Sears Houses In High Bridge, NJ: Sears Argyle On Seal Street

Sears Argyle • 7 Seal Street, High Bridge, New Jersey

The little town of High Bridge, New Jersey (Hunterdon County), packs a nice little punch when it comes to Sears houses. We don't really know how many are there, because very little of the town is viewable on Google maps Streetview or Bing Maps. But, thanks to the magic of real estate listings, we've run across a few charming examples. The houses that I'm going to highlight in this series are especially lovely because of their original detail, and interiors rich in Craftsman-style, unpainted, gleaming woodwork. Today's model is the Sears Argyle. Let's get started with our tour:

Sears Argyle • 7 Seal Street

Thanks to Andrew Mutch for spotting this one in the listings. We were all so pleased to see the great interior views, and wanted to save them for posterity.

Sears Argyle • 1921 Sears Modern Homes catalog

All of the windows and purlins match up nicely. 

The Argyle was first offered in the 1916 catalog (it's not in the 1914, and I've never seen a 1915 catalog), although in its first few years, it went by a number... actually, a series of numbers. The early 1916 catalog marketed it as the 264P245, offered for $827.00, or $867.00 if pre-cut; In the late 1916 catalog, it was marketed as C2018, as an already-cut-and-fitted kit, for $891.00, or C245, for $851.00, if you wanted standard-length boards, not pre-cut. Finally, it was given the name Argyle, when the 1918 catalog came out with names for the models.

Floorplan of the Sears Argyle, from the 1921 catalogue.

Let's take a look at the interior of 7 Seal Street:

The bookcase that we see here, to the side of the fireplace, came standard with the Argyle .

From the 1930 Sears Building Supplies catalog

We see the Sears Craftsman-M front door here, and the Five Cross Panel interior door, standard with the Argyle.

These two images are from my 1918 Sears Building Supplies catalog, not available online.

The built-in bookcase with colonnade, came standard with the Argyle, but other models did not include it as a standard part of the package. However, the bookcases, with or without the colonnades, were an available extra-cost option.

The bookcase was available alone, or with the colonnade, and the trim pieces and header were separate costs. The glass fronts of the bookcases, also had several optional styles. Also, you could opt for shorter bookcases, with longer colonnades. This catalog page is from the 1930 Sears Building Supplies catalog.

This bank of four windows, is the bump-out that we see on the side of the house. Notice, too, the decorative ceiling beams in the dining room and living room.

If you zoom in on the bookcase, you see what we call "The Sears Hinge". When we see this hinge, we know it is from Sears, as we have only ever seen this hinge in Sears houses. The cabinets and bookcases and doors came with a variety of hinges, so you don't always see this hinge.

Here is the distinctive design of what we call, "The Sears Hinge". Other hinges offered by Sears, were also offered by numerous other companies... but, not this one.

The style of trim that we see all over this house, is called Molded Cap Trim, one of the Craftsman style options that Sears offered. 

These two snippets are from the 1930 Building Supplies catalog. The description above, describes how the window trim, and the door head trim, are pre-cut, and pre-finished (sanded and all pieces that make up the header, already nailed together). However, the side lengths of trim, for door trim, were shipped in one of two standard lengths, to be cut to size at the job site.

This side of the Argyle has a pretty distinctive pattern of windows.

This enclosed back porch is not standard on the floor plan of the Sears Argyle.

For some reason, we don't often get good shots of the bump-out side of the Argyle. You can only just barely see that bump-out in the last photo, above, of the Seal Street house in High Bridge, so here is that side on three other Argyles we've found around:

This Sears Argyle is in Clarion, Pennsylvania. We see the standard bump-out, with its four  windows, with the main roof extending down over it. The windows look skinny in these photos, but, from the inside, you see that these are full-size windows. The bump-out area is the side of the dining room.

This beautiful Sears Argyle, with its original cedar shingle siding, has an added side dormer, and the house seems to be slightly heightened, allowing for an upstairs bedroom. This example is in the West View area of Pittsburgh.

Occasionally, we run across a Sears Argyle like this one, in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania, with a peak roof over the side bump-out.

In the Catalogue
I've snipped these images from the Argyle's listing in the 1921 catalog:

More About The Interior Trim

In the next two snippets from the catalogue page, you see mention of the millwork (interior doors, windows, window trim, and floors) all being (standard) in yellow or white pine. But, in the options, we see that oak doors, trim, and floors are an available upgrade, for an additional charge. I'm not a wood specialist, but I do want to point out that when we see painted trim, it often upsets people, who assume that gorgeous oak wood was painted over. But, in reality, many Sears houses (and others in their era) came with a lower-grade wood, intended for paint: yellow or white pine. Pine is beautiful, naturally, also, but it is the wood trim that is usually provided, when painting the trim is what is expected. It is also a softer and less-expensive wood. In later years (like in this 1930 Sears Building Supplies catalogue), we see that fir was the lower-priced wood offered by Sears, for paintable trim. This may all be related to which lumber yard the trim was coming from, in which area of the country. In the earliest years of the Sears Modern Homes era, Sears had a lumber yard in Mansfield, Louisiana, and southern yellow pine was the norm for trim wood originating there. In later years, Sears, instead, used the lumber facility that they owned in Newark, New Jersey.

We do see these five-cross panel interior doors inside the Argyle on Seal Street.

You notice, at the bottom of this snippet from the Argyle catalogue page, a testimonial blurb from a man named August M. Schiller, about his Sears bungalow in West McHenry, Illinois. His house was not an Argyle, it was a Sears Hawthorne. Sometimes, Sears just threw in these testimonial blurbs on catalogue pages that are not for the house that they refer to. If you'd like to see August M. Schiller's house, here it is, in this earlier blog post of mine.

The source for this is a July 24, 1910 issue of The Times, from Shreveport, Louisiana.
I have found more than one mention in newspapers, about the Sears-Roebuck Lumber Company in Mansfield, LA.
Sears also sold lumber from this yard in years prior to the start of the Sears Modern Homes era, when they were selling lumber supplies, but not house plans (which they began around 1895). I have found 1901 and 1904 newspaper references to this facility.

This house on Seal Street has, I think, the oak option, because all of the wood is left beautifully unpainted, and has developed a wonderful patina over the years.

Other Resources About The Sears Argyle
I am certainly not the first person to write about the Sears Argyle. Here are a few additional resources with great information and images:

• This Sears Houses In Ohio blog post about a beautiful Sears Argyle in Fairborn, Ohio, that is now an antique store
• This Sears Houses In Cincinnati blog post, originally showing 17 Sears Argyles, with several more added, when the post was edited (this blog is a re-creation of the original blog).
• This Sears Homes of Chicagoland blog post, about the history of the Sears Argyle as the top-selling model offered by Sears. It was originally a design by Jud Yoho, later licensed by Sears, as were some of his other designs.
• This set of photos on a kit-house related FaceBook page, showing photos of Jud Yoho's original design in a 1914 bungalow design magazine, with photos from the magazine.