Saturday Spotlight-- Circa 1893 Brick Folk Victorian in Harleysville

This week's Saturday Spotlight house is a brick Folk Victorian home right on Main Street in Harleysville, PA. Image courtesy of real estate listing by Connie Hunsberger, BHHS Fox & Roach Realtors Folk Victorian homes are characterized by classic and simple home forms, adding Victorian detailing and spindlework, often with a front porch. They are distinguished from those homes commonly labeled as Victorian or Queen Anne since they take on traditional and vernacular shapes and forms. With the spread of railroad...

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A Walk Through the Ardsley Neighborhood (Ferguson's North Glenside)

Examining the history, growth, and architecture of your home's neighborhood can tell you quite a bit about its own history by providing context, both physical and temporal. We've now been through two posts regarding the subdivision in which my house was built, Ferguson's North Glenside. The first post explained the process of discovering the subdivision's name through historical map exploration. The second post gave a brief history of Reginald T. Ferguson's creation of the subdivision by splitting two larger tracts...

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The Origins of Ferguson's North Glenside

In one of the blog's early posts, I explained the process of discovering the subdivision of land on which my house currently sits-- Ferguson's North Glenside. It constitutes what is today known as the neighborhood of Ardsley. Today we will take a look at the origins of the subdivision, which occurred in three successive phases around 1920. On October 5, 1917, in the later years of her life, Emma L. Spear officially conveyed, to Reginald T. Ferguson, the 217-acre farmland tract which had been owned by her family for...

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Fire Decimates 1927 Tudor-Style Clubhouse at LuLu Country Club

Today we lament the sudden loss of a local historic building. Although not a residential house, it was the Tudor-style Clubhouse of the Lulu Country Club, built in 1927 according to the club's website. Inage courtesy Lulu Country Club Yesterday morning I was out doing some errands, and driving back towards my home I was greeted by enormous plumes of dark black smoke in the air not too far away. The sight was pretty much the same as this fellow witness saw: Image via 6ABC Action News viewer As I drove towards...

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Extracting Clues from Property Deeds

After you have gathered a collection of property deeds related to the land on which your subject house sits, you can begin to examine the details of each individual deed for specific clues. If you have found yourself at this article and have not yet gathered any deeds for your house or land, see my article on "chaining the title" of your property here. After this process, you may have a dozen or so deeds, or you may have 1-2, depending on how many times the house and land were sold and how far you choose to go back....

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Piecing Together a Chain of Title for a House's Land

One of the most important research tasks to undertake in the house history is referred to as compiling the "chain of title." This process is equal parts laborious and informative. Although it is a quite extensive search, you are really getting to the meat here by gathering all the deeds on the property. This will serve to essentially create a full ownership history of the land on which your subject house sits, assuming you don't encounter any insurmountable gaps. Note that I said history of the land (not the house),...

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Saturday Spotlight- Circa 1860's Second Empire in Gwynedd Valley

This week's Saturday Spotlight house is a stout and well-kept Second Empire in Lower Gwynedd, PA. Although this house is a robust 3,800 square feet and commands its fair share of attention on Brushtown Road, it is dwarfed by many of the multi-million dollar mansions on the same road and in Lower Gywnedd at large. Yet, unlike the neighboring estates, this house has stood the test of time. It exhibits the characteristics of the Victorian Second Empire style, which was most popular in the post-civil war era. The...

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