Reading a Delaware County Street: How to Tell a Sears Kit House From a Builder Colonial From a 1955 Rancher

Drive down a street in Media, Swarthmore, or the older end of Ridley and you're reading a timeline, not just a block of houses. A stone twin from 1912 sits two doors from a foursquare that went up in 1924. Across the street sits a rancher built in 1958, on what used to be that foursquare's back pasture. We've opened walls in all six of the styles covered below. Across 42 jobs we've pulled permits for this year, the single biggest predictor of a remodel's final cost wasn't square footage. It was which of these six styles the house actually is.

That matters before you call anyone for a quote. A kitchen remodel priced for a 1958 rancher's open platform framing is not the same job as one priced for a 1912 stone twin's load-bearing masonry wall. They just wear the same name on an estimate. This guide walks six styles you'll actually find on a Delaware County street. For each one: how to identify it from the curb in about ten seconds, what's typically behind the walls, which renovations are straightforward versus expensive on that structure, and one ProBrothers project on that housing stock. Want the deeper cost breakdown once you've placed your own house? Our guides on opening a load-bearing wall in a galley kitchen, dormering a Cape, and fixing a split-level kitchen go further on three of these six.

The Stone Twin (roughly 1900–1935)

From the curb: A pair of attached homes sharing a party wall. Faced in local Wissahickon schist or a similar fieldstone, usually two and a half stories, with a shared or mirrored front porch. Common in older Media and the rail-line boroughs that grew up around the Pennsylvania Railroad's Main Line and West Chester branches in the early 1900s.

Behind the walls: Balloon framing. The wall studs run uninterrupted from the sill to the roofline, rather than breaking at each floor. That's why fire and sound travel vertically inside these walls faster than in a newer platform-framed house. Plaster over wood lath, not drywall. The party wall itself is almost always load-bearing masonry, shared with the neighbor, and that changes what you're allowed to do to it.

Easy versus expensive: Interior layout changes on non-party walls are usually straightforward. Balloon-framed partition walls are rarely load-bearing. What gets expensive fast: anything touching the party wall. That usually means coordinating with the adjoining owner, and it almost always needs an engineer's sign-off. Full knob-and-tube electrical replacement is the other big one, since original wiring in most of these homes was never upgraded past a single 60-amp service.

We recently handled a kitchen remodel in one of these stone twins in Swarthmore. The party wall turned out to be carrying roof load we hadn't expected from the original drawings, which pushed the structural scope up mid-project. On site, that's a fairly common surprise on this housing stock. It's exactly why we budget a structural contingency on stone twin jobs, rather than pricing them like a standard interior remodel.

The Sears or Aladdin Kit House (1908–1940)

From the curb: This is the one most homeowners don't know they own. Look for a simple, symmetrical bungalow or foursquare-adjacent form. Often smaller and plainer than its neighbors, sometimes with a distinctively proportioned dormer that doesn't quite match the rest of the block's custom-built homes. Sears, Roebuck and Company sold more than 70,000 of these mail-order "Modern Homes" kits nationwide between 1908 and 1940. Aladdin Homes ran a competing catalog out of Bay City, Michigan over roughly the same stretch.

Behind the walls: The real tell isn't visible from the street. According to the National Park Service's own research on the catalog-home phenomenon, every piece of framing lumber shipped from the factory pre-cut and numbered. A shipping stencil or part number stamped into a rafter or joist in the attic or basement is close to definitive proof. We've found exactly this kind of stencil twice in our own project files. Once in a Media attic, once in a Ridley basement, on houses the owners had no idea were kit homes until we opened the ceiling.

Easy versus expensive: These were standardized designs. Interior partition walls are almost never load-bearing, and the framing itself is typically in excellent condition, since kit houses used graded, factory-selected lumber rather than whatever a local mill had on hand. What's expensive: original windows. They were sized to a non-standard catalog dimension and usually need custom replacement rather than an off-the-shelf swap. The original electrical service is the other cost driver, built for a world before central air and a dishwasher.

On the Ridley kit house we identified, the owners had already priced a standard window replacement quote before calling us. The contractor quoting it hadn't caught that the openings were about an inch and a half off standard sizing, in both directions. That would have meant a poor fit on delivery. Catching it up front saved a return trip and a second production run.

The 1920s Foursquare

From the curb: Nearly cubic in silhouette. Two full stories under a low-pitched hip roof, almost always with a full-width front porch and a central dormer. These went up across Media and Swarthmore in large numbers between about 1905 and 1930, usually on slightly larger lots than the stone twins nearby.

Behind the walls: Balloon framing again, plaster and lath walls. A center-hall layout with load-bearing walls running front to back through the middle of the house, which is the structural signature shaping almost every renovation decision on a foursquare. Cast-iron waste piping is still common in these. It corrodes from the inside and can fail without any visible exterior sign.

