Alliance's Sears and Other Kit Houses at Rodman Library
Robb Hyde of the Alliance Area Preservation Society (AAPS) presents Alliance’s Sears & Other Kit Houses: Your Historic Home, the second public program of the Your Historic Home project, on Tuesday, September 13, at 7:00 p.m., at Rodman Library Main Auditorium. Hyde is the Vice President of the Alliance Area Preservation Society, retired Director of the Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster, and former Director of Marketing and Development at the Canton Museum of Art. He holds a BA in Communications from Mount Union College and an MBA in Marketing from the University of Pittsburgh. Currently he serves on the City of Alliance’s Historic Preservation Commission and the Castle Crusaders’ Capital Campaign Committee.
Alliance’s Sears & Kit Houses will give an overview of the history of mail order and kit houses in the United States. Mail order houses by Sears, Aladdin, Montgomery Ward and others were a popular option for those wishing to build their dream home in the first half of the 20th century. These houses represent a period when the concept of home ownership and consumerism met in the creation of kit homes in a variety of architectural styles that could be planned by experts, manufactured in bulk, and built economically and efficiently in every corner of the country. Alliance has quite a few of them! The Society has already positively identified seventeen of them, made probable IDs on another eight, and is looking for more! The program will feature historic catalog images and contemporary photos of kit houses built in Alliance. It will also present clues to discovering if you have a kit home, or if there is one in your neighborhood. The AAPS exhibit and samples of vintage catalogues will be on display at the event. The program will be presented by Robb Hyde.
Over the next several years, Your Historic Home will help people throughout the community unlock the history of their own historic homes—be it a 19th Century Second Empire or a 50s Ranch home. AAPS plans to build a strong foundation of knowledge about the homes of Alliance, and help individuals learn how to research the history of their house. Each year we will focus research, surveys and programming around a particular house type found in the area, or a specific neighborhood in Alliance. We will also conduct house history research workshops to teach people about the resources available to research the history of their home.
Rodman Public Library is located at 215 E Broadway St. in Alliance. Free Parking is available. The Alliance Area Preservation Society is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic structures through education, research and documentation. It also owns and operates the Haines House, 186 W. Market St. in Alliance, (www.haineshouse.org) an Underground Railroad site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This program is free and open to the public.
