One of the best things about working for my dad is the continual opportunity to glean tiny bits of historical evidence from each house we work on. With some acute observation and a little contemplation (and help from the older and wiser), you can find out about a lot of things that most young people these days inevitably take for granted. Take for instance, our lovely little barn-red abode as an example. Think you don’t have enough closet space? Our house was built without closets. None. The closets we use now are tacked on to each room, a bit clumsily, somewhat disturbing the natural flow of the house. When our house was built, each inhabitant had a peg on which was hung a single set of work clothes, and a set of Sunday clothes. That’s all that was needed for the rural dweller.
According to our 85 year-old neighbor who grew up in this neighborhood, our house used to be the only one on the block. Like most of my grandmother’s houses, other small homes sprang up around the neighborhood in the ’30s and ’40s, likely lending a more suburban feel to the area. Post World War II, the remaining lots were hastily crammed with more cheaply assembled structures, to accommodate the booming families of the mid-forties.
If you know what to look for, it’s easy to spot the difference between the pre-WWII and post-WWII houses. The older houses were more craftily built, with foundations made of cinder blocks sculpted to resemble stones. The newer houses simply have plain old flat cinder blocks. Older houses have eaves that hang out a foot or more past the exterior wall of the house, which is less commonly seen in the newer homes. I’m not sure of the reason for this difference, but would be willing to bet it has something to do with gutters being a more modern invention.
Regardless of “old house” or “less-old house”, all of the houses in our area (and most of the houses I’ve worked on) still display a tell-tale sign of days gone by. Does your basement have a funny little iron trap-door on the same level as your basement windows? That, my gas furnace-loving friends, is a coal chute. I’ve seen many a coal chute in my work day, and occasionally I’ve discovered an actual coal room, still intact, with a little wooden door for easy access to the long-ago used up fuel. One of my grandmother’s houses must once have been occupied by very wealthy inhabitants indeed, for their coal room, to this day, still harbors the heaping surplus of coal that they left behind many decades ago.
I’ve grown accustomed to the phenomenon of viewing the outside world through the warped surface of blown-glass window panes. Glass, which is actually a very slow-moving liquid (!), has the habit of creating these fun-house mirror images of whatever is viewed through them, due to the thickening of the pane, over time, near the bottom. When I look out my kitchen window at my garden every morning, the lawn seems to undulate in response to the movements of my head and body.
Another amusing indication of simpler days is the ubiquitous presence of a beautiful wooden-framed bathroom window, right smack dab where any sane person would know a shower wall should go. I’ve helped my dad tear out many of these windows, placed so artfully just above the tub, because they had, of course, become hopelessly rotted out from the overhead spray of water. They have to be replaced with smaller vinyl windows surrounded by a protective sheet of plastic across the entire wall. The cause of all this hard labor is the same cause of the trouble my dad often has to go through to install that simple modern comfort that I can’t imagine ever having to live without—a shower.
Besides these antique clues as to the extinct past of my home and the dozens of others I have worked on, there are much more blatant signs to be found that tell about the very recent histories. When I began work on our house, one that we currently rent from my grandmother, there were plenty of clues that had to be removed or covered over. One of these, in the doorway leading to the hall, was a compendium of several years’ worth of height marks. You know, the kind with little names written off to the side, documenting the great race in growth among siblings. I saved that little testament to the former tenants till the very last, when it had to be painted over because I didn’t yet know that I was going to be the next lucky occupant. It comforts me to know that it is still there, hidden just under a layer of cheap white paint, and may yet reveal itself again one day.
A hopelessly sentimental amateur historian like myself can only wish it to be so.
Christmas Is All Around Us 
Your next step is to go downtown to the State Library and find out who lived there, when, and what became of the family members. Years ago I became interesed in doing House Histories for people, writing up a neat little document that could be framed and hung in their homes. One of many wishful endeavors I never succeeded in pursuing.
Ooh, good idea!