apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I was told by neighbors that my apartment in Oakland (way back) was previously rented by a group of Africans who sacrificed a goat in the kitchen. I don't know if that's true, but it was a strange and uncomfortable place.

The building managers of my building have lived there since the 70's so they have told me LOTS of great stories. My husband and I learned from them that a drag queen who used to live in our unit committed suicide in our bathtub. FIERCE!

I also lived in a house in Oakland and we would every once in a while get mail intended for the previous tenants that would be things like newsletters for pyramid money making schemes and cryptic Scientology mail.

Not so much a juicy history as a crazy coincidence. I have a large extended family and a bunch of cousins in Mexico (im from tx). I have been living in my place in Los Angeles for about a year when I get a piece of mail that has a name of someone I think I am related to. I asked my mom do I have I cousin with this name? She says yes. Long story short I emailed this cousin I have never met in my life and he used to live in my exact apartment a couple years before me. Crazy right?!

Okay, just to add to all the Oakland stories....

I rent a unit in a duplex that burned down several years ago. The fire was supposedly caused by electrical damage due to tenants who had too many pets in aquariums with lights. I think there were other things in those "aquariums."

I had a friend tell me in a sort of poetic way that if there is a fire in a house, the spirit of the fire never really ever burns out (his childhood home burned down twice). That kinda creeped me out.

No creepy stories but I did go though the old population records that are available at the Denver library. Turns out the first person to live in my apartment back in 1928 and I have the same first name. I always found that comforting.

Also, when speaking with a moving company, I discovered the rep lived in the same 10 unit apartment building back in 1969. Knowing that place, it was probably the same carpet...

I live in Sunnyside Queens, and I've heard this from people (and on wikipedia) but the art deco buildings used to house some of the mistresses of NY biq whigs in the 1920's and 30's. They would pay to have them live here since it's close, but not too close, they could easily have them meet them at a hotel or just come out and get a quick "lunch" by subway.

Either way, I love all the art deco buildings.

I live in an old apartment building in Coral Gables (Miami,FL) I've been told that the architects that built the city used to live here. (Don't know if it's true) There are some initials in an iron gate "A C" but I have no idea what they stand for

my house (not an apartment) was built by a locally famous architect. it was built for a wealthy farmer for his "sunday home." then was bought by a professor/author that was considered, in his time, to be the foremost authority on abe lincoln. then was owned by a family with 4 generations of pharmacists, one of whom was the first woman pharmacist in kansas.

nothing sordid... but i did the entire genealogy of my house, including the lots, back to the grant from lincoln.

My home is one of nine 2 and 3-story townhome units, with the two units created from a Victorian-era house built by a wealthy banker in 1890. In the early 1980's, an architect and developer got together and coverted the home into 2 units, built 6 more units in the same style as the 3 story home around what had been the back yard, and renovated the carriage house, creating a charming small enclave of 9 units in the city with large 100 year old trees in the courtyard.

Several years later, my townhome unit was owned by a sportswriter for the local newspaper who was busted for cocaine possession and very publicly fired from her job with the paper. She and her husband (also a sportswriter) moved to Connecticut to work for a golf magazine. They put what is now my home on the market, where it sat unoccupied for over a year until I bought it for an amazingly low price.

I was recently curious about the age of my building, and eventually I was able to determine that it was built in 1928 and the name of the architect. Some other time, I was able to find a map of the lots before they were built and who owned them, but I can't find that again. How do you get the other information? Nobody in my building has been here such a long time to ask. Another thing I discovered in my search was someone on the first floor was arrested for something, now I forget what, but it happened within the 3 and a half years I've lived here.

how can one search for the history on their home or rental? what are good search terms?

I live in Chinatown in my city's old red light district. I share my building with a Chinese medicine clinic, and some art studios. The only things to suggest its sordid past is the secret back stairwell in the art studio next door and the tiny red lights above every door in the hallway.

The previous owners of my place had their wedding in my living room!

I bought a 1924 house in Amsterdam, and when I started removing some old cupboards the formers owner placed in the bedroom, there was a lot of Wallaper behind it to be taken off. In all 7! layers, going back to simpel paper used by the first owners. And also old newspapers as wallpaper with news that Nazi Germany was ging to invade the netherlands and other stories during the 1939's. I wondered right away if the kept jewish people hidden in the space under the house...it's not unlikely....

Our son was born at home when we lived in a Belltown loft, and our daughter was born in the house we are still living in... kind of neat, and it gives the place much nicer energy then a fire or goat sacrifice.

I found out last year that someone committed suicide in a building we lived in a few years ago- I was sad for the person but it didn't shock me, that was the most depressing place we'd ever lived and it always had a funky vibe to me. The worst part is that apparently the crappy management waited over 3 weeks from the first neighbor complaints before they went in to check on him... I can't even imagine...

