Hi All,
New to the forum. I'm excited to say that my wife and I just put an offer on what I believe to be a kit home, built in 1927 in central Maryland. The home has a stucco exterior with 3 bedrooms, 1 full bath on main level & 1 in basement, a living room, dining room, kitchen and walkout basement. There is one fireplace in the living room and a fireplace in the unfinished basement, directly under the kitchen which we thought was interesting. An obvious change to the property appears to be the wrought iron on the front porch but apart from that, both the interior and exterior have been meticulously maintained by the current owner since he purchased it in 1978.

I'd love your thoughts and opinions on it's identification. In my search, it appears to me to be strikingly similar to the Alladin "Franklin" model.

Thanks in advance for your help!

The following links are to pictures I have from the listing.

I don't think that this house is an Aladdin Franklin. The original Aladdin is still standing here in Bay City. Others have been located in Oxford and Buchanan Michigan.The polygonial bay window is not a typical Aladdin detail. The bay windows they allowed customers to add were typically boxy.

Front gable, recessed porch bungalows such as this were very common. Every pre-cut housing company, plan book publisher, and local developer had their own version of this housing type. To determine if this is a pre-cut house look for identifaction numbers on exposed members and sheathing. It can be stenciled or simple grease pencil. If there are identifaction numbers it would help to determine who manufacturered the house.

Dale Wolicki
Architectural Historian
Bay County (Bay City) Michigan Historical Society

Our contract was accepted and we settle on the 29th of Sept.

I'll be inside again next week with the home inspector and will take a look for any markings. All beams in the attic and basement are exposed.

Thanks Dale, I'll post up what I find.

This is the Aladdin Franklin from a 1921 catalog


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Well,
I couldn't find any markings on the beams during the inspection but the house is in great shape. 3 weeks to settlement! We found some old knob and tube wiring in the attic that was still live with exposed ends dangling and both chimneys needed cleaned and inspected.

The house is very livable as it sits so we may begin in the spring with restoring the exterior. I'm sure the neighbors will throw us a party for bringing some new life (and color) to the green monster. I've been playing around in photoshop with white trim, grey stucco and burgundy braces/rafters. We also plan to remove the wrought iron on the front porch and replace with square tapered columns.