Easy versus expensive: Cosmetic kitchen and bath updates that don't touch that center load-bearing wall are routine. Opening the kitchen to the dining room is one of the most requested foursquare renovations we get. It almost always means a structural beam, because that wall is carrying the center of the house. Full waste-line replacement, when the cast iron is original, typically runs into the five figures once you add in plumbing and plaster repair.

A recent foursquare kitchen opening we completed in Media needed a laminated veneer lumber beam spanning just over 14 feet to replace that center wall. That's a bigger structural member than most homeowners expect going in. We walk every foursquare client through that number before the first wall comes down, specifically so it doesn't land as a surprise mid-project.

The Pre-War Builder Colonial (roughly 1935–1955)

From the curb: A simplified, symmetrical colonial revival form. Usually brick or stone veneer on the front face only, two stories, a center entry, and modest detailing compared to the stone twins and foursquares nearby. These filled in the gaps between the older boroughs and the postwar subdivisions, built out through the late Depression years and into the early 1950s.

Behind the walls: This is the transition generation. Some of these are still balloon-framed with plaster. Some are already platform-framed with an early version of drywall, depending on exactly when in that 20-year window the house went up. Electrical service is usually a step better than the foursquares, often upgraded to 100 amps at some point. But original cloth-insulated wiring frequently remains in the walls behind a later panel upgrade.

Easy versus expensive: Framing style varies house to house, even within this one category. We always confirm framing type before quoting a wall removal, rather than assuming based on the build year alone. Kitchen remodels tend to run a predictable middle ground here: cheaper than a foursquare's structural surprises, pricier than a straight rancher.

A whole-kitchen remodel we completed in one of these builder colonials in Havertown turned out to be platform-framed. That let us open a wall between the kitchen and a small breakfast room, without the beam work the foursquare up the street would have needed for the identical layout change.

The 1950s Rancher

From the curb: Long and low, a single story, usually under 1,600 square feet. A shallow roof pitch, and an attached garage that was a genuine novelty when these were built. Postwar subdivisions pushed these out through Havertown and parts of the Main Line corridor roughly between 1950 and 1965, often on former farmland.

Behind the walls: Platform framing throughout. Each floor is framed independently on top of the one below, and drywall replaces plaster. A single level with no structure above means almost no partition wall carries roof or floor load from another story. That's the single biggest structural advantage this style has over everything listed above it.

Easy versus expensive: Open-concept kitchen remodels are the most requested renovation on this housing stock, by a wide margin. They're also usually the most straightforward structural job of all six styles, since most interior walls are non-load-bearing partitions. What runs long: if the rancher sits on a slab rather than a basement, moving plumbing fixtures means cutting concrete. That adds time and cost a basement-foundation house avoids entirely.

Per our own job cost data, a rancher kitchen or bath remodel tracks closest to a straight finish-and-fixtures number of any style in this guide. Structural work is a small fraction of total cost on most jobs, rather than the leading line item it becomes on a stone twin or foursquare.

The Split-Level

From the curb: Three or four short half-flights of stairs connecting staggered floor levels. Usually a garage and family room on the lowest level, kitchen and living space a half-flight up, and bedrooms a half-flight above that. These followed the ranchers through the same postwar subdivisions, mostly from the mid-1950s into the 1970s, as builders looked for a way to add square footage on sloped lots without a full second story.

Behind the walls: Platform framing like the rancher. But the staggered levels mean load paths run in more directions at once, carried by the short walls and the stair landings between levels, rather than stacking cleanly floor over floor. That half-wall separating the sunken family room from the kitchen above it is almost always doing structural work, not just dividing space.

Easy versus expensive: Cosmetic updates on any single level are routine. Opening that half-wall between levels is one of the most common split-level requests we get. It's almost never a simple demo, because of exactly the load-path complexity described above. We bring in a structural engineer before touching a wall on nearly every split-level job we take on. That's something a straightforward rancher kitchen remodel rarely needs.

Our own split-level kitchen project covered in depth here walks through exactly this half-wall problem on a real Delaware County job, with the beam size, the permit path, and the final cost.

Six Styles at a Glance

According to the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey, roughly a third of the owner-occupied housing stock in older Northeast metro counties like this one was built before 1960. That's exactly the range these six styles cover. It's one reason a one-size-fits-all renovation quote so rarely survives contact with the actual wall. Not sure which of these six your own house is? Our team can usually tell within the first ten minutes of a walkthrough, often before we've opened a single piece of drywall. For homeowners in the Media area specifically, our Media, PA remodeling page covers the service area where most of the stone twins and foursquares above sit. It includes the local permit and township details that come with that housing stock.

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