Diane, I didn't even think of using this method to ID build years. Thank you for the tip! I had started, then stopped looking through the deeds and lot records when we lost the house during the first round of bids. I'm hoping to pick that back up soon because that may also give me a better idea. The property records online still don't include anything pre 1960 by address, you have to trace back through book and page #s. It's one of the reasons the deed searches prior are still images of the pages themselves because they are still typing in the info to the newer database setup.Powermuffin wrote:Lily, please check with your city's water board to see if in fact your house is dated from 1935. A lot of your house looks like ours, our bath and kitchen cupboards were added in the 1920s, so until we went to the water board, we thought the house was much newer. The water was turned on in March of 1908. (Happy anniversary to us.) We also went to the library and found old address books, which clearly showed us that our house was not built by 1906.
I am curious to see what you find, since your house looks more like it was built <1930.
Diane
I went back to look online just now, since I was curious and I'd been meaning to anyhoo.
These are the deeds going backwards...
us in 2017;
Daughter & Mother co-owned in 1989;
Mother & Father bought it in 1935 (he passed only 10 years after in '45);
from another married couple who bought it in 1927;
which they bought from an estate administrix for a wife whose spouse had passed away in 1918;
leading me to find that they bought it in 1906;
and 1906 is the same year the architectural plan for the lot # was made, although the property overall belonged to others before that as well before it was divided up then.
Now one thing I did notice--and I remember seeing this also with "42" in Gardner-- was that the 1927 deed had conditions attached stating what minimum value ($1500 for Beebe) anything built on that property must have "including stable and necessary outhouses", as well as set back distance and such. I can't recall where in the chain for '42 I saw that exactly, if it was just before the building was built or an older deed. If it was older, perhaps that was a standard at the time. The conditions even had an end date for both properties. It is the only deed to list such conditions, however, that's not to say that it means without a doubt the house already stood in 1935, and the Bedards immediately updated it after buying it. (The stamp on the kitchen sink is October, the sale was August) Still, I felt like I was so close to the answer, and I went looking again in the unrecorded section of the county paperwork per year/name.
When I found the page image showing them as grantees by year and last name, after some backtracking of the dissolution of a contract...I hit the motherload.
Now, the awesome part is that Chairtown Lumber is still in business, and is the same place I'd talked about being so glad to live within walking distance of as well. So I might be able to find someone there who can tell me exactly when it was finished! The entry that led me to find this note was dated December 7th, "dissolving".
But getting back to the idea of updates...this is why I think the cabinets were either moved to this wall from somewhere else, or were built in later. See that odd metal lined inset there? I think it may have been a stove vent at some point.