bad reputation that lingers to this very day even though modern homes tend to be made with far better material, and starting from the 1960s American home construction was already starting to move away from these kit builds as homes started to be made with more masonry and brick like my current home.
>>18294520they needed to build a lot of houses in a hurry because there had been very little in the way of new home construction since 1929
>>18294512>Also personal anecdote, it's also a great way to build a house in the Sims.What the fuck that's actually smart I want to try this now
There’s a house near me in suburban Michigan that looks like a mini Gone With the Wind classical revival mansion and turns out it’s a Sears kit home, probably one of their fanciest models. I’d thought they were all craftsman bungalow types.
>>18294741They came in many different styles. It's also interesting how the styles in their houses evolved over the years. An early one had some remnants of Queen Anne Victorian influence with it's bay windows and turret.
Why don't Americans build their houses from brick like we do in Germany?
>>18295100Cheap abundant lumber and balloon frame construction made for quick and easy houses. There are some beautiful examples of wooden homes in the U.S. built with local lumber—redwood in the northwest, cypress in the Deep South—but the average wood framed McMansion today might as well be a cheap movie set. My 1960s ranch style suburban shitbox is brick.
>>18294512You're a retard for making threads like this >>>/x/41808422 insinuating that you want me to fantasize or "daydream" or create a "persistent world" in my mind then making retarded threads like this to terrorize, harass and threaten me for thinking about what's the most ideal kind of house because you're a retarded tranny who rapes my mind every second of every day and terrorizes, harasses,abuses, threatens etc me for literally any thought I think
