Surveying Interior Wood Casings to Distinguish Original from Alteration

There are several methods for distinguishing original construction inside your home from later alterations and additions. You can look for source documents, such as permits, photos, or drawings as evidence of your home in a previous condition. You can look at floor plans of typical homes of the time period and try to determine if your house's layout ever fit that arrangement or something similar, and interviewing former occupants may be the most helpful. Additionally, you can examine the existing physical details, such as interior wood trim. A stark, or even subtle, but noticable, divergence from the overall trim detail scheme in a house (or portions of a house) can hint of a detail or a wall that was constructed later than the original. Although distinctions can be discerned from any type of trim (such as baseboards, wainscoting, or crown moldings), this article will focus on looking at casings.

Why Casings and What Exactly Are They?

Interior casings are a type of wood trim that serve the primary purpose of finishing the gap between a wall's finish (i.e. drywall, plaster, or wood paneling) and a door or window's frame. Casings also are used to frame "cased openings"-- a wall opening with no door in it.

This image shows how the casing trim covers over the gap between the wall finish and the wood frame of the opening. Image via Fine Home Building.

The interior trim is an opportunity to inject character through either intricate or simple detail, and its use throughout history has served as a method of associating the interiors with an overall architectural style or movement. Casings can incorporate details to your heart's content, such as keystones, plinth blocks, corner blocks, entablatures, and are often formed with molding profiles of varying depth and detail.

Classical detailing in this cased opening. Photo credit: Mark Lohman, via This Old House.

Door casings with a fluted profile and rosette corner blocks. Photo credit: Shannon Malone via Houzz.

Now, why do I focus on casings? I contend that they simply are less likely to have been modified or added over the course of history in an older home than other types of interior trim. As opposed to baseboards and crown moldings, casings are generally at eye level and more easily in the field of vision, meaning it was near impossible for the builder of the original home to avoid giving significant thought to their appearance. Sure, they may have been painted over 10 times, but once in place there generally isn't much of a reason to change the casings out unless one goes out of their way to change the character of their home's interior. Baseboards, on the other hand, might hold more impetus for change if flooring is upgraded or changed. Crown moldings, wainscoting, and chair or picture rails generally are treatments provided on a per-room basis and could have been added at any time. The casings are elements most likely to have been given consistent thought upon original construction and to have stayed that way.

When examining the casing trim throughout a house, remember the word consistent, as this does not mean that all casings are treated equally by the builder. A higher level of detail and ornament may have been provided in more public rooms, with simple detailing in bedrooms or on the second level of the house. The same could be said for size-- larger rooms or openings might have consistently been given larger-scaled trim to remain in proportion. Again, we're looking for changes in consistency-- if you see a prominent room that has casings with a fancy frieze and entablature over top of most openings, but one wall has a door with corner blocks, someone may have added that wall at some point or punched a new door into an existing wall.

A Case In Point

Our 1920's bungalow has always been a modest home. It has never included incredibly rich architectural details, such as what you might find in a true craftsman home, but nonetheless it is not without its character. Most of the casings in my home are flat stock on the jambs (sides) but have a 6" tall entablature crowning the top of the opening. They look like this:

It is remarkably consistent, except where it isn't. Look at the picture below of what you see when you walk in through the front door of the house:

The opening to the right of the photo has just flat stock trim all the way around, with no additional detail whatsoever. It looks like this up-close:

Is this a less-important opening? No, not really-- it is a smaller opening, and it does lead into the "back-of-house" bedroom areas of the house, but most of the casings in those bedrooms have the more detailed entablature. The answer is that the opening with the flat trim was added several decades later, I believe in the 1950's or 60's. In the close-up view you can see two more openings beyond-- one with the more detailed trim (on the left) and one with the flat stock trim around the door (to the right). That opening with the detailed entablature was originally the entrance into the front bedroom from the hallway. Take a look from the bedroom side of these partitions:

Through the current bedroom door, you can see the casing of the original door opening just visible beyond. That entire bump-out in the entrance corner of the bedroom is a later addition, not original (you can see what I believe to be the original layout of the house here)-- the closet door to the right has our tell-tale entablature detail, but the current bedroom door opening has the flat stock. Again, look for breaks from the consistency in your house-- if the original builder had wished to make a distinction between less-important openings with the flat stock trim, that closet door would be more likely to lack the detail than the actual bedroom door.

