I recently visited my aunt's new (to her) home, and while I was marveling at the work she had done on it, she casually mentioned she had photos from the home's original owners from 1939. And not only that, she had the original ledger that the homeowner used to keep track of all his building and labor supplies. I cannot tell you what a treat it was to look through these old photographs and leaf through his meticulously kept ledger and compare it to the home that stands there today.
She gave me permission to copy a few of the photos, and I wanted to share them with you along with a photo of the room in its current state. One of the things that struck me was how the owners made sure to include themselves in a few of the photos. The picture of the man and wife in the mirror gives me goosebumps — what a modern pose (self portrait in mirror)! I hope you enjoy looking through these as much as I did.
(Images: Sarah Dobbins)
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Love the picture in the mirror!!
I love this! It's beautiful how many original details are still in the home.
Wow! If walls could talk.
This is amazing! Just love the line item for a phone call to the lumber company! Detail oriented, and it shows. The house is still beautiful.
That's incredible! It's so interesting to see photos from one house in days gone by. I found many photos of my grandparents' house (which I grew up in) from when my mother and uncle were growing up -- in the same house!!
I love this - amazing to see the differences and almost more to see what has remained. What a treasure.
Love this! Thanks for sharing; beautiful house!
This is so wonderful! If only the history of all houses was so available. Thank you for sharing!
I love this. As someone with a home built in 1925, I would've loved to have seen old photos of the inside and outside. I often wonder what my neighborhood looked like 80 years ago, and how my house has changed. Great post!
I LOVE that bathroom color! Would you mind sharing it???
What a beautiful and warm home! Some day, I will call a place like this my home...
What a charming house! It's clear that your aunt values it just as much as the original owners did. I love the corner cabinets in the dining room and the cast-iron swoosh brackets (that's the technical term, haha) supporting the back portico.
Yes, this self-portrait is wonderful! The home's classic lines have aged very well!
Wonderful post - thank you! One question: the home seemed closer to the road when it was built - and usually it's the other way around with roads being widened - any idea what happened there?
Our house is 130 years old and I would give anything to know what it looked like...way back when, what a wonderful article....about a beautiful home.
Reminds me of the home on the original "Miracle on 34th Street" -- I wished for that home too!
Handwriting was so beautiful in those days, too....I suppose the teaching of penmanship has virtually disappeared from schools. I can't imagine anyone in 2080 poring over my spreadsheets of home renovation costs with the same appreciation.
I really wish the kitchen and bathroom had stayed original!
Lovely though- thanks for sharing:)
House Tour please!
I really like the current dining room, especially the furniture and the fabric on the chairs. Nice to see something in a style that seems to be "out " at the moment so beautifully used.
@Trollopian, I'm with you on that. My mother was taught Palmer Method handwriting from the first time she was given a pencil in grade school, and at age 90 her handwriting is still beautiful.
I was taught blockprinting before cursive, and at age 46 my handwriting is still atrocious.
I did recently find the teaching materials online though, and I'm going to give it a try:
http://archive.org/details/palmermethodofbu00palmrich
Thank you for posting your aunt's home!
What a beautiful home, your aunt has great taste. I'm in love with the painting over the fireplace, is it an original?
I would absolutely be tempted to buy a house just for a book exactly like this.
Where did your Aunt find the fabric for her dining room chairs? I've inherited a set of chairs that might do well with that print. Close up available?
Very neat! Thanks for sharing. I'm looking at a house of this approximate age and style so it's cool to see another similar dwelling. The one I'm looking at has been owned by the same family since 1938. If only it came with such interesting documentation!
I found this charming in the extreme. Love love love the navy door, it's what I'm planning for my own brick house. Also, did anyone notice the gorgeous wingback chairs in front of the fireplace in the "original" photo of the room? You can find copycats on every modern furniture website right now. So funny how style cycles.
Wonderful post.
It is indeed a beautiful house! I would love to own one. I was amazed at how little most of the rooms have acutally changed and how well the original designs fit so well into todays styles.....grace & elegance...I do love it and how the new owner has taken care of it..(redoing it) beautiful!
How wonderful to have all those old records & photos!
hugs
How wonderful! I wish I had something like this for every place I've ever lived in. :) Makes me think that I should do the same as these great folks from 1939 when I buy a home, and leave them to the next owners...
So great to have the history of this home! Looks beautiful!
This is great! I wish our 100 year old house had something like this, then again it still has all it's original cabinets, hardware, and plumbing.
Very adorable. Looks like a neighborhood in KC?
What a beautiful home. They really built them to last back then. Our home was built in 1959 and it's still ticking. Your aunt has a lovely home.
That old bathroom could be a recent redo in an AT post. The home is lovely. I'm so glad the new owner didn't mess with perfect.
