The Peterson Family House: Lumber and Supplies Arrived By Train

Paul Peterson: 1867-1941 (Paternal Grandfather)

The house I grew up in and that my brother lives in now was originally built during my father’s childhood. He was born in 1917, so it was probably built around 1930. My father said the house was a “kit house”.

So what is a kit house? Wikipedia defines it as follows:

“Kit houses, also known as mill-cut houses, pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses, mail order homes, or catalog homes, were a type of housing that was popular in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the first half of the 20th century. Kit house manufacturers sold houses in many different plans and styles, from simple bungalows to imposing Colonials, and supplied at a fixed price all materials needed for construction of a particular house, but typically excluding brick, concrete, or masonry (such as would be needed for laying a foundation, which the customer would have to arrange to have done locally).”

“Depending on the size and style of the plan, the materials needed to construct a typical house, including perhaps 10,000–30,000 pieces of lumber and other building material would be shipped by rail, filling one or two railroad boxcars, which would be loaded at the company's mill and sent to the customer's home town, where they would be parked on a siding or in a freight yard for unloading. Once the materials arrived, a customer would arrange for a local carpenter or contractor to assemble the house on a piece of property owned by the customer.”

My father remembered the train bringing the house materials. Rather than stopping in nearby Hanska, the train stopped about half a mile outside town. The train tracks crossed the rural road where our farm was located just a little ways from the house site. The rail car of materials was unloaded into my uncle’s field across the road so the lumber and supplies didn’t have to be transported as far.

My father said that my grandfather, Paul Peterson, hired local people to prepare the foundation and construct the house. My brother jokes that the foundation installers didn’t use the best materials; our basement always leaked during spring snowmelts and after big rainstorms, and the concrete was a little crumbly in texture. However, the foundation has successfully held up the house for nearly a century.

Ad for a four-square kit home

I have been trying to verify that the home is actually a kit house. I’ve looked at a lot of the kit house catalogs for the era, but haven’t been able to identify a specific plan that matches our house. I can find similar designs, but the windows and door placement don’t quite match up.

The house style is a “foursquare”, described by Homesandgardens.com as “a two-story, cube-shaped single house characterized by a full or half-width front porch, a hipped roof, double-hung wood windows and dormer windows in the attic.” Other sites note that there are often four rooms on each floor. Our house is definitely a four-square, as it is cube-shaped, has a hip roof, a half-width front porch, double-hung wood windows, a single dormer in the attic, and four rooms on each floor of the house.

Another four-square style, fairly close to our home

Four-squares were popular kit home styles. Kit homes were available through general mail-order companies like Sears and Montgomery Ward, as well as through companies like Aladdin Homes and Gordon Van Tine, who only sold homes. So did Paul Peterson actually order a kit from a catalog from one of those major companies? Or did he work with a regional company that used a basic design to pre-cut a home?

Our house from the rear. Attic dormer visible at left, window on stair landing in center. Hipped roof.

I will probably have to search the archives of the local newspaper to find any answers. If the house truly was a kit home, I am sure it would have been a bit of a curiosity and would have been covered by the local paper. There would at least have been a mention in the gossipy community news items that residents submitted for publication. It would be fun to verify my father’s story.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_house

https://everydayoldhouse.com/american-foursquare-kit-homes-wardway/

https://searshomes.org/index.php/2014/10/14/montgomery-ward/

https://kithouses.org/topic/identification/

https://everydayoldhouse.com/foursquare-sears-kit-house/