Harris Brothers Company (Kit Homes) & Chicago House Wrecking Company, 35th and Iron Streets, Chicago, Illinois.

The Chicago House Wrecking Company (CHWC) was founded as an architectural salvage company in 1892, and incorporated in 1893. For many years, and through two World's Fairs, the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, the company bid and successfully removed the salvage materials from those sites... a highly profitable endeavor.

The Chicago House Wrecking Company dismantled the Ferris wheel at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Then they blew up the Ferris wheel for scrap at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Because the axle was so big and heavy, it was buried in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri, in May of 1906.

The Indiana Dunn's Bridge Myth — According to James Cooper's "Iron Monuments" book, which documents Indiana's historic bridges, there are rumors that the Dunn's Bridge Truss arches came from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition Ferris wheel. This claim is not realistic, especially considering that the arches are not concentric. Another rumor claims Dunn's bridge came from the interior or exterior of the Indiana Building at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. I'd don't see it from this postcard picture, do you?

In 2007, Sheldon Breiner, a famous geophysicist, used a magnetometer to locate the Ferris wheel's axle, which he found 200 feet from where the Ferris wheel's foundation stood.

This is a Chicago House Wrecking Company, Kit No. 84, from the 1910 catalog. It is identified by the bay windows on the first and second floors and the shed dormer over the porch. This house is located at 1318 South 7th Avenue, Maywood, Illinois.

From 1908 to 1920, there was an overlap in operations between Chicago House Wrecking Company and Harris Brothers Company. In 1910, the Chicago House Wrecking Company offered its first book of plans, which is noted in the Catalog of Copyright Entries for January-December 1910 in the Library of Congress. 

In 1912, Harris Bros. began selling plans and offering with them a list of building materials, though at that time the houses were not pre-cut. (The competition among like-minded lumber dealers was intense and each was jumping on the innovations of its competitors.) 

By 1918, Harris Brothers Company had established themselves with "The Harris Way" and its distinguishing details which included liberal terms and "money back for waste" as well as other unconditional guarantees. 

Like other companies, Harris offered a service to produce "special plans to order," which meant that they would take a customer's sketches and create plans to their specifications. Customers ordering in sufficient quantity could negotiate cut-to-fit manufacturing as well, "when houses are ordered in quantities, sufficiently large to warrant" production.

Most of the Midwest kit home manufacturers, Aladdin, Sears, Montgomery Ward (meeting their demand for kit homes, subcontracted the manufacturing to Gordon Van Lines and sold kit homes from about 1921 to 1931), Lustron, and others delivered their products regionally, so the vast majority of the homes designed and manufactured by Harris are found in Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan through testimonials shown in the catalog range from builders as far-flung as Maine to Kansas.

"Presto-Up," was Harris Bros. patented, bolt-together houses, garages and barns etc.

"Presto-Up," was Harris Bros. patented, bolt-together house kits, garages, barns, etc.

Though the history of Harris Brothers remains murky, a quotation from the 1920 catalog distances the operations of Harris Brothers from the Chicago House Wrecking Company:

"In our earlier career we were incorporated under the name of the Chicago House Wrecking Company. For years we were known to the public, under this name, as the Bargain Mart of the world, but as time passed we were, by reason of the great savings made on new lumber and mill-work materials purchased for customers, forced into the new material business and we realized that the old name gave the wrong impression. Millions of dollars have been spent by us to acquaint the buying public with the old name, still the four Harris Brothers, the men who built this great institution decided that their best interests demanded a change of name that would not mislead. Remember we furnish new material only."

Harris Brothers expanded, opening the Harris Millwork plant at 1349-1451 W. 35th Street, Chicago, which was on 25 acres, housing their plant, warehouse and offices for the company.

After filing for bankruptcy in 1933-34, the company reincorporated as "Iron Street Lumber Company."

In 1947, Iron Street Lumber Company, by then a large construction company, purchased Silcrest Window Manufacturing Company. The company remained in business until 1960, producing doors and windows from their plant in Wausau, Wisconsin. Silcrest became Harris-Crestline Corp. in 1960 after the company was sold. Sentry Insurance Company bought the Harris-Crestline Corp. in 1981.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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The 1913 Chicago House Wrecking Company - Book of Plans.

Step inside. My private tour of a Sears Modern Home in Carlinville, Illinois in Sept. 2013 & May 2014.

I was fortunate to meet Mr. Robert Cook, a homeowner of a Whitehall Sears Modern home in Carlinville, Illinois, when I was on a tour of the Macoupin County Courthouse in 2013. After several phone calls, he invited me over for a private tour of his home. In May 2014, my wife went with me for the second photoshoot. I brought Mr. Cook some fresh bakery pastries on both visits.

Mr. Robert Cook and his Whitehall Sears Modern home on a corner property in Carlinville, Illinois.

Original catalog photo and floor plan.

