A 1923 Harris Brothers Company catalog includes an attractive Craftsman style house with a rather lackluster name: No. N-1026. The house was offered with clapboard or shingled siding, and a reversed floor plan as an option. The Aladdin Company sold a nearly identical kit house called “The Plaza” as early as 1917… does anyone know of other similar kits? Who came up with the design first?
Beneath the catalog description below are what may be two examples in Oberlin, Kansas. Each of these are stuccoed, and vary slightly in subtle ways from the illustration (as do many kit homes). Could these examples be knock-offs by an area builder? I hope to answer many questions in the future.
Harris Home No. N-1026 The Size: 38 ft. 8 in. x 48 ft. 7 Rooms and Bath
HERE is a house that has proven astonishingly popular for the prospective builder who is desirous of having a seven-room house with a large porch and bath. We cannot help but believe that this attractive yet sensible Home will meet every requirement. Looking from all sides this Home is equally beautiful.
Upon entering the living room from the spacious porch, one is surprised at the well arranged and lighted interior. To the right upon entering the living room we have a large chamber 15 x 12. It will undoubtedly prove to be just what the professional man desires for his home office. The kitchen, with its breakfast room and French windows, is most inviting.
This Home can be had in either Cedar Shingle siding or bevel siding. Of course, when we furnish Cedar Shingles for the side walls we include sufficient creosote shingle stain for dipping them before applying.
Please bear in mind that our proposition also includes double floors, double walls, plenty of large windows for the cellar, complete with frames and hardware, and solid 6×6 girder posts to carry the floor beam supports. Any Plan in this book can be reversed without charge.
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HARRIS BROTHERS COMPANY, 35th and Iron Streets, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
The N-1026 as it appears on page 23 of the Harris Brothers’ 1923 catalog. I do not know what other years the house was offered. The facade rendering shows the front door flanked by single windows while the floor plan shows the door to the right of a double window. It appears that there were subtle variations even within the company’s own publications!
This example has a stucco exterior and attic windows. The room suggested as an office has a single window unit rather than the triple window illustrated. The windows are capped with brick; the brick porch piers are nicely detailed.
Side view showing more of the spacious porch.
The following house was built with the published plan reversed:
The front steps were turned to the side in this example.
A portion of the porch has been enclosed on the side elevation.
Here is a virtually identical house by Aladdin from their 1917 catalog:
The Plaza looks sharp in its shingled exterior!
When we bought our home in 2007 it had been marketed as an Aladdin Plaza, with an architect-designed addition in 1952. We have subsequently recognized the same style homes in another near-by Philadelphia suburb, Chestertown, MD, and Ocean City, NJ. (I can’t seem to attach photos)
It certainly does seem to have been a popular look! Were you able to determine the origins of your house? I keep thinking I will find a similar plan in a plan book somewhere (I’m sure it’s out there) but have not done so yet.
We recently purchased and are in the process of renovating a bungalow that has a floor plan identical to the examples above. During my initial research I was convinced it was an Aladdin Plaza, but once I was able to get into the house I noticed that our home did not have any of the stencil markings and labels that would have been present in a kit home. As I continued my research I found the Harris Brothers plan. I am curious if the original owner purchased the blueprints from Harris Brothers and had local contractors build the home.
I am very curious about the origin of our home and this is a major part of that history.
I share your enthusiasm for understanding the history of one’s home! Knowing the background of a house makes it even more special. Many kit houses were so popular that they were imitated – both by other kit home manufacturers and by the numerous business which sold plans by mail. The absence of markings on your lumber suggests that your house may have been built by a local builder who used plans from a plan book or who purchased plans from a plan company. There were numerous variations of the Aladdin Plaza, and I have no idea who first originated the plan. I suspect it was based on a design from California. Someone who has researched this house thoroughly may know for sure.
If you enjoy research, you can peruse a lot of house plan catalogs online at archive.org. Go through as many of them as you can which were published in the years up to the time your house was built and you may eventually find a match. Try various search terms for more results… the number of business which sold plans and kits is mind-boggling. Good luck, and please let me know if you solve the mystery!
Thank you so much for the response. I did not realize that buying plans from a catalog outside of the kit homes was so common at that time. Not much different than today. I am going to continue researching and diving into the history of these house plans.
Thank you for the tip about archive.org. Wow! What an amazing resource.
We just bought an Alladin Plaza home in Foster Virginia. Built in 1921. Love it!
Congratulations! The Plaza is a beautiful and livable design… it’s no wonder there were so many knock-offs of it. Enjoy your new house!
As an additional note, our Plaza has an added room off of the dining room. They, a previous owner, built this room with a sliding patio door to the side porch. My wife will be using it as a sewing room. Also, they removed the wall between the kitchen and the “breakfast room” and expanded the countertop to include a Jenn-Air stove on a peninsula. On a sad note, a previous owner turned the middle bedroom into a larger bathroom with a separate shower and a large soaking tub. The original bathroom is now the laundry room. What is very nice is the original wood floors.
Hi Russ,
Super curious about the modification that was done to your home off of the dining room. My wife and I just bought and are renovating the 1921 Plaza and someone had also built off of the dining room. We were hoping to remove the wall between that new room and the breakfast room – but was also afraid that it was bearing a load. Do you have any beams showing that they did on their end?
Dan, all of the work done to our house was done by the previous, maybe even farther back. I only have some photos that was done in the 80s or early 90s. Sorry. We have no plans of any of the remodel, only some before and after photos
One thing I’ve noticed between the Plaza and the Harris N-1026 is the variation of front door and windows. Our Plaza has the front door situated to the right, looking at the house, and three windows across the front. It also has a bay window on the front wall in the master bedroom. Also, it has an added room off of the dining room with a sliding patio door to the side porch. And the wall is removed between the kitchen and breakfast room.
My grandparents built a house around 1935 in Rensaeler, NY. How can I attach a photo so you can see if it is a Sears house or any other kit house?I asked the current owner if the floor joists were labeled but he didn’t seem to know. It is a cross-gabled Dutch Colonial. Rosemary Thornton looked at the image but she said it was not a Sears.
We bought our house at the beach in 2017 and a lovely woman reached out to us in 2019 and said that she had stalked our home for years, hoping it had not been torn down. She sent us the Aladdin Plaza ad from her research. We still have a way to go but our house is a favorite of travelers to our little beach town!