Brochures

For much of the twentieth century an American family could buy a house the way it bought a sewing machine: from a catalogue. Sears, Roebuck sold complete house kits by mail, lumber cut and numbered, ready to assemble. After the Second World War, Lustron promised a factory-built house of porcelain-enameled steel. By the 1960s, plywood made the weekend cabin affordable, and brochures full of mid-century artwork sold the dream of a second home. This shelf collects those catalogues and brochures as page scans; more are being added.

House catalogues & sales brochures

Between 1908 and 1940 Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold complete houses through its Modern Homes catalogues. A buyer chose a design from the book, and a boxcar delivered everything needed to build it — framing lumber cut to length and numbered, doors, windows, nails, paint and a leather-bound instruction book. Tens of thousands were built, many in the Craftsman bungalow style, and a good number are still lived in today.

After the Second World War, with millions of returning veterans and too few houses, the Lustron Corporation of Columbus, Ohio, set out to build homes on an assembly line. A Lustron house was made of steel panels coated in porcelain enamel, inside and out, in colors such as Dove Gray, Surf Blue and Desert Tan — it never needed painting, and pictures were hung with magnets. Only about 2,500 were made, between 1948 and 1950, before the company collapsed.

By the 1960s the dream had moved to the lake and the mountains. Plywood, cheap and strong, made the vacation cabin something an ordinary family could build, and catalogues of “second homes” — A-frames, chalets and beach houses, drawn in bright mid-century style — showed them how.

A note on prices: the prices, terms and offers in these catalogues are historical and long since withdrawn.