Aside from the fact that I have documentation and other clues of previous alterations to the house, the flat wood casings are a dead giveaway throughout the house that they are not original. In truth, the casings with the added detail are so consistently similar to each other, and the flat trim is so consistently inconsistent with that overall theme, that I believe all of the flat trim was installed by the Cantlin family, who were the home's only owners from 1932 to 2001. I have full confidence that if it has flat trim, then either it's a wall that is not part of the house's original layout, or a new door or opening was made in an original wall. This is a theory that plays out when I compare the locations of various trim styles with the evolution of the floor plan of my house.

Here are some further examples throughout the house:

Casings in the original portion of the house all exhibit that entablature detail, unless the wall itself was later modified.

All of the casings within the 1940's addition are flat stock.

Even in the original bedrooms, we have entablatures at the window casings.

But no detail was added to the window and door casings in the 1940's addition.

Yet, one more trim style exists, and that is at both bathrooms. Here, we see standard-issue casing trim that you'll find at any big-box home improvement store. This was installed by the owners prior to me.

Entrance to the bathroom on the left, with a basic casing profile from the home improvement store.

This is not to downgrade its status-- on the contrary, the majority of the updates post-2001 work quite nicely for this modest home. It's what most people today would use. However, the difference from the other trim clearly marks its timeline in the house. On a side note, one question this leaves me with is whether the window in our second, more public, bathroom is in a window opening that was always there or whether the window opening was added (the window itself is a modern double-pane replacement).

If you'll notice, it has the same Home Depot window casing. Perhaps the original, more detailed (and entablatured) casing was ripped out, either when the original kitchen was converted to a bathroom in the 1950's or when new owners modernized within the last 15 years. The other possibility is that the casing trim never existed and that a new window was created during that bathroom conversion-- something to investigate further if I ever get to the point of replacing our exterior asbestos siding.

Hopefully now you are able to look for both the consistencies and differences in the trim of your house. Although the contrast between the two main trim styles in my house are more obvious, even a more thoughtful renovation job done in the past can show subtle inconsistencies that can clue you into non-original alterations. Put your mind into that of the original builder, and think about what he would have done...

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Interpreting Historic House Blueprints

The conception of most buildings, residential houses included, has historically involved some sort of architectural drawing. Whether crudely crafted as a rough hand sketch or professionally drafted and reproduced, drawings serve to visualize, communicate, and translate a building's design. I've written before about the importance of at least making an inquiry at your local building department regarding the possible existence of your home's original permit drawings. The older your house is, the more likely you are to come up empty in this search. However, the value which bona fide architectural drawings can bring to the richness and understanding of your house's history make it worth the effort to try a few other places as well, such as historical societies, county archives, and architectural archives. One such repository here locally is the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, which houses an extensive collection of drawing archives and maintains an outstanding online database of Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. While age may decrease your odds of finding plans, if your home has local significance then the odds may increase that some drawings have been preserved throughout its history at such a repository. One other way to potentially locate old drawings for your house is through previous owners or their descendants. Perhaps the son of an original owner felt deeply connected to the house in which he grew up and was able to hang onto the plans.

So let's say you score. You are able to locate historic drawings for your home-- now what? Let us look at a case study. Last month, I published a Saturday Spotlight article featuring a 19th century folk/vernacular home in Roxborough, which had been significantly modified with renovations and a major addition by noted Philadelphia architect Robert Rodes McGoodwin in the mid-1930's. Fortunately, a blueprint copy of drawings for the project has survived and been passed down through the progression of ownership history of the house. The current owner has been kind enough to grant permission for me to share and interpret the blueprints here, so let's do exactly that. A scan of the entire sheet is shown below and includes primarily floor plans and elevations.

Scan of blueprint copy. Courtesy of the home's owner.

Provenance

As described, we know that this an authentic copy of the original architectural drawings. That is of no doubt, due to its having remained with the house. In drawing set standards, the title block is essentially what it sounds like-- a block of space on the sheet reserved for basic information including project name/location, the name of the architect or firm, client's name, drawing scale, the drafter's initials, and the title and date of drawing issues and revisions.