I'm from LA but go to school in NYC and live in a small studio apartment with my overweight cat on Avenue A. I just found out (from the ancient French woman who lives in apartment 5 and has since 1976) that this used to be a huge drug building in the 70's-90's. The person across the hall killed someone during a drug deal gone wrong and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat bought his heroin from Rosario Dawson's step uncle upstairs.

Interesting place to live indeed.

I live in what is know as Sunny Side (s. slope Mt. Davidson) area of San Francisco. During prohibition it was on the edge of the city and full of agriculture fields. My basement apartment was an illegal bar very popular with people who worked in the fields. There is this great alcove that I can see being the bar, but other wise I think it was just an open space until some unknown previous owner turned it into an apartment.

I have not been able to get a clear answer to what our house was before it was a residence. It was built in 1890 and the best we've found it was the office, with an upstairs residence, for an iron works. We have a completely walled in backyard in which I keep finding weird little treasures. We found wall foundations, all brick and mortar I decided to keep them and build the garden around them using them as paths. In fact every time I go out with a shovel I come back with something weird! I have found turn of the century bottles, door hinges(with bits of charred wood attached) bits and pieces of teacups, tons of nuts & bolts some nails too, parts of tools, I did dig up some little toys too, but they're newer. It's always so fun to get the garden together in the spring, a little adventure. The only clue I have is the plaque from the iron works, which is almost impossible to read. Sorry I love my backyard archeology

I live above a bar that used to be a very trendy club in the 80's (Madonna was a coat check girl here before she became famous). My living room used to be the VIP room for the club and my kitchen counter is still the original bar. A friend who is an actor and used to be part of the underground downtown music scene in that period was sitting on my couch one day looking around with a weird look on his face. When he said "This place looks really familiar..."

I told him the story of the place and his eyes grew wide and then he declared "No Shit! I did coke with Grace Jones on that counter!"

I really wish I had a picture of Grace Jones in my living room...

My condo is part of a building renovation. It used to be a nightclub. In March 1997, an off-duty police officer was shot and killed by an assailant thrown out of the club by a fellow D.C. police officer hired by the club as security. Police shut down Ibex the next day, and it has been vacant since.

Whenever people ask me where I live I ask how long they've been around DC. If they've been here for a while all I have to do is say The Ibex.

My current apartment is in the attic of a very old building in the middle of the downtown of a small student-heavy city, and this whole building is notorious as a party house, going back decades. Our landlord bought the place last year and is slowly redoing all the heavily abused apartment - ours was the first done. There's nothing specific in its history, but there are still needles in the eaves from drug use on the roof outside our windows... it's a gorgeous old Victorian and didn't deserve that at all.
A few apartments ago I was in a similarly weird old apartment, also with a sordid history of students, but it had an older history as a huge family house, and a long reputation of being haunted by a young girl. Our cats did shriek at the walls a lot, which they've never done before or since, and I did see a pair of stockinged feet running up the stairs when I was the only one home...

I thought I would chime in again since someone asked about researching the history of homes.

If you read my first two posts in my blog, you can see I have a HUGE amount of information on my house. I ended up choosing it as the subject for my admissions paper for a master's in historic preservation.

So, here is how I did it...

(1) Go to the county courthouse and head for the register of deeds. The paper file at our courthouse started in 1920... which meant I had to spend hours flipping thru microfilm to get farther back. I got all the transactions back to the original claim the pony express contractor did from Abe Lincoln. The people there are super nice and will get you started.

(2) Go to the local library, armed with the names of people who have owned the property and when, and scan thru the microfilm of census records. This will give you names of family members, ages, occupation, where they immigrated from, etc. Good stuff.

(3) Go to the local library. Mine had a section for local obituaries and some old deeds that had been turned in by a bank. Obits are great sources of information.

(4) Hit rootsweb and start doing searches on the names to get even more genealogy information.

(5) Find out where historic property tax records are housed. In my case, KU has a collection in their historical library. When property tax makes a huge jump, that tells you when a lot went from farmed land to a residence with a house on it. Particularly useful information to those of us in the Midwest.

Hope that helps a bit in your search. Check out my blog for more tips/information. And just comment there if you have any questions or need further help. I don't mind lending a hand!

http://cottageofstone.blogspot.com

-- Sarah Beth

Besides the haunted apartment mentioned in response to an older post, I once lived in a sprawling house that had been built for a pro basketball player. He apparently ran into some personal and financial problems, and never actually moved into the house.

In the 5 years after construction was completed, seven families lived in that house. All of them neglected the house and grounds (when my family moved in, most of the plant life was dead, and none of the bathrooms had ever had towel bars). My family replaced all the dead plants, built a pool, added solar panels, dug a well (to fill the pool), scrubbed nicotine residue off every surface, and made the place livable again.

