Schol­ars dis­agree on when, exact­ly, Rome fell. But if you watch the new video from City 3D Time­lapse above, you’ll under­stand the lack of debate on the ques­tion of whether it fell. Around the turn of the sixth cen­tu­ry AD, build­ings start van­ish­ing at a rate that soon turns alarm­ing; long before the end of the first mil­len­ni­um, it’s clear that Rome has been plunged into very hard times indeed. In the video’s accel­er­at­ed visu­al his­to­ry, that much-scru­ti­nized 500-year span pass­es in a lit­tle more than five sec­onds. Just one minute lat­er, it has spread not just beyond the old city lim­its, but beyond the very frame of the aer­i­al view, becom­ing the vast urban­ized region we know today.

Leg­end has it that Rome was found­ed in 753 BC, when Romu­lus killed his twin broth­er Remus. As reflect­ed by the video, archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sug­gests that the area was set­tled ear­li­er, though the tra­di­tion­al date of Rome’s found­ing rough­ly coin­cides with the emer­gence of what we know as the Roman King­dom.

There fol­low the Roman Repub­lic, the Roman Empire, the medieval era — when the once-for­mi­da­ble Eter­nal City was left prac­ti­cal­ly for dead  — the Renais­sance, the Roman Baroque peri­od, the indus­tri­al era, and final­ly, our time of glob­al­iza­tion. For ref­er­ence, the clas­si­cal archae­ol­o­gist Gio­van­ni Pirane­si went to Rome and drew his influ­en­tial etch­ings of its ruins around the 1:55 mark of this three-minute video.

Not that the Rome cap­tured in Pirane­si’s Vedute bears much resem­blance to the Rome of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, for bet­ter or for worse. You can still see the Colos­se­um by moon­light, but the ambi­ence won’t be the same: the over­growth has long since been scraped off, and the car­go shorts are out in force year-round. Regard­less, no city is best appre­ci­at­ed through its land­marks alone, not even the mod­ern Rome so long both cel­e­brat­ed and dis­missed as an open-air muse­um. Watch­ing it rise, fall, and rise again from above with­in the length of a Euro­vi­sion song reminds us that it was­n’t built, or rebuilt, in a day — and that, in the face of often-for­mi­da­ble dif­fi­cul­ties, it even now man­ages to put up some­thing new once in a while.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Rome Began: The His­to­ry As Told by Ancient His­to­ri­ans

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

The Chang­ing Land­scape of Ancient Rome: A Free Online Course from Sapien­za Uni­ver­si­ty of Rome

What Did Ancient Rome Look Like? A 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the City Dur­ing the Sec­ond Cen­tu­ry AD

Time­lapse Ani­ma­tion Lets You See the Rise of Cities Across the Globe, from 3700 BC to 2000 AD

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

When the Colos­se­um in Rome Became the Home of Hun­dreds of Exot­ic Plant Species

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Two of the books that most shaped Amer­i­can cul­ture both hap­pened to bear the nick­name “The Big Book.” While the sec­ond of these, the A.A. Man­u­al, pub­lished in 1939, changed the coun­try with 12-Step recov­ery groups, the first of these, the Sears Cat­a­log, trans­formed Amer­i­ca with mass con­sump­tion, offer­ing cus­tomers in every part of the coun­try access to mod­ern con­ve­niences and retail goods of all kinds at unheard of prices. Begin­ning in 1908, Sears start­ed sell­ing entire hous­es, in approx­i­mate­ly 25-ton kits trans­port­ed by rail­road, con­sist­ing of 30,000 pre-cut parts, plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal fix­tures, and up to 750 pounds of nails.

“In an era before com­mer­cial avi­a­tion and long-haul truck­ing,” Curbed mar­vels, “Sears, Roe­buck & Co. set up an oper­a­tion that would pack­age and ship more than 400 dif­fer­ent types of homes and build­ings to any­body who had the cash and access to a cat­a­log.”

They start­ed small, and just as they didn’t come up with the con­cept of the mail order cat­a­log, Sears didn’t invent the kit house, though they sug­gest as much in their telling of the sto­ry. Instead they may have tak­en the idea from anoth­er com­pa­ny called Aladdin. Aladdin hous­es have been for­got­ten, how­ev­er, and even Sears’ main com­peti­tor, Mont­gomery Ward, didn’t catch up until 1921 and only last­ed ten years in the kit house busi­ness.

Sears hous­es, on the oth­er hand, are cel­e­brat­ed and sought out as mod­els of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can home, and for good rea­son. Between 1908 and 1939, Sears sold 70–75,000 hous­es in 447 dif­fer­ent styles all over the coun­try. “From Crafts­man to Cape Cods, they offered a cus­tom home at bud­gets and sizes that could accom­mo­date any size fam­i­ly,” writes Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics.