The drawing sheet title block, providing basic information for the project. At right is a photo of architect Robert Rodes McGoodwin. (Photo source: University of Pennsylvania Archives)

Looking in the lower-right corner of the drawing sheet here we see the title block. Some of that basic information includes:

Title: "Alterations & Additions to Frame House at S.E. Corner of Spring Lane and Paisley Road, Roxborough, Phila., Penna."
Owner: Mrs. Samuel F. Houston
Architect: Robert Rodes McGoodwin, Registered Architect

These pieces specifically tie the drawings to its exact current location. McGoodwin is known to have been commissioned by Samuel Houston for a number of residential properties in Roxborough. As described in the previous article on this home, the Houstons never lived in this home but did own it and alot of land in the neighborhood, commissioning the expanded design of this home as part of a larger effort to bring up the standards of Roxborough at-large. The specification of Houston's wife as the Owner might be an indicator that she may have been more heavily involved in dealing with McGoodwin and his associates for this particular house than her husband was. The original date of the drawing was October 19, 1935 and a revision is noted and dated November 12 of the same year. That November 12 date is likely when the original hand-drafted version of this copy was produced. While there is the possibility that this or some version of this drawing was used for construction, there likely were additional drawings for the builder. I believe that this copy is a final or near-final progress copy used by the architects to communicate the design to the owner, thus its having been passed down through ownership history.

Floor Plans

Most people understand what floor plans are. An architectural floor plan depicts the layout of a building, viewed from overhead, as if one were to take a horizontal slice through it about 4-feet above the floor (in order to show doors, windows, etc). Taking a look here at the first floor plan, I've highlighted a number of standard architectural drawing conventions in yellow. Of course, each room is labeled with its intended use "Kitchen", "Pantry", "Living Room", etc. Primary dimensions of various rooms and of the overall addition are provided. Window tags assign a number to each window, which would typically correspond to a window schedule (not seen in this blueprint), which is a list of all the planned windows with their sizes and other pertinent information. Standard symbols show locations of electrical outlets as well as lighting locations.

A few things to note about the layout itself. McGoodwin's task in 1935 was to design an addition onto an existing house. On the blueprint, I can see the original house comprising the rooms labeled "Living Room", "Alcove", "Dining Room", and "Hall" as this resembles a common arrangement of rooms in many earlier vernacular homes. There are other clues here as well which tells us where the old ends and the new starts. At both the top and bottom of the plan, there is a line cutting through the center of the house labeled "Face of Old Studs". The studs are the vertical wood framing members of the original house. To the right of that line, all the walls are "unhatched", meaning they aren't colored in by the draftsman. This drawing convention in this case indicates all of the existing wood-framed walls. To the left of that line, the walls are "hatched" or "poched" (colored-in solid), indicating new walls built of cinder blocks.

This 1935 addition essentially turned a fairly basic house into an upper class or upper-middle-class residence. The addition is setup as the "servant zone"-- it is more or less an "ell" addition, meaning it is not as wide as the original house and relocates the kitchen function there. The original kitchen may have been where the dining room is now, adjacent to the fireplace. A new garage is added onto the ell addition, and a secondary set of stairs has been added at the kitchen for use by servants to travel to the Laundry Room directly below in the basement and to the servant's bedroom above the garage.

There are a few significant differences between the 1935 layout and the current 2016 floor plan of the house. A powder room is now provided at the 1935 coat closet off of the front Hall; the access to the basement remains with an additional door within the powder room. Today of course there are no servants, no service "wing" of the house, and the house merely functions as a residence for only the family itself. Thus, at some point in the past, there was less need for a separate storage pantry at the kitchen; the wall separating the pantry from the kitchen was removed, giving way to the modern trend of a larger centralized kitchen.

The current kitchen. At the far wall are two doors to the staircases which once were used by servants, as well as built-ins original to the 1930's addition. This photo is taken standing at a spot which was formerly part of the pantry. The wall between the kitchen and pantry would have been where the oven range currently sits, cutting to the left across the view in the photo. Photo courtesy of The Sivel Group.

The space marked "Alcove" on the First Floor Plan is now a home office, with access off of the main hall and now closed off from the Living Room. That Living Room was expanded over time by enclosing the porch and filling in the remainder of the depth of the original house with a one-story cinder block addition. This is the area covered in yellow by me on the first floor plan above. The result is the generously-spaced living room existing today.

