The Casher, Barr, and McClure eras, 1948 to 2009

The most recent history of the house is a tad dull. Not only because sites like Ancestry.com and such concentrate on the further past, but because I'm choosing not to delve too deeply into people who are still alive or whose heirs are still alive.

First, let me thank them all for not modifying the house a lot. We can see the architectural history of the house pretty easily, and this is because the most egregious thing that's ever been done to it is that someone decided in the mid-60s to cover the interiors in wall board. So, who might that have been?

Most recently, I bought the house from Pat Casher, who still lives in Bellefonte. Someone during the Casher era or immediately preceding ran a travel agency from the commercial space -- the sign is still there! I only met Pat once, but he was very helpful, and told me that the house is a double house, but has also always, as far as he knows, been occupied by families. When he owned it, several relatives of his lived in the two sides.

Pat Casher bought it from Norma Barr, who was the widow of David J. Barr. I wasn't able to find any information on Norma, but David is an interesting case. He used the house's commercial space to run his physical therapy business up until his death in 1997. However, the local newspaper indicates that David was a mechanic at the Nuclide Corporation in 1964. At the same time, an attorney named J.A. Harris operated from the commercial space. Incidentally, we have a valuable historical resource in our carriage house tenant, who hasn't signed a lease since he signed one with Mrs. Barr sometime in the late 90s. He has also shared some information about how things in the house were arranged.

The Barrs bought the house From William and Alta McClure. They are absolute mysteries -- I wasn't able to find any information on their jobs or heritages.

How To Research Your House

I am planning to blog out my new house's history in this space shortly, but I am still locating information about some residents. So I thought, while I am letting that information percolate, I would share the nuts and bolts of how one researches a historic (or any) house.



First, there are some pretty good resources out there. Use them!



But if you really want to know when your house was built, who lived in it, etc., you basically need to do the following:



1. Go to the local records room and research the deed. If you're in Athens, GA, you'll have to ignore the snooty professional parapros and law school students. But do that -- you have just as legitimate a need for those records as they do, and pulling them will give you a structure and some facts that will be very hard to get otherwise. Note: you may learn some very odd things in this process, since older deeds tend to include descriptives that would now be unusual or even illegal.



2. Search for local Sanborn maps. This will show you things like what your house's footprint looked like and what it was constructed of at various points in its life. It answers questions like "is this siding original?" or "was my craftsman house really built in 1960?"



3. City directories, which are usually in the nearest rare books library or heritage room, are AWESOME. Especially if you own a house that you suspect may have been rented at some point. City directories tend to contain information like who lives in a house, how old they are, and what they do for a living. In short, trace the individuals by any means necessary. Useful resources include census records, cemetery listings, old newspapers, city plans -- any historic records that might show your house or show how things that might affect your house (like the siting of the road it sits on) would have occurred.



4. Oh, you can also ballpark the date of construction or modification by taking a stab at the style, and there are some great resources for this, too, but this type of research can be awfully confusing depending on how much your house has been modified, how free spirited the architect was, or how avant garde the local design community was. I suggest you do it because it's fun, but two houses of similar style can be radically different in age depending on factors like the above. Or you could, like me, own a house that's basically a hodge-podgy mystery.



5. Also, you can try to date the house from its construction. Nails, in particular, are clearly characteristic of certain eras.



Here's a handy-dandy checklist!

House History, Ground Rules

I'm about to post the house's history. However, I wanted to lay out the rules so you kind readers can follow.

1. I will go from the present as far into the past as I can go.

2. I will tag all of these posts with "house history," so I can isolate the actual history.

3. I will set out any issues in their own posts, so I can isolate those, as well.

4. I will post, each post representing a new ownership period, every 3 days or so, until I run out of owners to post about.

Wish us luck!

We're having about 50 guests this weekend, a good number of whom are helping with the house. Can my father in law and a troupe of rogue comedians coexist? Only the shadow knows if the bathroom will be completed!

I'm also hosting a St. Patty's Day thing at the Red Horse Tavern in Pleasant Gap. Come down if you have a few hours Saturday afternoon!

Stuff We're Doing

Ok, so, as you guys know we're in the midst of a pretty extensive bath and kitchen redo, with the bath leading the way and affecting the kitchen. 

So... 

The bathroom has a holey floor, which has absolutely no insulation in it. We'll be fixing that. The washer/dryer closet is framed in and the bath tub is up in the room. And after all the consideration of barn doors, pocket doors, and so on the carpenter thinks he can take one of the doors from the attic and extend the door header so that the washer/dryer closet has double doors. Anyway, we had a big, lengthy series of discussions about how it's all going to shake out, such aswhere the vanity and toilet and lights go. 

We're also going to add hall lights, so that this area won't be so ridiculously dark. 

the kitchen ceiling, which when put back will not be dropped but will have a bulkhead running above cabinets and appliances on both sides (which is the only good way to get the vent above the stove legal). Removed skirting above the cabinets that are staying. What I think we're doing is doing a beadboard wainscoting, reusing and mostly leaving alone the sink side of cabinets, and using the short wall on the opposite side for the stove, fridge, and either an espresso machine bar with some open storage or a set of display cabinets. 

Stuff We got Done

Since we just rented out most of 231, I thought I'd share some photos we took while it was staged for showing:

The tiny bedroom/"hot box."


231's upstairs bathroom. -- it's too small to photograph most of it.


The front bedroom.


231's stair hall. 

This is the done stuff. Next post: the stuff in progress. 

Old House Philosophy

Philosophizing here, in brief: 

I feel like in some regards owning my house is a constant job of managing other people's prejudices and expectations.I know they mean well, but specific fallacies I get very tired of include: 

1. The idea that my house is going to take forever, and that old houses are a ton of work, and this would somehow not be the case if I bought something new. That's actually not true -- I am pretty lazy and I wouldn't buy an old house if it wouldn't will perform comparably to a newer house once it's not derelict. Besides which, I have yet to meet the person who doesn't invest some portion of their money into maintaining and altering their house, regardless of its age. 
2. The notion that newer is better. Sometimes, yes, but this view ignores the role that economic, legal, logistical, etc., factors play in material selection and manufacture. A 2X4 is not superior to a steel beam, necessarily, but a 2X4 happens to at one point be a better choice or even just the choice that's made given all the factors mentioned above. 
3. The notion that newer windows create savings, which is somewhat true. but that is a very simplistic statement that ignores when you individually would realize savings based on how inefficient the old ones are and how much new ones cost and also ignoring intermediate solutions. Also, the old windows are part of the historic fabric, which is the primary reason I own this house. I get that it doesn't matter to you, but it very much matters to me. 

Finally, for someone who loves them owning an old house is not always a practical matter. In my opinion they are beings, like books or other storied things, and I am writing the next chapter of their lives, such as it is. So my renovation choices have a moral component. In other words, no, I'm not interested in hiring some jerk to cover my house in vinyl siding or tearing out my historic woodwork to simplify the application of sheetrock. I do make compromises, but the fundamental compromise that I do not want to make is compromising the house's historic essence.