These Sears homes weren’t cheap low-end hous­es. Many of them were built using the finest qual­i­ty build­ing mate­ri­als avail­able dur­ing that time. It’s not uncom­mon to find Sears homes today with oak floors, cypress sid­ing, and cedar shin­gles.

What’s even more extra­or­di­nary is that 50% of these were built by the home­own­ers them­selves, usu­al­ly, as in a barn-rais­ing, with the gen­er­ous help of fam­i­ly, friends, and neigh­bors. The oth­er half sold were built pro­fes­sion­al­ly. “Often,” writes Messy Nessy, “local builders and car­pen­try com­pa­nies pur­chased homes from Sears to build as mod­el homes and mar­ket their ser­vices to poten­tial cus­tomers.”

These hous­es could have a sig­nif­i­cant effect on the char­ac­ter of a neigh­bor­hood. Not only could poten­tial buy­ers see first­hand, and par­tic­i­pate in, the con­struc­tion. They could also order the same or a sim­i­lar mod­el, cus­tomize it, and even—as the com­pa­ny tells us in its own short his­to­ry of the “Sears Mod­ern Home”—design their own homes and “sub­mit the blue­prints to Sears, which would then ship off the appro­pri­ate pre­cut and fit­ted mate­ri­als.”

Sears sounds mod­est about its impact. The com­pa­ny writes it was not “an inno­v­a­tive home design­er” but instead “a very able fol­low­er of pop­u­lar home designs but with the added advan­tage of mod­i­fy­ing hous­es and hard­ware accord­ing to buy­er tastes.” Yet Sears hous­es aren’t beloved for their for­ward-look­ing designs, but for their stur­di­ness and vari­ety, as well as for their impact on “the emo­tion­al lives of rur­al folk,” as Messy Nessy puts it.

“The Sears mail-order cat­a­logues were sit­ting on kitchen coun­ter­tops inside mil­lions of Amer­i­can homes, allow­ing poten­tial home­own­ers to both visu­al­ize their new home and pur­chase it as eas­i­ly as they might have bought a new toast­er.” Build­ing a house required a lit­tle more invest­ment than plug­ging in a toast­er, and required a 75-page instruc­tion book, but that’s anoth­er part of why Sears house hunters are such a ded­i­cat­ed bunch, awestruck at each still-stand­ing mod­el they’re able to pho­to­graph and match up with its cat­a­log illus­tra­tions and floor plans.

In its first year of pro­duc­tion, 1908, Sears sold only one mod­el, num­ber 125, an Eight-Room Bun­ga­low Style House for $945, adver­tised as “the finest cot­tage ever con­struct­ed at a price less than $1500.” In 1918, the com­pa­ny moved from a num­ber­ing sys­tem to named mod­els, most of which sound like the names of cozy small towns and bed­room com­mu­ni­ties: Ade­line, Bel­mont, Maple­wood, Aval­on, Kil­bourne, Del Ray, Stone Ridge…. (See a full list of these mod­els at The Arts & Crafts Soci­ety web­site.)

In the years Sears sold hous­es, between 54 and 44 per­cent of Amer­i­cans lived in rur­al areas, and these con­sti­tut­ed Sears’ most loy­al cus­tomers, giv­en that the cat­a­log allowed them to pur­chase things they could buy nowhere else, includ­ing ten room colo­nial man­sions like The Mag­no­lia, avail­able from 1913 to 1922 for $6,488, or rough­ly $88,000—a steal if you can put in the work. This was the largest and most expen­sive mod­el the com­pa­ny offered, “a three-sto­ry, eight room neo-Geor­gian with a two-sto­ry columned por­ti­co, porte-cochere, and sleep­ing porch­es.” (Mint juleps and ser­vants’ quar­ters not includ­ed.)

Sears even­tu­al­ly offered three build qual­i­ties, Hon­or Bilt, Stan­dard Built, and Sim­plex Sec­tion­al. At the low­est end of the price and build spec­trum, the com­pa­ny notes, “Sim­plex hous­es were fre­quent­ly only a cou­ple of rooms and were ide­al for sum­mer cot­tages.” Many of its low-end and ear­ly mod­els did not include bath­rooms, and the com­pa­ny sold out­hous­es sep­a­rate­ly. But due to inno­v­a­tive con­struc­tion meth­ods, even the least expen­sive hous­es held up well.

Because the com­pa­ny lost most of the records after its kit house busi­ness fold­ed, it can be dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy a Sears house. And because even the “youngest of Sears homes,” Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics points out, is now going on nine decades old, they all require a sig­nif­i­cant amount of care.” The blog Kit House Hunters has found over 18,000 Sears hous­es still stand­ing across the coun­try, most of them in the North­east and Mid­west, where they sold best. (One com­mu­ni­ty in Elgin, IL has over 200 ver­i­fied Sears homes.)

