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 a couple of phone calls, he invited me over for a private tour of his home. In May of 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 home 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 20”x17” 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 life with a coal burner for heat and hot water but was converted to gas a long time ago.

Front of house.

Rear of house addition.

Added unattached 2 car garage in the style of the Sears Home.

As you can see from the photos I took, Mr. Cook has 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 somewhere around the late 40s or early 50s, but Mr. Cook can only guess to 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 in each one. And, of course, the bathroom, with 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 time period furniture so he could 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 Standard Addition - 8 models for Standard Oil of Indiana built in Carlinville, Illinois for a coal mine community.

Carlinville, Illinois has the largest 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. For the first time, people could order home kits in a variety of models through the Sears mail-order catalog. 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 of the 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 they made the decision to close the mines. The closure devastated the town and required years before it fully recovered. The workers moved away, mostly 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 in the midst of the Great Depression, comparable homes were selling for $4,000, so it was 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 and has attracted the attention of architects and nostalgia buffs from around the globe.

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