The current living room. The walls painted in green, and the fireplace, in this photo are all within additions which occurred after the primary c. 1935 renovation. The original exterior wall of the house would have existed approximately at the left edge of the larger built-in shelving, coming out perpendicular and crossing to the back face of the house. Photo courtesy of The Sivel Group.

The most significant difference at the second floor between the 1935 floor plan and that of today is seen in between the two bedrooms marked "Chamber #1" and "Chamber #2" on the Second Floor Plan blueprint below. The alcove to the right of the bathroom has been eliminated by removing the wall between it and the bathroom, effectively creating a large master bathroom off of the master bedroom (Chamber #1). There is still access into this bathroom from the second bedroom.

Scan of Second Floor Plan blueprint, courtesy of the home owner. Although the image is stretched a bit, the Bath and Alcove have recently been combined into a larger master bathroom, seen in the following image.

Current master bathroom. The wall between the original bathroom and the "alcove" / dressing area used to come across where the vanity exists currently. Door to "Chamber #2" seen in the background. Photo courtesy of The Sivel Group.

Two more bedrooms on the Third Floor. They're still there, I saw them. Scan of blueprint courtesy of the homeowner.

Elevations

The term "elevation" in architectural drawing parlance refers to a straight-on view of the exterior facade. On this drawing sheet, we have elevations for all four primary facades of the expanded 1935 house. In this analysis, we will focus on the street-facing (front) facade as well as the backyard (rear) facade.

In the Northwest Elevation above, I have added a few marks in yellow to call out what the architect is conveying with certain drawing conventions. Again, we delineate the extents of the original house as well as those of the 1935 addition. As part of the building's facelift, most of the window openings remained as-is, but some were filled in and others were created new to produce the rhythm McGoodwin sought on the home's exterior. At those new window openings, we see annotation calling out the size of window headers required to span the opening structurally (8"x10", 8"x12"). Also on the elevations we see the basement and foundation construction drawn in lighter, dashed lines, indicating that this construction is below ground level. At the left side of the elevation drawing, each floor level is noted and the floor-to-floor height (vertical dimension between floor levels) is provided. Throughout, building materials are called out with additional annotation: "T&G boards" refers to tongue and groove wood trim; "clapboards" are the horizontal wood siding;"wood lattice" is called out at the side porch area; and on the rear facade of the house, McGoodwin's firm included a "wood and W.I. trellis", W.I. standing for wrought iron. This trellis, as well as the side porch, no longer exist today, so this is a fantastic and accurate depiction of what these features once looked like on the house.

Blueprint copy of the rear elevation, courtesy of the homeowner. A trellis!

Capturing a Home's Evolution

This particular house has lived several lives, taking on a new personality on multiple occasions. Originally, in the 19th century, it existed as a relatively simple home with a Folk Victorian style. Then, in the 1930's, a well-known architect crafted an extensive renovation and addition. Without the blueprints which have survived for 80 years, while we might be able to determine this house's evolution, it would have taken much more detective work. Had this home been significantly altered even further after the 1930's addition, these blueprints would have been invaluable in coming close to understanding the house's history at the particular point in its history. These professionally hand-drafted drawings provide insight into the mind of the architect so many years ago, and hopefully now you might be able to interpret more of what you'd find on a set of blueprints if you happen to locate some for your historic house.

At left: the rear of the house as it exists today, trellis long gone. Photo courtesy of The Sivel Group. At right: the rear of the house prior to McGoodwin's intervention, pre-trellis. Historical photo courtesy of the home owner.

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Saturday Spotlight- 19th Century Folk Victorian (Turned Colonial Revival) in Roxborough

This week's Saturday Spotlight house is one with a storied past, a Folk Victorian in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. It dates back to the latter half of the 19th century and was renovated and expanded in 1935-36 as a Colonial Revival.

Image courtesy of The Sivel Group

Architectural styles can be tricky sometimes. They change over times, of course, and sometimes a homeowner will want to update or expand a home significantly, incorporating details and stylistic trends of the day. The physical evolution of a home may fool one into thinking that the currently presented architectural style was always so. Fortunately here, the current owner of this home has a few historical photos which their listing agent was kind enough to pass along.

Image of the rear of the house, prior to 1935 addition. Courtesy of homeowner.

