Method
Where the Records Are
This paper stops at the sidewalk. Everything past that point is records work, all of it public, all of it free, and none of it difficult. Here is the order that saves the most time.
Start with the atlas, not the archive
Fire insurance atlases are the fastest route to an answer and most people find them last.
They were drawn block by block for insurers, they show every building's footprint, number of stories, construction material and often its use, and they were revised repeatedly, so a run of them gives you a building's life in stills. Color tells you material at a glance.
Twenty minutes with an atlas will usually answer a question that a week of reading would not.
Then the directories
City directories list residents and businesses by name and, crucially, by address.
Take the address, look it up in successive years, and you get a list of who was there and what they did, year by year, until the listing stops. The year it stops is usually within a year or two of the demolition or the change of use.
This is the single most useful source for a step five entry, where the name is all that survives.
Then the assessor
Municipal assessment records are public and carry construction dates, demolition dates, lot dimensions and a sequence of owners.
They are dry and they are definitive. Use them to confirm rather than to explore, because they will not tell you anything you did not already know to ask.
Then the survey
Statewide and city historical surveys have visited most blocks in this city and written a paragraph on many of them. They are uneven, they are sometimes decades old, and they are still the fastest way to find out whether anybody has already asked your question.
Where all of this is
Public libraries hold most of it, and the reference desk of any of them can get you to the rest. There is no fee, no membership and no appointment for the ordinary case.
Two practical notes:
- Ask at the desk before you start. Nine years of somebody's working life sits behind that desk and thirty seconds of it will save you an afternoon.
- Bring the address, not the story. Records are indexed by address, and an address gets an answer where a description gets a shrug.
What we do not print
We do not print what we find about a named building, and this page is the reason that policy is workable rather than obstructive.
Everything above is available to anybody, free, without asking us. So the paper can decline to name a place and still leave a reader better equipped than they arrived, which seemed the right trade when we set it up and still does.