Inspiration can come in many different and unusual ways.
In 1981, in Chicago, Sears Roebuck and Company was founded. The company became a giant in the mail-order industry and also built department stores across the nation.
Two unique items Sears sold were automobiles and houses.
Their sturdy homes were constructed with numbered pre-cut beams and boards.
In the early 1970’s my parents bought a Sears home in Lafayette. The house was impressive with white pillars on the porch, dark brown wooden shingles and tall windows. Many people said it looked like a mansion.
The realtor told my parents that the house had an important event associated with it. He said earlier one of the Price brothers had lived there and noticed the part numbers on a large beam in the basement.
Price then had an idea that would impact the lives of millions of people. He realized that a home built with numbered pieces of wood, cut to size in a factory, could also be built with room size panels, mass-produced in a factory. This new approach to building would save much time and money. These panels would then be trucked to the construction sites. Because of this the Price brothers, Jim and George, founded National Homes Corporation in 1940, in Lafayette. Their factory manufactured room size panels for well over four decades. This made National Homes the largest producer of pre-fabricated homes in the United States! In 1984, National Homes moved to their plant to Effingham, Illinois.
John R. Oilar
Crawfordsville
