Finding Physical Evidence: Old Kitchen?!?

Researching the history of your house must undoubtedly involve a thorough inspection of the inside and outside of your home with an eye trained towards unearthing clues. In previous posts, I have already touched on a few physical clues, such as those that tip off a previous rear addition, and the covering over of an exterior window in one of the bathrooms.

A few short months after moving into the house, before I got heavily involved in researching its history, I was in the basement trying to get a better understanding of all the piping hanging from the first floor joists above. Over by the stairs leading to the first floor was a pair of gate valves, on a set of side-by-side water supply pipes, with some duct tape wrapped around each. There was something scribbled onto the duct tape in black magic marker:

Copper water pipes, with old gate valves shutting off supply to the mysterious "Old Kitchen"

"Old Kitchen"?!? What does that mean? Houses do tend to undergo many physical alterations and changes over time, but relocating the whole kitchen would be one of the larger undertakings on the list. My immediate thought, and one that persisted for a bit, was that the kitchen of the house was at one time located in what is now the rear bedroom. I made this inferrence due to further inspection of the basement piping. Following the two water supply pipes with the duct tape tag, they turn at the foundation wall, heading along it for a few feet before penetrating through the foundation wall into the unexcavated crawl space. In addition, a sanitary drainage line pokes through this wall as well, right around the same location. These penetrations occur more or less underneath the demising wall between our living room and the rear third bedroom. Furthermore, this wall between the two rooms on the main level is extra-thick. These are all very strong indications that the wall is a former plumbing wall, with that bedroom being a former kitchen.

Copper pipes now oxidized where they run along the foundation wall. Sanitary drain pipe coming from the "Old Kitchen" is right below that.

However, that location as a kitchen doesn't make a lot of sense looking at the main floor plan. Sure, before modern homes valued the kitchen as a central feature of the house, kitchens were often located at the rear, more out of the way. But in this case, we have always been pretty certain that this location was part of an addition, constructed at some point after the original main house. Did the kitchen originally exist where it does now, in the center of the house, then get moved to the addition, then get moved again by my previous owners after 2001 (based only on the knowledge that they did a lot of work to the house)? That theory sounds a bit far-fetched and didn't make much more sense than the original theory.

Sketch of the main floor (L) and basement (R) plans. The presumed addition is the Living Room and Bedroom at top of the page, with unexcavated space at Basement level. Possible location of "Old Kitchen" is the rear bedroom-- the piping punches through the foundation wall at the location of the staircase in upper right corner of plan.

Still, someone in the past left this duct tape label over the abandoned plumbing valves, and I figured this most likely to be the previous owner of 2001-14. Surely the tape couldn't be more than 15 years old, right? I ran this by him, and he indicated that the kitchen was always where it was as far as he knew, but he had also had similar inklings of layout changes having occurred before his ownership. So it does seem that this duct tape was there prior to 2001 after all.

Then, however, at some point thereafter I had an epiphany...

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What I Knew on Day 1

The scope for a house history can go in any of a number of directions.  There are various types of documents from which information can be drawn. We will visit those specific directions and documents in other posts. For me, for my house, I essentially want to know anything there is to know, and in this sense my research may never be considered "complete". Although I did not begin to heavily research the house until many months after I moved in, we always wanted a house with some architectural and historical character, and I was interested in the history the day we closed. So, what did I already know on Day 1?

Approximate Date of Construction
The real estate listing for the house declared the date of construction as 1920. Now, this cannot be definitively stated as a completely accurate fact.  Realtors pull construction date info from local public record databases, most often specifically in property tax assessment records. However, while these records can accurately tell you assessment history (especially more recent assessment history), the construction date listed is most likely not correct if your house is any more than a few decades old. Although the style of the house is supportive of a construction date in this time period, we cannot assume 1920 is the exact year.

Likelihood of a Rear Addition
Our home inspection was invaluable to us as first-time home buyers, and one item that was revealed during this inspection was that the rear living room and bedroom were likely part of an addition. One can tell this from a simple visual inspection-- as we made our way around the north side of the house, a crack/separation in the exterior siding indicates that the foundation at this portion of the house had settled a bit more than that of the main house and was likely built at a different time than the original house.

At some point, the house was re-sided to appear uniform throughout. The other area from visual inspection where an addition is obvious is in the basement-- the original foundation wall ends at this same location, right at the staircase to the basement (and attic, which also ends at this point). A peek into the existing doorway cut in the foundation wall reveals a crawlspace, the stairs which at one point provided direct access to the exterior, and the floor joists supporting my living room floor.

Style of the House
The style of the house is clearly that of a typical American bungalow. The term "Craftsman" could apply to this style, although generally connotes the presence of more elaborately crafted details than my house exhibits. Bungalows were often a single story (or single story with an attic) and were commonly built in the first few decades of the 20th century. Architectural features include a low-pitched gabled roof, often with deeper eaves. My front porch with tapered stone piers is also a typical craftsman bungalow feature, although they more typically extend to the ground, as opposed to sitting on the porch slab.

Diagram of a Craftsman Bungalow, courtesy of A Field Guide to American Houses, by Virginia & Lee McAlester

Previous Ownership
We certainly know who sold the house to us-- a couple not much older than ourselves, who have kids of their own as well, had owned the house for 14 years, and were moving to a larger house in town. Our deed also tells us that they bought the house from a woman of the last name Cantlin. This would be a bit of information for further exploration, and previous deeds will feature heavily in future posts. There had been no recent sales prior to 2001.

Renovations
It was clear that the previous owners had cared quite a bit for the house and put quite a chunk of change into it. The seller's disclosure form they filled out as part of the process of our transaction indicated such items as new roofs (likely c. 2001) for the back section (previously mentioned "addition") and for the front porch; the addition of a rear deck (2003); and infrastructural improvements such as a new domestic water heater (2001), and brand new natural gas boiler (2013). Although not detailed in documentation, other obvious improvements by these owners include hardwood floors throughout the living areas (modern, not original), and new tile finishes and fixtures in both bathrooms. Most likely the entire kitchen was modestly re-done including new (Ikea I believe) cabinets. Modern, dual-paned, double-hung vinyl windows (Pella) are also recent.


As you can see, even without doing much heavy searching, one can get a great start on a thorough history of the house merely by going through the process of buying it-- we've looked at the real estate listing, the home inspection, and the deed here as sources of information. Although some of these revelations are not "historical" in the sense they did not occur many decades ago, even the recent alterations are part of the long history of the home.

You will also soon come to see that, had I been looking even closer, additional clues would have been apparent...

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