Montgomery Ward

[W. Gray]

I was surprised to learn that Montgomery Ward, or Monkey Wards as we called the place when I was a kid, is still alive and kicking as an internet mail order company.

In the 50s, it seemed a good many towns had either a mail order Sears or Wards store (or both) where most anything could be picked up after ordering from their catalog.

Retail stores seemed to be restricted only to the largest towns until both companies expanded to shopping centers everywhere in the sixties and seventies.

One could even order a house from Sears. I know of at least one home in Howard that was picked up pre-cut from a box car or two at the rail siding along Cherry Street, taken to the building site, and built with the supplied plans. Everything from nails, plaster, and paint to the furnace was included. The only thing that was not included was the foundation.

Spiegel is alive, also, but apparently sells only female wearing apparel.

[Ms Bear]

The town I live in here in Texas has one house that was ordered from Sears in 1939.  It is still in good shape and the last couple to buy it paid off the 30 year mortgage last summer.

The kit even included all of the cabinet hinges and drawer pulls.  The people that bought it originally had a big problem finding local carpenters to put it together because the didn't think they should have used lumber from Illinois when we have all this lumber here.  The lumber that was used in it was cypress and the supplier sold mainly to Sears.

Does anyone have a picture of the house in Howard?

[farmgal67357]

Monkey Wards sold houses too, they were called Wardway Houses and were made by the Gordon Van Tine Company.
Lisa

[srkruzich]

One of my table saws is a monky ward saw.  Made of cast iron weighs around 300 pounds.  Still works too after 62 years

[W. Gray]

That Montgomery Wards table saw might very well be a PowerKraft which was Wards equivalent of Sears Craftsman.

Wards sold TVs and radios under the Airline brand, while the Sears equivalent was Silvertone.

Sears house brand of furnaces was Homart.

[srkruzich]

That Montgomery Wards table saw might very well be a PowerKraft which was Wards equivalent of Sears Craftsman.

Wards sold TVs and radios under the Airline brand, while the Sears equivalent was Silvertone.

Sears house brand of furnaces was Homart.

It is a powercraft.  I think sarah has a homart window fan too.

[W. Gray]

Our first "air conditioning" was in the early fifties when the folks put in a window fan. That fan really made a huge difference in nighttime sleeping. We thought we were definitely "uptown." It was a Sears Homart brand and covered the entire bottom half of a sash window. All the windows in the house were shut at night time except the bedroom windows insuring a breezy sleep.

Nothing could be better than that fan, it seemed, until they put in a Homart window air conditioner a few years later. Like the window fan, the air conditioner was taken down and stored in the basement during the winter months.

We had a huge coal fired furnace in the basement that had been converted to gas. Something went wrong with it and the folks put in a new Homart gas furnace. I remember marveling at how the replacement was so much smaller than the old furnace. Being very young, I could not understand why it was so much smaller. Even so it was about 3 feet by 3 feet and six feet high. 

When I bought my first house at age 33, I looked at the furnace in my new home and could not understand how it could be several times smaller than that new Homart.

[srkruzich]

Y

Our first "air conditioning" was in the early fifties when the folks put in a window fan. That fan really made a huge difference in nighttime sleeping. We thought we were definitely "uptown." It was a Sears Homart brand and covered the entire bottom half of a sash window. All the windows in the house were shut at night time except the bedroom windows insuring a breezy sleep.

You know what, there isn't anything made that is the quality of that PowerKraft. it was a home saw not a commercial one.  And today the best i've found is a grizzly and thats a commercial saw that isn't even on par with the PowerKraft.   
Sad state of affairs when you cannot buy something of good quality.

[Diane Amberg]

May I share a very funny Sears tale? I grew up in a big 12 room Victorian home out in the country with a big front porch and a side porch .Every few years the seat cushions for our porch and terrace furniture would wear out and Daddy would buy more from Sears and have them delivered. We had two porch gliders and a bunch of chairs.That amounted to about 16 seat cushions to replace.
  One beautiful spring morning in 1964, a huge Sears tractor trailer lumbered down our drive way. The driver wanted to know where we wanted all the furniture dropped. "Uh,what furniture?'' sez Daddy. It seems whomever took the order had very bad hand writing.The 16 porch furniture "seats" was read as 16 porch furniture sets!  Chairs, loungers, umbrella tables, porch gliders....16 sets ! Needless to say we sent them back, and still had to reorder the seat cushions we really wanted.

[farmgal67357]

When my brother and I were kids, we could hardly wait for the Sears and Monkey Wards Christmas catalogs to arrive each year. After fighting about who got which one first, we settled into a comfy spot on the couch armed with ink pens. Just about every page in the toys section had something circled on it!!! And heaven forbid my brother and I circled the same toy.... My mom would just roll her eyes, like we were going to get ALL of that for Christmas!!!
Lisa