Researching the History of Our House

I was able to head down to the library downtown and do some research on our sweet little house.  I didn't get a whole lot more information than what I was already able to find using regular online searches and Ancestry.com.  But I was able to have the permit cards for our property right in my hand and see when and what was done on the property since 1901!

Part of our property's permit card - dating from 1901

Researching!

The city directories were also a lot of fun.  Lots of those are archived on Ancestry.com, but you have to be looking for the correct name.  When you're looking directly in the book, you can look up the address.  And that's helpful because the names are sometimes misspelled, or just spelled differently from year to year.

1950 City Directory

Charles Olek worked at the Pillsbury Mill downtown - 1939

As you might imagine, there aren't usually pictures and a lot of historic information on private residences, unless they were significant in some way.  Since our house is just a 1950s same-old-same-old, there weren't any pictures of our house, just the permit cards and directory listings.

What I was able to find a lot about was our neighborhood.  Ever since we bought the house, I wondered about the big building across the street.  It's apartments now, but it doesn't look like that's what it was from the beginning.  And we've met one of our neighbors who lives there and he says he thinks his apartment used to be a gymnasium.  So I looked for the building and the librarians brought me 3 huge envelopes that were bursting with newspaper clippings.  Turns out the building used to be the Margaret Barry Settlement House, up until the 1970s or so.  What's a settlement house?  Since the Northeast neighborhoods were largely settled by immigrants, settlement houses were a place to gather and find resources.  From what I read on the Margaret Barry House, there were English, typing, and parenting classes; job and living resources; preschool and childrens' education; and frequent dances and gatherings for the teenagers of the neighborhood.

Margaret Barry House - 1925

Article on the Margaret Barry House - 1932

I also found a really cool photo of the building where a couple of our good friends live, just a mile or two down the road from us.  It was built by the Cream of Wheat company for the offices and factory, I believe, and it has been converted into very cool lofts. 

Names of people who have previously owned our property:
        Lucy Doyle and Edward J Doyle  (1901-1910)
        Vincent and Sophia Fanzig, Charles and Sophia Olek  (1931-1943)
        Angelo and Conjate Cremisino  (1943-1945)
        Charles A Pettis  (1945-1946)
        Didrick J Orfield, John F Sandstrom  (1946)
        Kenneth A Chase  (1946-1949)
        Hope A Quinn (1949-1951)
        Frank J & Rose M Flanigan  (1951-1971) - they built our house
        Harold L Fletcher (1971-1979)
        Paul Wesley Irwin & Diane E McKay-Irwin  (1979-1999)

1865 City Directory

Peach Siding - Another Spotting

Yesterday evening, when we were working on taking down the other elm, I noticed some more peach paint peeking through on our siding!

The electric meter is there on the side of the house, but at some point, the meter was changed--  the meter that is there now is smaller and a different shape than what was there previously.

More peach!

Peach Siding?

On Friday, when K was building our new flower beds in the front of the house, we had to re-pin down the drain pipe in that corner of the house.  The bracket that holds it on has been broken since before we got the house.  So, right now the drain pipe is held in place with a couple of mini bungee cords--  K's secret weapon for everything.

While crouching at the corner of the house, helping K, I noticed this peach/beige-colored shadow from behind where the pipe used to be/should be attached:

I pointed this out to K (who was busy and distracted), and she's like, "I don't know, looks like that's the color the house used to be?"

And looking back on those MLS photos, I realize that in the 1997 photo the house looks like this peachy-beige color.  And in the 1999 photo the house is clearly yellow. 

1997

 

1999

MLS Photos

Since I've been wanting to research our home's history, I asked our realtor if he could find any additional information about its previous sales or owners.
He sent me all the listings for the house on the MLS system.  There were a total of 5 listings, including the one that was included in our house search this past spring. 
And there were 2 pictures of the house that I had never seen before.  One from 2003, with the house clean, the yard maintained, and the roof unstained.

2003 Sale Listing

And the other was from 1997.  The roof looks similar to how it does now, a bit rust-stained, so it must've been replaced between 1997 and 2003.  But the landscaping is adorable!  Lush green grass, bright rose bushes, white stone edging and lights along the path to the door.  Now I know why we found so many rocks buried under the layers of dead grass in the front yard!

1997 Sale Listing

It's inspiring to see this little house all dressed up with a fancy yard.  That's our hope for the yard next year, to brighten it up and give it a lot more curb appeal.  We were so overwhelmed with the moving this summer, and then it was so hot, that all we could manage was ripping out one of the giant, overgrown bushes, and putting two potted hibiscus next to the front door!

I wonder if it would be annoying to do that rock border again...

Was There A Chimney?

Looking at the front of our house, do you notice the stubby little chimney?

I didn't, at first.  It sort of looked like a planter.  Especially because there were overgrown weeds sprouting up out of it.

But we took a closer look, and we think the chimney used to go all the way up the front of the house.  This had to have been at least 16 years ago, since we have the MLS photo from 1997 and the chimney is short in that picture, too. 

Here are the bits of evidence that indicate the house once had a tall chimney:

#1-  Behind the wood trellis, the siding of the house is not the same.  It looks like just a piece of wood paneling, painted the same as the siding.

#2-  The eaves trough looks patched in this part.  It makes a little jump and the seams don't line up perfectly.  (Perfectly enough, though, since water doesn't leak out of the gutters here.)

#3-  The large pile of pale bricks in our backyard, at the end of the alley.  The pile is as much dirt as it is brick, but we can see them there.  And they match the bricks of the little chimney.

I would love, love, LOVE to find a picture of the house when the chimney was tall.  I think it would be really adorable.  I'd actually like to rebuild the chimney, but it doesn't fit into the designs that K has been working on.  It would probably be spendy, too.  And it's not like it would be functional.  --We figured out that the chimney now is just a plain tube sticking up from the roof in the back of the house.

So, until I find an actual picture of the house with the tall chimney, I decided to make one up so that I could see what it would look like.  I think it's cute!