Our home was built in 1898, and while there are no photos we know of from then, we have had old owners come by to visit. It has happened at least twice and both times they were riding by on bikes on a warm day, saw us outside and said: "I used to live here!" You've got to invite them in after that! It is always interesting to hear them describe what the house was like when they lived there. The most interesting tidbit I heard was that at some point there were swinging corral doors between the kitchen and dining room!
* excuse me, make that swinging saloon doors :)
This reminds me of my home that was built in 1940. I would love to have pictures from the original homeowners. We are currently in the process of remodeling, and want to keep in with the style from that era, which is very simply stated and classic. It is nice to have some pictures like this to refer to! I have a corner cabinet built-in in my dining room as well! Thank you for sharing!
@Trollopian....as a retired first grade teacher who taught penmanship for years, I too, regret the demise of that skill. But because schools are under such pressure to perform on standardized tests, handwriting is a non-essential requirement by the powers that be. I realize that technology is a more widely used method of communicating, but it is sad to lose such a natural way to relay one's thoughts. OK, I am off my soapbox.
What a wonderful treat to see how a house with good bones and caring inhabitants changes in style but not in love from the owners.
What a cool post! The old photos are so nice to have and your aunt has done a beautiful job with the place - I especially love that dining room. Thank you for sharing!
What a treat! Thank you for sharing.
Great photos and a great idea for a posting. Thanks for sharing.
What I find most amazing that while some things change, attention to penmanship, bathroom styles, kitchen styles, clothes and hair; The obsession with green "parking lots" is still present. Of all traditions to stay alive the one that makes the least sense and does the most environmental damage remains!
Loved the tour. It's great to see the home's hsitory and what it looked like years ago. I love that sort of stuff!
Thank you for sharing. Imagine the music and news coming from the floor radio in pic #4!
very cool. how neat to find that!
This really was a treat! I live in a house from the 50s and I wish the original owners had handed down photos. It has changed so much in just what we've done that I can't imagine what it looked like. We moved into a bad 70s remodel and have been lovingly trying to recreate the original feel with modern convenience so photos would be awesome! We knocked out a wall that was built later and I have no idea what the house looked like before.
It's beautiful. As much as I appreciate the old black & white photos--there's something special about them--I wish I could compare the colors between then and now.
I'd love a full house tour.
@AlkGrace@LittleBlackSweats: I feel the same. The house I just bought was built in 1915. I would have loved to have seen original photos of the house and the neighborhood. Granted, the house was an estate sale and the woman who owned the home, lived in it for 75 years before passing in 2010. Unfortunately, over the years, someone did updates here and there. For example: the pantry seems to be original, but the sink was updated to a stainless. As for the kitchen and bath: I think these rooms were updated sometime in the 50s or 60s. I would love to see photos of the house in its original 1915 condition.
this is realy really cool. Am selling my late mom's (c. 1900 craftsman) house and should really copy some of the old photos for the new buyer.
How very cool to have this info. I have been searching archives for photos of my home after it was built. I have found plenty of historic photos of surrounding houses and buildings, but so far none of our building. I plan to have a few old B&W photos of neighboring buildings framed to display in our common areas.
What a fabulous post. Terrific. Timely too - I got very excited a couple of days ago because online I found a photograph of my own home just after it was built in 1949.
One of my favorite AT posts of all time!
What a gorgeous restoration. I love the bathroom sink that was originally in the house. The one you have currently is exactly what I am looking for in my bathroom. Can you please tell me where you bought it? Please email me at: fromclutter2clarity@gmail.com.
Thank you.
Rosemary
This was really great to see! The past and present. I'd love to have a house like that passed down through the ages.
Absolutely LOVE the current interiors and how surprisingly little stylistic difference there is between the old and the new. The current decor, while definitely gussied up and more layered, is also totally timeless and charming. It feels so much like the house decorated itself, if that makes any sense. Original owners would surely approve, though it would be great to see that second bathroom stripped of the 1960's tile and vanity - that room is a little disappointing compared to the rest:)
Please, convince your Aunt to offer up a full-on house tour with lots of details about what she's changed and what has stayed the same!
We bought our house from my mom, who bought it from the second owners since the place was built in the 1940's. There used to be photos around of the exterior and beautiful backyard, but somehow they've been lost. Keep hoping I'll find them tucked away someday, because I really want to re-create the landscaping. There was even a photo of the original owners enjoying backyard barbecue, the Mrs. decked out in red lipstick, pearls and a very prim summer day dress, holding a pair of tongs! It was taken from the very spot I sit now on the slate patio. Sigh.
Wow! Beautiful home, both then and now. My favorite part is the self-portrait they took in the mirror. :)
wish i had pics for our place! we do have a lot of receipts, etc from building in the 50's. this is a super cool article!
That's the only self-portrait-in-a-bathroom-mirror that I like!!! It's very charming!
