Sears Bandon in Philadelphia, PA

Probable Sears Bandon • 800 Crestview Road, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Circa 1923
The deep bump-out on this side, is for the dining room. 

Sears Bandon in my 1923 catalog.
You can see it online in the 1921 catalog, here.

We're excited to present yet another of the rare Sears homes: a Sears Bandon !  Last year, I found two of them in the Pittsburgh area, authenticated via mortgage records signed by Sears trustee William C. Reed, but I think that we only had one or two on our national database until that time.  The Bandon is a bungalow that is reminiscent of the larger, more elegant Sears Hollywood, especially because of the dormer with inset center window, that both models share. The Bandon is also known for two big, deep bump-outs, one on each side of the house.  

The two bump-outs on the Bandon are both for dining areas-- oddly, one is called a "dining porch", and the other is a "dining room"... even though the dining porch area is still inside the house!  Here is the floor plan, on which you can see that one side of the house has that deep bump-out up near the front of the house, and the fireplace-side of the house has the deep bump-out near the middle of that side:

Floor plan for the Sears Bandon. You can see that the bump-outs are both in dining areas.
Source: 1921 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Another thing that we love on the Bandon, is the presence of the typical 5-piece bracket that Sears included on many of its bungalows (the Hollywood has the 5-piece brackets on one version, but much different brackets on the version that has the inset-window dormer).  On the Bandon, we see the brackets all along the eaves of each side, and on the dormer:

Typical Sears five-piece brackets on the dormer of the Bandon in Philadelphia, with its inset center window.
It looks like the center bracket was removed so that they could enlarge the windows there.

Sears five-piece brackets shown on the catalog image of the Bandon's dormer.

Sears five-piece bracket close up on the side of the Bandon in Philadelphia.

Series of five-piece brackets along the left side elevation of our Bandon on Crestview Road.  And, there's that "dining porch" bump-out!

It looks like the garage for this Bandon must also have come as a kit from Sears -- more five-piece brackets!

And, here's another Sears garage with five-piece brackets, this one goes with one of the Pittsburgh-area Bandons.

Look at that nice tongue-in-groove porch ceiling! That's typical on these solidly-built homes of the 1920s.
Atthe top, you see the dormer with its inset center window, and five-piece brackets

If you'd like to see the real estate listing for this Bandon, here it is on Zillow (many of the photos in this blog post are from the listing), and here's one of the listing's images of the interior, showing that the house has nice, solid woodwork around the doorways and windows:

Sears Bandon interior view, at 800 Crestview Road, Philadelphia, PA.

Who Lived Here?

County records say that this house was built in 1923.  I am not 100% sure of the residents at that time, but the 1930 residents (according to the census of that year, and the 1930 Philadelphia City Directory) were the Schwartz family.  Carl L. Schwartz, a teacher, and his wife Elisabeth, lived in the house until at least 1940. They had two girls, and two boys.  Carl and Elisabeth were married in 1911:

Carl and Elisabeth were married in 1911, and here's their marriage certificate!

And, here is the Schwartz family in the 1930 U.S. census, listed at this address:

And here is the Schwartz family listed at 800 Crestview Road in the 1930 city directory for Philadelphia.  I didn't find them listed at this address in 1925, so they may not have been the very first residents of the Bandon, but they certainly lived here for a good while.

Here's one last image of the Sears Bandon at 800 Crestview Road, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thanks to researcher Andrew Mutch for finding the listing for this Bandon, and allowing me to blog about it.  If you'd like to learn a bit more about the Bandon, and see the two Bandons in Pittsburgh,  visit my previous blog post.

800 Crestview Road, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • probable Sears Bandon