Sears Silverdale in Pennsylvania

Sears N° 110, later called the Silverdale • 1915 • 1069 Rocky Run Road, West Finley, Pennsylvania
(image from Bing maps streetview)

To honor the life of a wonderful woman who grew up in a Sears Silverdale in Northampton, Massachusetts, I'm posting today, images of another authenticated Sears Silverdale, this one in West Finley, Pennsylvania.  The owners of this home have paperwork documenting this house as a Sears home, and it was shared with me by researcher Lara Solonickne, who blogs about her research at Sears Homes of Chicagoland. 

Here is the No 110, as the Silverdale was named in its first years, in the 1916 Sears Modern Homes catalog.
(Thanks to Daily Bungalow/Antique Home for publishing their copyrighted scan, here.)

The Silverdale was first offered as the N° 110 (for a short time it went by the more complicated 264P110 ), and was offered in the first Sears Modern Homes catalog, in 1908. In that first year, it is shown with a slightly different (and kind of odd) look to the roof line:  Instead of the smooth line of the front porch roof, from the house all the way to the porch entry (shown above), we see a separate roof section just over the front entry vestibule of the house, slanting down from the main roof. The porch roof starts after that. It looks a bit choppy and awkward, and the design was quickly changed to the simpler look we see in later years.  Here is a 1908 catalog image showing that first design:

From the 3rd edition 1908 Sears Modern Homes catalog.
(Thanks to Andrew Mutch of Kit House Hunters for the image from his catalog.)

That early 1908 catalog is filled with large homes, many of the farmhouse-type similar to this model. In architectural terms, this is known as a Gabled-Ell style (read more here), and the N° 110/Silverdale is one of the large Gabled-Ell styles that Sears offered. Because homes of this farmhouse style are so similar, many researchers kind of get a headache trying to identify them, but the 110/Silverdale has one feature that none of the other Sears Gabled-Ell models had: the entry vestibule, indicated below, in yellow:

The entry vestibule is a distinguishing feature of the Silverdale /No 110.

Here are three other Gabled-Ell models offered by Sears in those early catalogs (these are from my 1916 catalog), none having a protruding entry vestibule. The front entry door is just built right into the main wall of the house (click an image to enlarge):

The No 101 is very similar in layout to the No 110,
but without the entry vestibule.
There was also a version of this model without clipped gables.

The No. 115 is much smaller,
and you enter right into a main room -- no entry vestibule.

The No. 171 has the same entry style as the No. 115.

Sears was not alone in offering a model with this floor plan: competitors Gordon-Van Tine and Chicago Millwork Supply Company both offered an almost exact lookalike to the Silverdale/110. The image below is from a blog post I wrote, explaining the very small design differences in what the three companies offered:

See my blog post about these three models, offered by competing companies.

The beautiful white Silverdale in West Finley, Pennsylvania, is set in a gorgeous country spot, with sprawling views of green countryside.  I'll close here with more views of the house, and its picturesque setting (all from Google maps or Bing maps) -- click any to enlarge:

The view across the road!