More about our house
Because I am going to insulate the walls of my house this year, I wanted to see if I could get a copy of the blueprints, or at least find out for sure which year the house was built. I also wanted to find out if my house was a home constructed from a kit purchased from Sears, Roebuck & Co. They sold house kits from 1904 to 1939. Mine most closely resembles a Fullerton in size and layout.
So, today I did a lot of walking in circles. It was pretty fun.
I started at the County Clerk’s office. Someone helped me look up the property in the County’s records, and she said the house was built in 1900, which would not make the house a Sears home. I asked if the record was actual or approximate, and she said that I should ask the City tax office because that’s where they got the record from.
I walked a few blocks to city hall. In the city tax office, they confirmed for me that the construction date often says 1900 when assessors and property owners don’t know the date of construction at the date of the last assessment. I asked if they had any building permits on file, and they sent me to the Code Enforcement office.
At the Code Enforcement office (which I drove to, because it was on second street), I learned that they only have records going back to about the 1990s, and any records from before 1973 were lost in the flood. So there would be no official way to learn of the construction date through them.
They suggested that I go to the tax office, who suggested that i go to another tax office, which was closed from noon to 1 p.m., and I arrived at the door at noon exactly. So I went back to the County Clerk’s office, this time to ask about mortgages. I wanted to know if the builders of the house had recorded any mortgages on the property, and if so, whether Sears was the Mortgagee. I found nothing there, but I did decide to look up the original deed written for the Harpers when they took possesson of the property, after it had been subdivided from Miller’s farm, from back in 1889 in the Liber of Deeds:
Neat, huh? Unfortunately, I was still no closer to knowing when the house had been built.
So I made one more stop, this time at the Chemung Valley History Museum.
We looked at a bunch of photographs of houses belonging to people whose last names began with H. It would have been neat to see an older photograph of my house, but since my house is tiny, nobody thought to take a picture of it and give it to the historical society.
We also looked at the city directory, which was a bit like a phone book, except it was written for a time when nobody had phones. It was a hardcover book, and listed names and occupations by residence. It also listed residences in order, based on if you were traveling down the road away from the city center, so you would know what the cross streets were.
It turns out that the nomenclature of our street has been somewhat controversial over the past hundred years. When we moved in, it was Collins Street. Then the city replaced all the street signs with one that said “Collin Street”. Apparently, 90 years ago, it was also known as Collin Street. I didn’t bother to check how long it was before the street became Collins Street.
On a hunch, I found the house in the 1936 directory. The librarian suggested I go by fives until I found a time when it was not in the directory, so I went all the way back to 1916 before i found that there was no 603 Collins between Baty and South. Then I moved forward until I learned that the first time my house showed up was in the 1920 directory, which the curator said was published in Spring of 1920. Given what I can guess about lead times for publication, and how snow is not good for construction, it leads me to believe that the house was actually built in 1919.
Unfortunately, I can not vouch for the provenance of whether this is indeed a Sears home just yet, because I have not read enough about the subject. I am planning to pick up a book about it, so I can read more. For now, I have a decent idea of when the house was built, which is not that far off from what the structural inspector said. And while it was built within the time frame of the Sears Modern Homes catalog’s publication, as well as being really close to the rails needed to deliver such a kit, I have a feeling I actually live in a knockoff of a Fullerton.