Mr. Cook, a man in his mid-70s, purchased the home around 1993. He has painstakingly refurbished the house himself, except for the plumbing. The porch was already enclosed when he bought it. There is also an added family room in the back of the house measuring 2"" x1"" and is about 4 inches lower than the rest of the first floor, so the roof of the add-on would not block a second-floor window. The home began with a coal burner for heat and hot water but was converted to gas long ago.

Front of house.

The Addition on the Back of the House.

The unattached 2-car garage was added in the style of the Sears House.

As you can see from my photos, Mr. Cook stripped all the wood trim and doors, saving the original home's hardware. Even most of the button wall switches for the lights are original. The stained glass was added around the late 40s or early 50s, but Mr. Cook can only guess the date. The windows are hand-cut leaded glass. The two-car garage was added later. The back door was moved to accommodate the add-on family room. Upstairs are three original bedrooms, but the previous owner had built closets. And, of course, the bathroom, with the original tile still on the floor, had also been updated.

Also updated in the house is the removal of old ducting. New ducts and an air conditioner were added. Mr. Cook searched for period furniture to decorate his home as it would have been when it was a new house. With that in mind, he has yet to find a suitable dining room table and chairs.

The bathtub was originally a claw-foot tub with open plumbing.

Enclosed Front Porch

An Example of one style of stained glass windows which were accents to the fireplace.

The Standard Edition - Standard Oil of Indiana built 8 models in Carlinville, Illinois, for their coal mining employees.

Carlinville, Illinois, has the most extensive single collection of Sears kit homes in the United States. Beginning in 1917, Carlinville saw its population grow by one-third when Standard Oil of Indiana opened two new coal mines. An influx of young European immigrants coming to work the mines caused the town's population to swell from 4,000 to 6,000, creating a severe housing shortage.

Standard Oil officials found a solution to this crisis in an unlikely place; Sears and Roebuck. People could order home kits in various models through the Sears mail-order catalog for the first time. Eight different models were selected for Standard Addition, ranging in price from $3,000 to $4,000, with the company placing an order for $1 million for homes, the largest in Sears history. By the end of 1918, 156 mail-order homes had been placed within a nine-block neighborhood on the northeast side of town.

In 1926, Standard Oil executives determined they could buy coal cheaper than mining it themselves and decided to close the mines. The closure devastated the town and required years before it fully recovered. The workers moved away, primarily to other mines, and abandoned the housing to the ravages of time and the occasional party-goers from nearby Blackburn University. Standard Addition remained largely vacant until the mid-1930s when the houses were offered for sale to the public. Families could purchase one of the run-down five-room homes for $250 and a six-room model for $500. Even amid the Great Depression, comparable homes sold for $4,000, an incredible bargain for lucky buyers.

Today, 152 of the original 156 homes still stand. Four no longer exist on their original sites; three were destroyed by fire, and one was moved to the country. As the largest single repository of Sears Homes in the United States, Standard Addition has been the subject of several documentaries. It has attracted the attention of architects and nostalgia buffs from around the globe.

Copyright © 2014 Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.

The checkered past of Cave-In-Rock on the Ohio River in Hardin County, Illinois.

Hardin County in Illinois was formed in 1839, but the natural centerpiece of the whole county was first seen by European eyes a hundred years before. In 1739, the French explorer & surveyor M. Chaussegros de Léry charted the course of the Ohio River, found, mapped and named it "Caverne Dans Le Roc" or, in English, the Cave-In-Rock.

The cave had, of course, been in existence for thousands of years. It was worn into the bluffs by Ohio River flooding, probably extensively during the melting following the Wisconsin Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. The effects of the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquake (7 and 7.5 on today's Richter scale) may have further contributed to the formation of the cave.

Many caves are the topics of stories told about the happenings in and around the premise. Possibly no cave, though, has more stories and legends told about it than this cave! Cave-In-Rock outlaws, pirates and counterfeiters reined for fifty years beginning in 1790. As is true with most legends, facts are few; sometimes, even local folklore is hard to document in any credible way. However, legend holds that notorious counterfeiters Philip Alston and John Duff used the cave as a meeting place in the 1790s. 

Through a relationship with Duff, Samuel Mason moved his base of operations to Cave-In-Rock in 1797. Mason had been a Revolutionary War militia captain and later served as an associate judge in Pennsylvania before moving his family to Kentucky. After arriving in Kentucky, Samuel Mason became the leader of a gang of river pirates and highwaymen outlaws who wreaked havoc around Cave-In-Rock, Stack Island (a point on the Mississippi River about 200 miles north of New Orleans) and along the Natchez Trace. Mason's gang's practice was to rob travelers going down the rivers. They also pirated boats carrying merchandise and supplies down the rivers. It was common practice for men to move supplies down the rivers, abandon the flatboats at the end of their journey, then return home along the Natchez Trace. If the Mason gang missed robbing them on one of the great rivers, they'd have yet another opportunity to rob them on land along the Natchez Trace.