The house as shown in this older photo is clearly a folk, vernacular form, presenting as a two-story I-house with a side gable on one side and rear and front-facing gables at the other end. Tales of this house have its origins as far back as the 1850's. The intricate turned porch posts and the brackets at the roof eaves, however, suggest a few decades later to me. While a Victorian-style porch was a very common addition to existing earlier Folk homes of this time period and could have come after the original construction, I'd still wager that this house was constructed closer to the 1870's due to the eave detail. The simple frieze trim over the windows also was more likely to have occurred a bit later than the 1850's. This historical photo gives us a fantastic demonstration of how shutters were actually functional back in the day. Second floor window shutters were louvered, allowing a breeze to enter on a warm day, while first floor shutters were often comprised of solid raised panels to increase privacy. This arrangement was thoughtfully extended and maintained in future additions.

The facade shown in the historic image above is the current rear of the house. Take a look at it compared to a present-day image of the rear facade (below) and notice the asymmetrical window pattern largely intact, albeit with a door replacing one of the first floor windows, another door added, and the cross gable removed as part of an extensive 1930's renovation. Today we see much more of a Revival style, with the original house down to side gables on both ends, now accompanied by lower-height additions continuing the side gable form. Dormers are added on both the front and back at roof level to continue the rhythm of the facade's fenestration pattern. The white German siding set off with dark-painted shutters gives the house a classic farmhouse look.

Current rear of the house. Image courtesy of The Sivel Group

Origins

The home currently sits on land at what is modern-day Andorra, in Upper Roxborough. However, this was not its original location; more on that in a moment. At the edge of northwestern Philadelphia, this area was largely undeveloped through most of the 19th century, with groupings of houses along Ridge Pike surrounded by larger ownership tracts. As of 1875, this immediate area was still referred to as “Manatawna”, a name which persists today in the form of Manatawna Ave. The exact land on which the house exists today is marked by the ownership of a Mr. Sebold in that same year. A structure is shown on the 1875 map further northeast of the home which is the subject of this piece, existing close to the corner of Spring Lane and Ridge Pike. According to the current owner, the original frame structure of our feature house may have been sitting further to the south along the banks of the Schuylkill River at this time, to be relocated to its present site later on.

Aerial image from 1930. The house, pre-addition on its new (and present) site, is marked with the red arrow to the west of Ridge Pike, the main north-south thoroughfare.

In the last decades of the 19th century, local railroad executive and philanthropist Henry Howard Houston began acquiring many of the large tracts of land in Upper Roxborough. Houston had already burgeoned the adjacent neighborhood of Chestnut Hill as an upper class haven, having amassed a wealth of land and establishing his own mansion residence there (Druim Moir). By the time of his death in 1895, Houston’s holdings in Roxborough had yet to be developed to a significant extent. That would change, however, with the efforts of his son Samuel Frederic Houston, who took over the Estate’s real estate holdings. The younger Houston set out to replicate the section as an elite residential area similar to Chestnut Hill, with grand ambition to construct a cross-country parkway from Chestnut Hill, with a large bridge over the Wissahickon Gorge and through Roxborough, connecting to the Main Line to the west. Those plans never materialized, nor did S.F. Houston’s hopes for a massive Cathedral in Andorra a few blocks away from our subject folk house.

Samuel F. Houston, circa 1900. Image courtesy of UPenn Archives

Instead, smaller-scaled plans did materialize in the core of the neighborhood. This occurred largely through Houston’s commissioning of professional architects, such as Robert Rodes McGoodwin, to design elegant residential houses, including what is now the Renfrew Center further down Spring Lane. This, too, is where the tale of the white folk house picks up. According to the owner, the original house was relocated from its location along the Schuylkill River to a new foundation on its present site on Spring Lane. The house, missing from a 1910 property atlas, may have been moved to this site shortly thereafter. It appears with its smaller, original footprint in a 1930 aerial photograph (seen above). A large-scale renovation and addition was then executed by R.R. McGoodwin, commissioned by Samuel F. Houston’s wife. The Houstons never lived at this home, but merely commissioned its expansion. Fortunately, building plans have survived for this work and are in the care of current ownership. The addition and alterations nearly doubled the footprint of the house, to its current 4,930 sf, and altered the exterior style to its present appearance.

Left: The title block portion of a drawing sheet for the addition of the house, courtesy of the owner. Right: Robert Rodes McGoodwin, architect of the modified end result. Image via UPenn Archives.