In the video at the top, you can see a few of those well-built Sears hous­es still lived in today. The short How to Archi­tect video above points out that “Sears had a mas­sive impact on the busi­ness of home-build­ing, and… the busi­ness of pre-fab­ri­ca­tion, is alive and well today.” For a look at the vari­ety and intri­ca­cy of the Sears Mod­ern Home designs, see this Flickr gallery with over 80 images of cat­a­log pages, illus­trat­ed homes, and floor plans. And if you think you might be liv­ing in one of these hous­es, many of which have been grant­ed his­toric sta­tus, find out with this handy 9‑step guide for iden­ti­fy­ing a Sears Kit Home.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the Sears Cat­a­log Dis­rupt­ed the Jim Crow South and Helped Give Birth to the Delta Blues & Rock and Roll

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

The Psy­chol­o­gy Behind Why Some Homes Feel Good But Most Don’t: Inte­ri­or Design Prin­ci­ples Explained

Image via Buck­min­ster Fuller Estate

The nov­els of John Brun­ner have become a niche taste, even with­in his genre of sci­ence fic­tion. A more soci­o­log­i­cal­ly mind­ed ver­sion of Philip K. Dick at his best, he could write with what now looks like a simul­ta­ne­ous pre­science about the civ­i­liza­tion to come and an apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal­ly anx­ious con­cern with the issues of his day. His undis­put­ed mas­ter­piece Stand on Zanz­ibar came out in 1968, the same year as the late Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Pop­u­la­tion Bomb. Both books deal with the dire con­se­quences of what, at the time, looked like the run­away mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of human­i­ty, though ele­ments of the dystopi­an sci-fi writer’s vision now look rather more cred­i­ble than the pre­dic­tions of the Stan­ford biol­o­gist — apart from the giant geo­des­ic dome cov­er­ing Man­hat­tan, any­way.

In a sense, Brun­ner was actu­al­ly behind the times, since Buck­min­ster Fuller him­self had sug­gest­ed dom­ing Man­hat­tan near­ly a decade ear­li­er. In their ambi­tious pro­pos­al for a “two-mile-wide Dome Over Man­hat­tan” from the turn of the nine­teen-six­ties, Fuller and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Sho­ji Sadao “imag­ined a mas­sive archi­tec­tur­al sur­face that would reg­u­late the city’s ecosys­tems,” write Next City’s Janette Kim and Erik Carv­er. “They deliv­ered this design along with a series of sur­pris­ing cal­cu­la­tions: the Dome would reduce heat loss by scal­ing the city to one eighty-fifth of its sur­face area; the elim­i­na­tion of snow­plow­ing alone would pay for heat; build­ings inside the Dome could be built lighter and cheap­er with­out need for weath­er­proof­ing; and inte­ri­or air could be heat­ed by remote plants.”

Fuller and Sadao did bring some num­bers to back up their claims, but even more impor­tant­ly, they made assur­ances that the dome’s glass would be one-way, a defense against pry­ing non-Man­hat­tan­ite eyes, and would keep res­i­dents’ cars and lawns in prime con­di­tion. How­ev­er out­landish­ly for­ward-think­ing Fuller could be, he nev­er for­got that he need­ed to appeal to the wor­ries and aspi­ra­tions of mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. As a per­son­al­i­ty, he also fit in well with the era’s enthu­si­asm for sweep­ing infra­struc­tur­al fix­es. “It was a time when peo­ple real­ly believed in the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy,” says Nev­er Built New York co-author Sam Lubell. “We’re build­ing space­ships that go to the moon. Why can’t we build a dome over Man­hat­tan to get rid of all this pol­lu­tion, get rid of all the prob­lems of weath­er?”

Still, as eccen­tric as he was, Fuller was­n’t delu­sion­al. “It’d be very worth­while to have cities under geo­des­ic domes, but New York City, if you think about all the dif­fer­ent own­ers of dif­fer­ent lands, the con­tro­ver­sy about ‘this is my air rights, I don’t want a thing over my thing here,’ I just don’t think it’s going to hap­pen,” he admit­ted. But “it can hap­pen where you start out in places where ener­gy is a real­ly fan­tas­tic prob­lem.” At the time, the ever-increas­ing demand for resources of all kinds by a rapid­ly grow­ing pop­u­la­tion appeared to be not just a but the fan­tas­tic prob­lem. Today, once-unfore­see­able devel­op­ments like ris­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy and an appar­ent­ly inex­orable decline in glob­al birthrates have direct­ed our ner­vous gazes else­where. Yet dat­ed visions of tech­no­log­i­cal utopia and dystopia still strike us as odd­ly famil­iar — and indeed, as strange­ly sim­i­lar to one anoth­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

A Brief Intro­duc­tion to Buck­min­ster Fuller and His Tech­no-Opti­mistic Ideas

The Eden Project Built a Rain­for­est Ecosys­tem Inside Buck­min­ster Fuller-Inspired Geo­des­ic Domes

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Plan to Turn Ellis Island Into a Futur­is­tic Jules Verne-Esque City (1959)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.