The only sign of the original owner was the freakishly tall ceilings. All of the ceilings were at least 12 feet high at the lowest point, and all the doors were over 8 feet high. That house made all of us feel really, really short!

I just bought a house that was from the 70's but is all redone from the previous owners... Apparently a lady who once lived there had everything purple on the inside... the bathtubs were purple, the walls were purple, the drapes were purple, even the appliances. Even the kids on the street at the time called her the purple lady. I don't know where you can get purple appliances but I just think that story was hilarious.

Is this your purple lady? The article is from 1998:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_47_14/ai_53461425

Sarah Beth - thanks so much for posting a detailed instruction for how to research my home's history. I pasted it into a file so I can use it later when this article gets buried, and also had a look at your blog. Very interesting!

I live in a late 1920's Bungalow Duplex. I lived in the neighborhood before I bought it so I actually saw and heard of some of the things that went on before my purchase and turning it into a single family residence. It was one of the last homes in the neiborhood to be reclaimed from the neighborhood decline. I can remember one tenant always grilling out in the front with 3 to 5 cars parked on the lawn. The cars had names on them like "game over," "juicy fruit," and one even had a memoriam airbrushed on the side with the deceased's picture and dates. It was rumored the resident pimped out her neice. I know that she cared for her invalid uncle who later on died in one of the bedrooms. She kept him in the home who knows how long because she wanted to continue drawing his social security check. It is going on 2 years and I still unearth the craziest things in the back yard and the basement. If I plant or dig in the yard I always find a happy meal toy. I have found cool stuff also..like an antique fire poker that I use in the fireplaces. The original owner lived on one side and rented out the other side. I found this out through the courthouse archives and old phone books at the library. The house has totally been transformed. I don't want to sound all crazy, but it appreciates the work and attention it has been shown.

The house that we currently rent was originally one room and was built in the 1800's. The dining room was added in the 30's and the rest was added in the 40's. This can be seen in the arched antryways and progressing difference throughout the house. The landlord has a box of photos from the entire progression of the house and even wants to add us to it. Very interesting.

http://www.makemineeclectic.wordpress.com

One of my neighbors told me that she saw an elderly couple looking at our small eight unit apartment building in the Bluff Park neighborhood of Long Beach, CA a couple of years ago and she asked if they needed help. They said, no, they had lived there when he was stationed at the Long Beach Navy Base during World War II and they hadn't been back since they moved away. Apparently our building had been used as housing for the Navy for many years.
Several cool, old apartment buildings in Long Beach were Navy housing at one time and the most extravagent was the officers quarters built at the green neon-lit Gaytonia building. http://www.beachcalifornia.com/beach/gaytonia-belmont-shore-photos.html

I live on the outskirts of the town of Sag Harbor NY. In 2006 there was a reenactment of the battle of Sag Harbor, a key battle that took place in 1776. The British came over on Long Boats from CT, to take provisions from Long Island (Sag Harbor's) and Bridgehampton's wealthy farmers. FYI, Long Island was neutral during the revolutionary war. In any case the British soldiers were captured by the local Malitia from a huge hill, and reinvigorating faith in George Washington's troops that were being very well beaten down. The local malitia hid on a hill that viewed the sleeping British Troops on now Brickiln Road. The hill is now Island View Drive, one of the highest points in the area. My home is on this same drive Islandview Drive East !!!

I did a Google search just now and found that the building I live in (an old rowhouse) was owned by a former Confederate soldier and iron merchant who ran a major shipping company back in the 1890's.

KTG, No problem

I actually included the information as a post in my blog and added detail on how the deed index works (grantor/grantee) and such. So if you need more detail, you can read up there!

http://cottageofstone.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-research-history-of-your-home.html

--puck

i'm moving into a historic house built circa 1870 by the family whom my town is named for (Kernersville). i'm excited to do the research and see! before i looked at the house, my friends warned me that it might be haunted and that people had moved in and out over the years. however, when i finally brought them over, even in its empty state they said "this can't possibly be haunted!" the house gives off such a warm, welcoming feel. i'm glad to be moving both my home and business (photography studio) into it!

When I was going to school, I shared an apartment that apparently had a very risque past. It was a large three story building that had been divided (one side was now a single family home over a business) the other side a series of apartments.
The previous renters, told us a story that had been told to them by the people who passed the apartment to them (so this probably is a tall tale). Apparently an architecture student from my school had come to the door and asked to see the inside of the apartment. He said that according to city records the building had been a brothel (apparently they listed it as such on tax records?). There was nothing remotely sexy about the place, just odd. For example the ceiling were high (14feet) and the kitchen cupboards started at 7 feet (great planning there folks).