1950s to Present

This house continued its expanded existence into the next few decades and eventually came under the ownership of George S. Greene, a financial investment banker. Greene performed some alterations of his own, hiring contractor William Milton in 1959 to remove an existing porch (in the location of, and perhaps the same porch shown at the left side of the historical image) and to add a small one-story cinder block addition. This addition is manifested as the infilled-corner portion at the far right of the house when viewed from the street.

Building permit drawing for small addition, 1959.

Ownership changes continued through the latter half of the 20th century, with a Harry & Susan West selling the house to Frank & Elizabeth Blair in 1973. Mr. Blair was a medical physician. The Blairs owned the home until 1991, at which time they conveyed the property to Paul Tucker and Mary Rugala who held it for the next twenty years. 

The current owners have owned the home since 2011 and have performed a number of tasteful modern improvements, including upgrades to multiple bathrooms and a master bath. Yet, at the same time, the historic character of the house itself has been maintained, and it awaits a new owner to carry on the legacy.

Interior images courtesy of The Sivel Group

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Information From a Former Occupant of the House

Just before the New Year, I penned an article here called "The Importance of Contacting Your House's 'Descendants'" which described why it is so important for you to attempt to contact living persons who are connected to your house's history. This is THE most likely way to find the most elusive types of information-- about layout (or other physical) changes, the personalities/lives of former owners and occupants, and perhaps even photographs. The article also described ways in which you can go about finding these living sources and how to respectfully approach them. Finally, I presented an intro to what has led to some of my most important discoveries to date:

"The most successful result, however, was with one of the daughters-in-law (edit: of my house's longtime owners John & Catherine Cantlin), who by chance has lived within my same neighborhood for decades. I found contact information including the telephone number and address in a phone directory, and started off by writing a simple letter and including some current photographs of the interior and exterior of the house. I did not receive a response, so after a couple of months I made a simple phone call. On the receiving end was the daughter-in-law, who was delightful to talk to, who HAD received my letter (but had not responded only because she assumed she had no useful information for me), and who proceeded to have a very nice conversation with me about what I've found to date and about what she recalled."

I sent my initial letter to the daughter-in-law (who I believe is in her 70's) towards the end of the summer of 2015 (around when I started Home Scribe History) and decided to make the cold call in early November. We spoke for roughly 20 minutes and I kept very detailed notes. What follows here is a brief summary of what I found out from her in the first of what is hopefully multiple conversations with her:

• The daughter-in-law herself, who was married to John and Catherine's (now deceased) youngest son, lived in the "apartment" side of the house from 1958-1961. This confirms that she has some serious memories and knowledge about the house.
• She confirmed that the house, for a significant part of its history (as early as the 1950's through to at least 2001), was a duplex and not merely a single-family home as it was originally and is today. This is something I discovered previously and detailed in my post from late September "This Single-Family Was Once a Duplex" and was triggered by the discovery of a piece of duct tape in the basement labeling piping for the "Old Kitchen". The layouts I presented in that post were far from correct, largely due to the fact that the layout had changed much more than I realized. She did, however, confirm that what is presently my 3rd bedroom was formerly the apartment kitchen.
• She confirmed the youngest Cantlin son's (her husband's) birth year as 1933. Additionally, she informed me that he was born in the home.
• She and her husband had helped sell the house in 2001 after Catherine moved out to a nursing home at the age of 95. At that time, no significant changes were made in preparation for selling the house beyond some new carpets and minor cosmetic improvements. She confirmed some termite remediation which was found during my home inspection.
• I was informed that after John Cantlin's death in 1961, Catherine Cantlin undertook additional layout changes on the half of the house where she lived. Most significantly, I learned that what is now the second bathroom (between the current kitchen and the current living room) was previously the original kitchen of the house. After John's death, this became a bathroom, and the former dining room became what is today Kitchen/Dining.
• Her understanding is the same as mine that the house already existed when the Cantlins bought it in 1932. She relayed an anecdote that was told to her that the Cantlins had lived in Philadelphia previously (which I knew from census research) and had moved out to Glenside, at one point renting a house on Roberts Avenue less than a mile away from my house. Catherine had been trying to decide between the Roberts Avenue house and this one, ultimately choosing this one. She believes they rented the house before buying it, as I suspected based on their purchasing deed.
• The neighboring lot used to be owned by Catherine Cantlin as part of her lot. This lot now contains my neighbor's house. According to the daughter-in-law, Catherine sold the lot off 30 or so years ago. Records seem to indicate that it may have been sold in 1973, 43 years ago.
• She confirmed that the old stone stove in the backyard has been there since at least when she lived here, so she pegged it as at least as early as 1956-57. She was not sure who physically built it, and did not believe her father-in-law did. She relayed that it was heavily used, and that the Cantlins liked to entertain, especially on July 4th.

