Tucked away in the heart of Rome sits a quaint home with a special story. At a glance, this house seems classically inviting. The pale-yellow exterior, black shutters, and white trim give the home timeless character. The front walkway leads to a small porch that looks like it was made for summer Sunday afternoons: the kind where you sip iced tea and wave to your neighbors as they stroll past. The neighborhood is very walkable, with sidewalk-lined streets to keep patrons out of the road.
And though it may seem simple, there is something very unique about this home: it was picked out of a Sears Modern Homes and Building Plans catalog.
Between 1908 and 1940, Sears, Roebuck and Company created a system for customers to simply pick their ideal home design out of the dozens of models in a catalog. A few weeks after sending in a check, these new homeowners received all of the parts necessary to build the house via train.
Known as a “Sears Kit Home,” these house-building packages came with every piece imaginable: 10,000 pieces of framing lumber, 20,000 cedar shakes, nails and screws, paint, and even doorknobs and drawer pulls. The Sears guarantee was that any homeowner could build their mail-order home in less than 90 days (though most outsourced local builders). Because of their ability to mass-produce and pre-cut materials for customers, they not only kept purchase costs low but also shortened construction time up to 40%.
In 1925, this home at 122 Westmore Road came to be as a Sears Modern Home purchase. The original owners chose a model with 3 bedrooms and bathrooms that would be built close to downtown Rome. About 70 years after its construction, two very extraordinary people moved in and made this little yellow house their home.