Aladdin Homes archive shows a house with a foundation like ours, even down to the textured blocks. Here is another house with textured blocks on the foundation.
I found out something else today that is really interesting for a number of reasons. It was not until the 1896 with the Rural Free Delivery Act that mail was widely available. This act changed the face of rural America by providing mail order to parts of the country that had relied on cross-roads store to provide all of their "store-bought" items. Sears and other mail order catalogs changed this. No longer did a rural customer have to depend on what was available in their local area, accessible only by horseback. Now they could have items shipped in via US Mail from all over the country.
At least one forum exists where people discuss issues related to kit homes.
At some point, I am going to walk around Conway and take pictures of the houses I suspect of being kit homes and see if I can id them. Maybe I should write an article... (at least for the Historical Society).
While this is, indeed, ugly, it has other problems. Like none of the appliances work. And the area underneath the sink is rotted. And the cracks running between the walls and the ceiling? Those are because the wall is pulling away. We have to shore up the foundation.
This closed-in porch is supposed to be a walkin closet. Except it is not done. There is bare chip board everywhere.
The back bedroom is a mess. There is no door, the woodwork is painted dark green, the light fixture is dangling from the ceiling, there is a big patch in the corner and a hole underneath the baseboard. Oh, and that carpet? Totally hiding a dissolving particle board floor. That had to come out and be replaced.
