Kit homes were pioneered in the USA by the Aladdin Company, whose ‘Readi-Cut’ houses proved popular, particularly with corporations that were spreading across the wide-open spaces of the US, who had land, but no houses to put their workforce in. Companies like DuPont built entire towns using Aladdin kits, which were cheap and easy to assemble – even by an unskilled workforce. In 1917, 252 Aladdin kits made their way to England to form ‘Austin Village’, a town for the workforce of Austin Motors then busily engaged in war work.
Yet the company that really cornered the market in kit houses was Sears Roebuck. Already one of the major players in the home catalogue business, it prided itself on selling everything from knickerbockers to steel joists. Naturally, not everything sold equally well. By 1906, its building supplies division was making a loss, but as its building materials manager Frank W Kushel was looking at the company’s mountain of lumber and ironmongery...