Saturday, January 19, 2013

The House: A Brief HIstory

I spent yesterday evening at the house with a few friends, pizza and beer, and our older black lab River. It was the best day of her life. She took the stairs 3 at a time like she'd been born to it, like she'd been waiting her whole life for us to finally wise up and give her stairs to make her life complete. I just hope it doesn't ruin her joints...

This morning, I went over with the newest (and youngest) addition to the zoo, another black lab named Andre. This was also, clearly, the best day of Andre's life. Truly.



Back to the house...

Here's what I can tell you from the history of the house. It appears to have built built in about 1901. I was able to find it on the 1908 Sanborn Fire Maps; in earlier maps, our neighborhood had not yet been annexed into the city, I don't believe.

Our neighborhood is one of the few remaining trolley neighborhoods-- the trolley came out to the edge of town, turned around, and went back-- these were originally mule-drawn and then electric trolleys. These additions to cities allowed for the development of commuter suburbs as we now know them.

Our neighborhood is now on the National Register of HIstoric Places.

A book has been created about the area; the author compiled a number of newspaper articles, etc., about the are, and scoured city directories. The earliest resident of our house was a man who, from what I can tell, was the owner of an industrial equipment/hardware store. His wife's father had been a Civil War captain in the Confederacy; her family's papers are located at the Butler Center in Little Rock, and I hope to go down there to see them soon. Their son, who lived in the house after them, was a WWI veteran who served in France. His papers are at the University in Fayetteville, so I'll probably see those much sooner than later.

We've already started finding some crazy fun things to explore, and the sellers were kind enough to leave a set of blueprints from 1912. It was a chilly closing, at best, but I am very grateful that they left these propped up in the coat closet for us to find. the next post will begin with the exterior of the house and the blueprints... and I'll take it from there, one level at a time, and one building at a time.

Here we go again...

No comments:

Post a Comment