On March 27, 1944, the Sears building downtown caught fire. ACPL - Quest Club Papers - Fires That Have Ravaged Fort Wayne. - Koehlinger Lynn A-12 Jan 1979-0009. Page 7 "The Sears Roebuck Store in the 100 block of West Berry Street was damaged by fire on March 27, 1944. Flames licked over the roof of the building within half an hour of the 8:45 closing time. The official time for the alarm was 9:10 p.m. One fireman, Walter Schitzer sustained a possible fractured hip when a beam from an elevator shaft fell on him about 12:15 a.m. The fire started on the fifth floor and within a short time the flames were shooting high into the air, aided by drafts from the elevator shafts and the stairways. Jules C. Jenson was manager of the store at that time. Water damage was particularly heavy in the third floor of the store' furniture and rug department. The fire at the Sears Roebuck Store also caused a disaster sometime later. While attempting to - 8 - renovate the building, several walls toppled and fell into the Fort Wayne National Bank building. At least one person was killed in this catastrophe resulting from the fire." https://contentdm.acpl.lib.in.us/.../p1608.../id/13127/rec/1
ARCH Fun & Free Lecture: Sears Houses in Fort Wayne June 4, 2024 College TV Fort Wayne on YouTube Karen Richards, popular ARCH lecturer, will wrap up our lecture series with an exploration of houses their owners chose from the Sears and Roebuck catalog (and maybe from similar mail-order purveyors). Perhaps you’ve noticed a house or two around town that look very similar. They might be Sears Houses. Come learn how to know for sure!
SEPTEMBER 28, 1953 advertising for the GRAND OPENING of Sears on Clinton Street & Rudisill Blvd.
Sears opened their "new" store on September 29, 1953.... 70 years ago!! 😮😮😮
HOW AWESOME is this??? 🏆🏆🏆
Such a MAGICAL place!!
FUN FACT: When Sears opened, Clinton Street was a TWO WAY Street!! -- Lafayette Street was a MINOR Street that DEAD ENDED at Columbia Street, & Spy Run Avenue ANGLED into Superior Street RIGHT at the Gas House (now Hall's Gas House)!!
Sears at Glenbrook Square Mall has announced it’s closing. This week, the company told 46 unprofitable stores they’d be closing in November. Glenbrook’s location was on the list. Sears Holdings’ said in a statement the decision is part of “ongoing efforts to streamline Sears Holdings’ operations, strengthen our capital position and focus on our best stores.” Back in May, the company announced the closure of 72 stores nationwide. Copied from Sears at Glenbrook Mall to close in November posted Aug 22, 2018, updated: Aug 23, 2018 on CBS WANE-TV NewsChannel 15.
Image on the right is from an Atlas Obscura article that stated In 1906, the mega-company published a specialized 'Tombstones and Monuments' mailer, advertising it as a 'Catalogue of Memorial Art in Granite and Marble.' Sears’ prices, which beat out traditional funeral parlors’ significantly, allowed consumers to participate in the elite practice of custom-ordering grave markers. Copied from Sears Once Offered Mail-Order Tombstones Its beloved catalogue had a good run. by Evan Nicole Brown published October 30, 2018 on AtlasObscura.com.
The Rise and Fall of Sears How the retail store that taught America how to shop navigated more than a century of economic and cultural change, Vicki Howard, Zócalo Public Square, July 25, 2017 on Smithsonian Magazine.
The fall of Sears by CBS Sunday MorningDecember 16, 2018 on YouTube At its peak, Sears, Roebuck was the largest retailer in the world. And then, the company that dominated the department store and mail order business for much of the 20th century officially filed for bankruptcy, buckling under its massive debt load and staggering losses. David Pogue looks at the company and its failure to evolve in a changing economy.
Sears Roebuck catalog and Sears kit homes: encore (original November 18, 2018) posted April 25, 2020 on the Archives of Hoosier History Live podcast on Saturdays, noon to 1 p.m. ET on WICR 88.7 FM introduction starts with: Although Sears Roebuck & Co. announced many department store closings across Indiana and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, the retailer has a deep and storied history on many levels in the Hoosier state. In this encore show originally broadcast in November 2018, we turn back the pages of history to explore the enormous impact of the Sears Roebuck Catalog 100 years ago, particularly on small towns and rural areas. In addition to leafing through the catalog's significance in its heyday (with more than 500 pages, it has been called "the amazon.com of its era" by social historians), we also explore Sears kit homes that were built across Indiana beginning in 1908. The mail-order catalog began earlier, during the 1890s, and offered products ranging from household appliances to hats, shoes, undergarments, sleds, dolls and baseball mitts from Sears. Rival retailer Montgomery Ward had been selling goods by mail even before that, having been established in 1872. Nelson's studio guests are Paul Diebold of Indiana DNR's division of historic preservation and archaeology, an expert on Sears kit homes, and public historian Glory-June Greiff, who has researched the impact of the catalog.
From 1908 to 1940, the Sears Modern Homes Program offered complete mail-order houses to the would-be homeowner — what would come to be called “kit homes.” Customers could select from dozens of different models in Sears Modern Homes Catalog, order blue-prints, send in a check, and a few weeks later everything they needed would arrive in a train car, its door secured with a small red wax seal (just like the seal on the back of a letter). Paragraph copied from The House that Came in the Mail on 99% Invisible.com half-hour audio that includes a transcript of the audio with lots of images of houses and catalog pages. They described Production as Producer Joe Rosenberg spoke with Rosemary Thornton, an architectural historian and the author of The Houses That Sears Built: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sears Catalog Homes; and Penniman: Virginia’s Own Ghost City; Guy Parks, who lives in a Sears catalog home in Cairo, Illinois; and Rebecca Hunter, a Sears house hunter who lives in Elgin, Illinois and wrote Mail-Order Homes: Sears Homes and Other Kit Houses. This item was posted September 15, 2018 by ARCH ( Architecture and Community Heritage).
A Comment by Olinda Frances Wilson stated There is one at the corner of Cook and Felger roads in Lake Township. It arrived in Arcola on the train. to a September 15, 2018 Post by ACGSI on Facebook.
11104 W. Cook Road built by Felix F. Ladig in 1914 or 1915 with his wife Frances and their four children, left the original Sears shipping label, is shown in several photos from horse and buggy to automobile on The Proud Owners of a Sears Modern Home No. 118 posted October 22, 2013 on Sears Homes of Chicagoland Sears-Homes.com.
Video posted November 13, 2017 on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.
Conducting research on a historic site, structure, vessel or landscape? Consult the nation's largest archive of historical architectural, engineering, and landscape documentation - the HABS/HAER/HALS Collection - in The Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/
