A House So Small, It Was Delivered

It’s so small, you might just miss it.

The tiny house located at 400 E. Windsor Ave. is the lone remaining, little-altered Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order home in Del Ray.

Dating to 1920, the house harkens back to the early 20th century when new homes from local builders and mail-ordered varieties began popping up in the subdivisions that later become the Town of Potomac.

Today, the Town of Potomac Historic District is bordered by Commonwealth Avenue to the west, Route 1 to the east, E. Bellefonte Avenue to the south and Ashby Avenue to the north. It includes 690 contributing structures and 1,840 acres.

• Find out if your home or favorite business is a contributing structure.

According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination application for the Town of Potomac Historic District:

“Pre-cut homes from Sears and Roebuck Co. were built in Potomac. The tiny single-story house at 400 East Windsor, built in 1920, and the house at 301 Del Ray Avenue are two little-altered remaining examples that can be documented. Many others in Potomac are very similar to houses offered by Sears and other popular mail-order houses of the day. A company called Standard Homes Co. of Washington D.C. provided plans which were then constructed by local builders. Two of these houses built in 1936 at 303 and also at 305 East Windsor Ave were known as the ‘Special Williamsburg Model,’ reflecting the interest in the revival of ‘colonial’ architecture.”

The Sears home at 301 E. Del Ray Avenue has received some alterations since the Town of Potomac Historic District was established in September 1992. 

Two churches in Del Ray—the Emmanuel Temple Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Dewitt Avenue and St. Andrew and St. Margaret of Scotland Anglican Catholic Church on E. Monroe Avenue—are mail-order structures, according to Lance Mallamo, director of the Office of Historic Alexandria.

From 1908 to 1948, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold more than 70,000 homes through its mail-order Modern Homes program.

According to the Sears Archives:

“Sears designed 447 different housing styles, from the elaborate multistory Ivanhoe, with its elegant French doors and art glass windows, to the simpler Goldenrod, which served as a quaint, three-room and no-bath cottage for summer vacationers. (An outhouse could be purchased separately for Goldenrod and similar cottage dwellers.) Customers could choose a house to suit their individual tastes and budgets.”

How do you know if your home is of the mail-order variety?

The Arts & Crafts Society suggests looking for stamped lumber on exposed beams or rafters in spaces like a basement or attic and to inspect the back of moldings and trim for shipping labels.