That wallpaper in the dining area in the old foto was INTENSE! Wow! That was wallpaper that made people sit up & take notice! LOL! So happy that they kept the built in hutches! I would love to have that old "ice box" in the old kitchen foto! And of course it is great to see that the original fireplace is still intact. I've lived in many houses where they just went ahead & covered them up with sheet rock. So sad. I once got crazy curious from the hollow sound behind a wall (after discovering that, at one point during the 1930s, the 1890's farmstead we were living in had been used as a brothel since it was right off both a river & a railroad depot) and pulled the plastered plywood off the wall. behind it was an incredibly cool brick beehive bread oven- standing about 5 feet tall & 10 feet wide! With the original iron oven doors marked with the name of a foundry in the next town a few miles away & dated 1889, and the granite mantle! I cleaned up all the plaster & made that fireplace oven the focal point of the room (though didn't dare actually build a fire in it!). Who in their right mind would cover something like that up?! Was creeped out for a little while at first (from seeing one too many horror movie) that the people who had covered it had been hiding a body. No body. So that only enhanced the mystery! When I was moving out a few years later (and had sort of forgotten about tearing the wall off!) the owner commented "Wow, where did that fireplace come from?" When I told him what I had done & found he was stunned. He immediately started tapping on all the walls joking "I bet there's buried treasure in here somewhere!" I like to think that I had already found a treasure with just the discovery of the fireplace! oven. I wonder how many beautiful details, that had fallen out of fashion, are hidden behind the walls of people's homes today?!
Good design is truly timeless.
great post.
Thank you for this post. I really enjoyed it.
what a WONDERFUL post, i realy enjoyed the now and hten posts!!! beautiful!! the house has been maintained so well.
So awesome!
My house was built in 1921 and when we bought it my husband used a combination of state land records databases and a family member's subscription to ancestry.com to find out about the original family. It turns out one of the children from that family is still alive and living in a nursing home. We wrote him a letter and he wrote back several times and sent us photos. It is really fascinating.
There are services you can pay for to have someone track down the history like this for you -- here in the DC area there is one company but I think they charge $800-$1000! All you really need to do is look through the public databases your state runs on property/deed/land records history and run the names through ancestry.com.
Amazing photos. The house looks even better now with the mature landscaping and what appears to be many original parts. So often, new homeowners move in and rip out quality sinks, toilets, windows and fireplace mantle and replace them with cheap but trendy plastic garbage.
The pics made me feel how fast time passes.
Eco5-I'm sorry about the loss of your mom. I would love to see posts of her house, 1900 craftman! I live in a 1920 FourSquare-in KS. It's best retained features are a brick fireplace with stone surround, oak flooring and woodwork, and beveled edged mirror on the closet door in dining room and beveled edged glass in the transom and side panels between the living rm/dining rm. At one time, must have had French Doors, the notches are in the floor and woodwork; however they were not in the basement or anywhere to be found when we moved in about 11 years ago. What a pity!. There are also built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace, again there are notches where doors were previously....someone removed them. Someday, I will restore the rooms with the doors!
Loved seeing these photos of a home well loved, decorated, and maintained, and such meticulous records/ledgers. That is history at its best. More stories/posts like this Please!!
Thank you and to your aunt for allowing us to "tour" her home!!
I just adore this post and adore this home. It always disheartens me to see older homes that once had so much character only to have been renovated with big open rooms and all the charm and personality and lovely bones of the home stripped. I love seeing a home like this that has been maintained so well and all of it's original charm and character has been preserved. I love this!!!!!
Such a great post! Just found photo's of our place from 2003 and was taken away by the differences in such a short period of time - would LOVE to see photo's of our home when it was built in 1925
This is great, thanks for sharing!
Wish I had similar photos of my 1929 house. From neighborhood lore, we are only the 4th owners, after the 3rd owners lived there for roughly 50 years.
It was interesting dismantling our kitchen (all the way to bare studs) and seeing the layers of previous styles as I removed stuff. (The kitchen was a greasy 1980s horror, so no loss...)
Wow! What a beautiful illustration of the passing of time... Change is inevitable, but some things remain as they have always been. The photograph taken in the bathroom mirror is amazing!!!
I love this tour. Thank you for sharing!
this is seriously one of my favorite posts ever.
It's like the precursor to the home improvement blog!
I LOVE this! I've spent a lot of time researching my old house and sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who cares about this kind of history. I've used city directories, fire maps, and various other things to learn about my home (but haven't been able to track down pictures or histories from the families of people who lived here....yet!)
SO cool! Thanks for sharing!
Lovely walk down memory lane. I am a vintage fan so prefer the old kitchen, but overall the space is lovely.
I can't imagine being so organized and keeping that ledger. What a fun treat. Your aunt needs to take similar photos.