The Lay of the Land: A Testament to Testimonials!

There are many ways of finding and authenticating mail-order or plan books houses. Mortgage records, deeds, property transfers are pretty reliable if they can ultimately be traced back to a mail-order company. Some companies like Sears, Roebuck and Ray H Bennett offered their own financing. Less reliable are oral histories ("my grandfather built this house, blah, blah, blah.") unless they are backed up with paperwork. Sometimes the millwork, hardware or fixtures can be enough to authenticate a house within reasonable doubt, especially when a house design is unusual or unique or with no known clones. There are certain models every kit house manufacturer and his brother seem to have a version of (Sears Jewel/Wilmore, I'm looking especially hard at you!) and you can only really authenticate it with paper or specific millwork, hardware or fixtures, room dimension and build year.

One of the most fun ways (at least for me) are TESTIMONIALS!  Testimonials pop up everywhere — mail-order catalogs, newspaper advertisements, special advertising media like posters, postcards, and flyers. Sears utilized all of the above. In the back of their current catalog, they frequently had a special spread of photos and testimonials of houses built by John Q Public.

Two-page testimonial spread from the 1921 Sears, Roebuck Honor Bilt Modern Homes catalog. Photo from Archive.org

WHERE IS MR. PETERSON'S ELMWOOD?!!!
(I've looked numerous times in the LaSalle section of Niagara Falls but can't find it. It might have been torn down, of course.) Photo from Archive.org

The ads and special sales slicks were usually regional also which enables a "collector" like me to search for a certain area. One of the original Sears house researchers, Rebecca Hunter compiled a good number of testimonials in her book,  Putting Sears Homes on the Map: A Compilation of Testimonials Published in Sears Modern Homes Catalogs 1908-1940.

Manufacturer Gordon-Van Tine published a special brochure just of testimonials called, Proof of the Pudding!  Local North Tonawanda roofing and shingle manufacturers Creo-Dipt and Weatherbest published fully illustrated catalogs with photos of actual homes with the owners' names, cities and what was used on the homes. These all make it easier and more likely to find the houses.

Creo-Dipt catalog. I traced the house in the photo to 920 Highland Ave, Pelham Manor, NY

 I'll have more of all of these in the future. Stay tuned.