Excerpt from Building A College: An Architectural History of Berea College[1]
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Worker's Housing:
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sears Roebuck, as a mail order catalog, designed, sold and shipped by rail pre-fabricated houses across the United States. When the average household income was about $2,000 in 1933, Sears Roebuck sold their most popular four room model, the Crafton, for $3,400. From 1910 to the 1940s, an estimated 500,000 mail order houses were sold in the United States. Magazines illustrated New England farm houses and American Colonial examples of new house design and construction ( America )s Favorite Homes Mail-Order Catalogues as a Guide to Popular Early 20th Century Houses, 1990; The Architectural Forum, April, 1933). Berea's housing construction aped this taste and these traditional designs in many of the worker's houses.
------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Citation: Boyce, Robert Piper. Building A College: An Architectural History of Berea College. Self-published. Berea, Ky: Berea College Printing Services, 2006, p. 52.
NOTE: This content is reproduced here with permission of the author and is COPYRIGHT PROTECTED. Fair Use access granted for educational purposes only, therefore, this content may be used in the classroom or classroom assignments without prior permission as long as proper citation is provided. For commercial use, publication, or reproduction, permission must be obtained from copyright holder or owner.
Boyce, Robert Piper. Building A College: An Architectural History of Berea College. Self-published. Berea, Ky: Berea College Printing Services, 2006, p34-36.