Another Los Angeles Investment Company House With Ties To A Kit Home

Since I am on the subject of the Los Angeles Investment Company I want to share another home that is the work of Ernest McConnell supervising architect and his designers/architects one being Benjamin Allen Brown. The subject house was built in 1910 but featured on the front of their 1912 catalog.

Los Angeles Investment Company 1912 features their design no 560 on the cover. THAT house was built in fall of 1910. Does it look familiar?

 

This image shows the Sears 264P234 with the Los Angeles Investment Company design 560. See the similarities? Sears obviously retouched the photo, there’s no doubt.

 

Sears first offered model 264P234 in 1914. The Los Angeles Investment Company built their design 560 in fall of 1910. In fact, they built two on the same block! The first one built was used as the catalog image.

In September 1910 a building permit was filed by Los Angeles Investment Company for 1575 W 50th Street.

 

This is the house at that address, 1575 W 50th Street. You can see the house via bing street view and several years via google street. I took the screenshot that shows the details the best. Remember you can click on any of my images to see them in full size.

 

Some of you probably still aren’t convinced. In 1918 Sears began replacing model numbers with names. The 264P234 was given the name ‘Hollywood’. Coincidence? I doubt it. Here again, like the Sears ‘Osborn’, they acquired yet another pattern from another company to use for their kit homes.

In the 1918 Sears Modern Homes catalog they opted to show a photo of the house from the front. Look very closely at all of the details such as the stones in the lower right corner. And, BTW, Sears didn’t have a door of that style. One more detail, if you look very closely at the address on the Sears image you can make out the 1575.

 

The address is 1575 W 50th Street so google away and while you’re there stop at 1542 W 50th Street and see the other one which was built in 1911.

When Sears ‘borrowed’ the pattern they changed the floor plan. Designers/architects often did that to avoid copyright infringement.

By the early 1920’s this California bungalow became a very popular bungalow style and every company offered a version or two of it. The Sears Hollywood is one of the most common misidentified Sears models. In Fall 1920-Spring 1921 the Hollywood had the honor of gracing the front of the Modern Homes catalog.

 

And as native Tulsan Paul Harvey would say, ‘and now you know the rest of the story’.

Do you have a possible Sears Hollywood to share or report? If so email me at searshomes@yahoo.com

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And, you can join our closed Sears Homes group on facebook too if you want to learn how to recognize kit homes and pattern book homes!

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Oklahoma Houses By Mail by Rachel Shoemaker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.