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A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

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Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#31

Post by nkrisc »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #27
codelikeawolf wrote: post #20

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and I didn't realize how weird the term "Chicagoland" was until I started traveling around a bit. I'm not aware of any other city in the world that tacks "land" onto the name to describe the surrounding area. Do this with any other city and it sounds like a weird amusement park: Dallasland, Indianapolisland, Seattleland, etc.

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and nobody says "Chicagoland" in conversation. It's only used by newscasters, and car dealers in their commercials. Even dumber is "Chicagoland area." My copyediting professor (who worked at the Chicago Tribune) loved to mock this dumb term, pointing out that nobody says "Detroitland" or "New Yorkland" or "Indianapolisland."

Growing up in Chicago, I only ever heard the term on TV or radio.

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#32

Post by nicolaslem »

doomlaser wrote: post #10

Love the original catalog index of homes. http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm You can click on the pictures to see the original home ads in the Sears catalog, with prices (e.g. http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/images/1908-1914/1911_011... ) $1062 for the parts to a beautiful American Craftsman style bungalow ($34,394.38 adjusted for inflation)! Some assembly required :) On a tangential note: Sears kill…

The Red Dead Redemption 2 video game which takes place in 1899 has a story arc about buying a house from a catalog, receiving the parts and assembling it.

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#33

Post by CalRobert »

codelikeawolf wrote: post #20

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and I didn't realize how weird the term "Chicagoland" was until I started traveling around a bit. I'm not aware of any other city in the world that tacks "land" onto the name to describe the surrounding area. Do this with any other city and it sounds like a weird amusement park: Dallasland, Indianapolisland, Seattleland, etc.

My stepmom from Torrance pretty commonly referred to LA as Lalaland in jest.

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#34

Post by CalRobert »

vsskanth wrote: post #3

I'm really impressed by how timeless these homes look even today. Why are kit homes not a thing today ? What replaced them ?

They are a thing, I had one built. But dealing with meddling biddies in the local council who wanted to tell me what my house should look like (not to mention that the only real house is one made of crumbling concrete blocks) put up a lot of barriers.

Example: https://www.palmatin.com/

I honestly think a lot of the problem comes down to having people in positions of power who view affordable, commoditized housing as a threat.

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#35

Post by CalRobert »

For those interested in kit houses - Sears houses are fascinating but they were not the first houses you could order and have shipped. To give one random example, this house in San Diego was built in Maine, sent by ship to San Francisco, but then sold (and assembled) en route in San Diego when it was clear the bust after the gold rush meant there might not be a buyer in SF

https://gaslampfoundation.org/

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#36

Post by CalRobert »

whoopdedo wrote: post #13
vsskanth wrote: post #3

I'm really impressed by how timeless these homes look even today. Why are kit homes not a thing today ? What replaced them ?

It's not so much that they were replaced but that the logistics of delivering an entire house's BOM to a single location didn't make sense. What made it work at the time was the railroads. The lumber would be dropped off at a freight yard to be picked up by a local contractor. (Although the homeowner could have done it themselves if they wanted the actual work was typically hired out to tradesmen.) But as the country…

For what it's worth, my house was shipped a few thousand KM on two lorries. It was about €8,000 for shipping but a lot of that cost was related to it being in the middle of Covid and needing to use a roll-on-roll-off ferry.

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#37

Post by lqet »

codelikeawolf wrote: post #20

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and I didn't realize how weird the term "Chicagoland" was until I started traveling around a bit. I'm not aware of any other city in the world that tacks "land" onto the name to describe the surrounding area. Do this with any other city and it sounds like a weird amusement park: Dallasland, Indianapolisland, Seattleland, etc.

Switzerland has a whole Canton named after the surrounding area of Basel: Basel-Landschaft, which is often called "Baselland" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel-Landschaft

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#38

Post by icameron »

codelikeawolf wrote: post #20

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and I didn't realize how weird the term "Chicagoland" was until I started traveling around a bit. I'm not aware of any other city in the world that tacks "land" onto the name to describe the surrounding area. Do this with any other city and it sounds like a weird amusement park: Dallasland, Indianapolisland, Seattleland, etc.

Portlandland

Re: A trip to see Chicagoland Sears houses

#40

Post by tkgally »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #27
codelikeawolf wrote: post #20

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and I didn't realize how weird the term "Chicagoland" was until I started traveling around a bit. I'm not aware of any other city in the world that tacks "land" onto the name to describe the surrounding area. Do this with any other city and it sounds like a weird amusement park: Dallasland, Indianapolisland, Seattleland, etc.

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and nobody says "Chicagoland" in conversation. It's only used by newscasters, and car dealers in their commercials. Even dumber is "Chicagoland area." My copyediting professor (who worked at the Chicago Tribune) loved to mock this dumb term, pointing out that nobody says "Detroitland" or "New Yorkland" or "Indianapolisland."

> It's only used by newscasters, and car dealers in their commercials.

When I was growing up in Southern California, “the Southland” was used in the same way to mean the Los Angeles area. I heard the term only in the mass media, never directly from a person in conversation.

A little googling turned up this list of media-only geographical terms:

https://www.cyburbia.org/forums/threads/nicknames-for-metrop...

I noticed this phenomenon when I moved to Chicago in 1978. I liked the city, but I thought that “Chicagoland” sounded stupid.

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