The Aladdin Company was a pioneer in the pre-cut, mail order home industry. Sometimes referred to as Aladdin Readi-Cut Houses, the company was the first to offer a true kit house composed of precut, numbered pieces. Its primary competitors were

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curren ...

and

Sears, Roebuck and Co. Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as ...

in the US and

Eaton's The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton's, was a Canadian department store chain that was once the largest in the country. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew ...

in Canada. Two other kit home manufacturers, Lewis and Sterling, were also based in Bay City. Aladdin began operations in 1906 and ceased operations in 1987. In 2014 the rights to the company name and logo were acquired by Charles Munro and sold in 2018

History

Knock down kits for houses Popular Mechanics 1908

Origins

Aladdin was founded by two brothers, W. J. Sovereign and O. E. Sovereign in

Bay City, Michigan Bay City is a city and county seat of Bay County in the U.S. state of Michigan, located near the base of the Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 34,932, and it is the principal city of the Bay City Metropol ...

, after W. J. observed the success of the Brooks Boat Mfg. Co. in selling knock-down boats. The company began by selling boat houses, garages and summer cottages. Almost immediately the company was also involved in the Canadian market, and eventually opened a

branch office A branch office is an outlet of a company or, more generally, an organization that – unlike a subsidiary – does not constitute a separate legal entity, while being physically separated from the organization's main office. Branching is particu ...

in the prestigious Canadian Pacific Building in Toronto, and several other regional offices in Canada.

Boom years

Aladdin quickly expanded to become one of largest mail-order house companies. By 1915 sales surpassed $1 million. In 1918 Aladdin alone accounted for 2.37 percent of all housing starts in the United States, around 1,800 homes. The company's greatest success came from sales to industries which constructed company towns around new plants, mines and mills. The town of

Hopewell, Virginia Hopewell is an independent city surrounded by Prince George County and the Appomattox River in the Commonwealth of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 23,033. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Hopewell with Prin ...

was largely developed by the

DuPont Company DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

using Aladdin homes. In 1917 Aladdin shipped 252 houses to

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

for the

Austin Motor Company The Austin Motor Company Limited was an English manufacturer of motor vehicles, founded in 1905 by Herbert Austin in Longbridge. In 1952 it was merged with Morris Motors Limited in the new holding company British Motor Corporation (BMC) Limi ...

who built

Austin Village Austin Village is a First World War housing estate of prefabs between Longbridge and Northfield, Birmingham. Herbert Austin, who created the Austin Motor Company at Longbridge in 1905, had to take on more workers during the First World War wh ...

to house workers for munitions, tank and aircraft manufacture during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Decline

Aladdin began the development of a planned community called Aladdin City in southern

Miami-Dade County, Florida Miami-Dade County is a County (United States), county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. The county had a population of 2,701,767 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the most populous county in ...

, during the

Florida land boom of the 1920s The Florida land boom of the 1920s was Florida's first real estate bubble. This pioneering era of Florida land speculation lasted from 1924 to 1926 and attracted investors from all over the nation. The land boom left behind entirely new, planned ...

. The collapse of the boom not long after construction had begun proved disastrous. Aladdin's output fell below 1000 homes in 1928 on the eve of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, and never recovered. It exited the Canadian market in 1952. The company continued to produce catalogues, and maintained sales of a few hundred homes per year through the 1960s. During the 1970s sales fell further and by 1982 the company ceased manufacturing. The company ceased all operations in 1987. In 2014, the Aladdin Company was re-established and the new owner has re-registered the original Company Trademark

Contributions

The Aladdin Company, along with other catalogue-home businesses, played a key role in providing affordable housing to Americans in the period between the turn of the twentieth century and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. It also made key advancements in the

prefabrication Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. The term is u ...

of housing which would enable the post-war housing boom. Finally, it helped to propagate preferences across the U.S. and Canada for common

architectural style An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...

s such as the Craftsman,

Bungalow A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof (usually with dormer windows), and may be surrounded by wide verandas. The first house in England that was classified as a b ...

Four-Square Four square is a team sport played among two teams with two players each on a square court divided into four quadrants: A, B, C, and D (usually numbers 3, 4, 2, and 1, respectively, depending on the court.) The square that a player gets to befo ...

and

Cape Cod Cape Cod is a peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer mont ...

homes.

References

;Notes ;Sources * * * Roth, Ronica ''Built in a Day: Capturing the Era of Catalog Architecture'', Humanities, Sept/Oct 1998 pp 26–31. * Munro, Charles: May 30, 2014 - Sold By The Golden Rule.

External links

Aladdin Company Archives, Clarke Historical Library

The Aladdin Company Website

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Aladdin Company, The Manufacturing companies established in 1906 Defunct retail companies of the United States Manufactured home manufacturers Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1987 Defunct retail companies of Canada 1906 establishments in Michigan 1987 disestablishments in Michigan +Aladdin Company, The