Samuel Mason used Cave-In-Rock as a central point of his base of criminal operations, which stretched all the way to New Orleans. His tavern in the cave created an easy lure for travelers to stop as they passed, but the combination of the gambling den, brothel and refuge for criminals made it the perfect trap.

Micajah "Big" Harpe, born Joshua Harper (c.1748-1799), and Wiley "Little" Harpe, born William Harpe (c.1750-1804)

Some believe that the first recorded mass murderer in American history might have spent time at Cave-In-Rock. Micajah and Wiley Harpe, known as "Big" and "Little" Harpe, were active during the last decade of the 18th Century. 

Known as the Harpe brothers, the two started out life as first cousins.

The Harpe brothers spread killing and despair wherever they went. While they operated primarily in Kentucky and Tennessee, there are some accounts of their horrible activities on the Illinois side of the Ohio River. 

"Big" Harpe was the first of these three bandits to lose his head to captors, but eventually, Samuel Mason and "Little" Harpe were captured, killed and beheaded. Their heads and skulls were left strategically in plain view to deter future outlaws. Their departure only made way for the next generation of thieves and counterfeiters!

In the early 1800s, the Sturdivant Gang and the Ford's Ferry Gang appeared in the region. The Sturdivant Gang originated in Colonial Connecticut. By 1810, third-generation counterfeiter Roswell S. Sturdivant led his gang, primarily based in St. Clair County, Illinois, but also occupied a fortress nearby Pope County. The Ford's Ferry Gang had a more local foundation. James Ford (1770-1833) was a business and community leader in Kentucky and Southern Illinois on both sides of the Ohio River. The other side of his dual personality was that of a gang leader and his bandit's high-jacked flatboats for decades!

Isaiah Potts and his wife Polly, who owned a tavern, Pott's Inn, near Ford's Ferry, are two of the most colorful characters in our story. Ferry goers would depart the boat and take the short trek to the tavern as they ventured inland. It was a common occurrence for the travelers to be attacked, robbed and killed along the route to the tavern. 

This photograph of Pott's Inn was taken in the 1920s by Cave-In-Rock.

Although one descendant of Isaiah and Polly believes their behavior has been highly exaggerated over the years, one story seems to live on. Did they murder their son when he returned after being gone for years? While there is no credible evidence, legend holds that young Billy Potts left home after being caught by locals in the act of murder. Young Potts changed his ways and prospered. He returned home after many years, but his parents didn't recognize their well-dressed son, lured him to the infamous spring for a drink, and robbed and murdered him. As they had often done, they buried him in a shallow nearby grave. The next day, friends of Billy Potts came looking for him and described having seen him the day he got off the ferry. Isaiah and Polly realized what they had done. They dug up his grave and found a young man bearing a birthmark just like their son had. If it is true, it is a sad ending.

Happily, outlaw folklore isn't the only history associated with Cave-In-Rock! Although not too highly revered today as a highly educated researcher or author, in 1833, Josiah Priest wrote about cave paintings he observed at Cave-In-Rock. Priest described the paintings as plants, animals, humans, the sun, the moon, and stars. He described the humans as wearing clothing similar to the early Greeks or Romans. He wrote, "On the Ohio, twenty miles below the mouth of the Wabash, is a cavern, in which are found many hieroglyphics, and representations of such delineations as would induce the belief that their authors were, indeed, comparatively refined and civilized."

In 1848, another writer visited the cave. William Pidgeon was a well-known antiquarian and archaeologist. He became famous for his 1858 work, Traditions of Dee-Coo-Dah and Antiquarian Research, although at a later time, his work was critically deemed to be partly almost science fiction. He described the curious pictographs at Cave-In-Rock as humans that looked like ancient Egyptians. Pidgeon wrote about his belief, because of artifacts he had found, that an entire network of a mound-builder race was occupying sites in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. At the time, many in the science community made fun of him. In the past 150 years, history and prehistory have unfolded, and we now know that the Ohio River Scenic Byway region was such a place!

The pictographs described by Pidgeon and Priest have long been destroyed, but more recent graffiti tells the stories of other visitors to the cave. In 1913, the Ohio River flooded, and B.C. and Cole paddled his boat into the cave, stood up and carved his name into the cave ceiling.

In 1929, Illinois bought 64.5 acres of land, including the cave. Additional parcels were purchased later, and all combined form the current 200-acre Cave-In-Rock State Park. The beautiful park stretches from the Ohio River's shoreline to the top of a 60-foot-tall bluff. It is maintained by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and the lodge and cabins are managed by Marty Kaylor, a Cave-In-Rock lifetime resident. Kaylor recently reported that IDNR reported that in 2012, 514,000 visited Cave-In-Rock State Park, and Kaylor said the number significantly increased over the 2010 number of 227,000 people.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Mass Murderers in the Illinois Frontier: The Harpes Brothers.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.