This single conversation gave me alot to work with-- alot of new leads to research further. It gave me alot of detail that I likely would never have learned without contacting former occupants of the house. I will say that I probably caused this woman to be confused more than a few times, referring to a living room that she never knew as a living room, and I kept thinking she was referring to rooms in the back of the house when she meant the front. This confusion was simply because the house has seen a significant number of changes, so both of us had come from it based on our own understanding of the house. I did ask her if she could recall any photographs which might show the house in some of these earlier decades. She said that she would check, and would also check with her sister-in-law (the other living Cantlin daughter-in-law) who might be more likely to have such things.

I followed this phone call up with another letter shortly thereafter, enclosing a few sketched out floor plans asking some additional questions and to ensure that I understood our conversation correctly. I will post more about any follow up information as it arises, but I hope this demonstrates the potential value to your house history research!

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Finding Physical Evidence: The 1946 Addition

Locating the 1946 permit and the accompanying application for the enclosure of a rear porch on the house answered some questions, more specifically the question of when the rear "addition" was built (or part of it at least). However, the permit documents raised several questions as well. So, I physically went above, below, and outside this portion of the house in search of more insight. What follows in this post are some of the questions that remain about this porch enclosure addition to the house, as well as what I found as I investigated further.

When Was the Porch Built?

The 1946 permit was for a porch enclosure. So when was the porch itself originally built? The application mentions the use of floor joists in the construction, but does not say anything about a foundation, presumably because the foundation had already been built.

Clip from the 1946 permit application for a porch enclosure on the house, listing some of the materials used: "studs 2x4, joists 3 lb, german siding"

Was the Entire Rear Part of the House Built at One Time? Or Not?

Take a look at the current view of the house from the backyard. Architecturally, an A-framed gable structure is on the left, enclosing what is now the third bedroom plus half of the main living room. To the right, a flat roof structure enclosed along its entire length by windows (and one door) completes the rear elevation. Peeking out from behind these lower structures is the gable of the original house, just barely visible.

Is it possible, or even likely, that the rear of the house was built in multiple phases? The portion with the flat roof seems more porch-like to my eye, whereas the left-side gabled structure looks more like an actual addition to the house.

Let's Go Crawling...

Remember in the very beginning, when I shared a doorway in the basement leading to a crawlspace? Well let's head into that crawlspace!

Upon opening the door, one is greeted by a set of stone steps leading up to what once was exterior dirt. Straight ahead and to the left in the background of the photo you can see what appears to be a concrete block foundation wall at the perimeter. Immediately to the right is a block and brick masonry wall, likely retaining further dirt. Insulated copper water piping serving the home's radiators is also seen, as well as some cloth-sheathed non-metallic (NM) wiring, and some additional abandoned water piping serving the "Old Kitchen".

The masonry wall to the right of the stair stops shortly after you reach the top of the steps, but picks back up again along the same line with more concrete block. This discontinuous wall appears to be in line with a wood beam in the ceiling of our living room, which sits on post framing (or doubled-studs) at each end. Further, this happens to align with the juncture of the flat roof and the bottom of the gabled roof on the exterior. 

Peeking into the existing gap in the block wall (but not squirming my way through there on this jaunt), I could see yet another block wall (with a similar gap in it) which appears to support the wall between the living room and the bedroom. Thus, the thick wall on the main floor likely has some load-bearing capacity, as it lines up with the ridge beam (center beam) at the top of the gable roof.

Another semblance of a concrete block foundation wall in the background, underneath the wall between the living room and third bedroom

...and Climbing

Next, to the attic! Fortunately, it is easy to poke my head into the attic space above the addition, as an access opening exists near the top of the attic steps. Doing so, and looking straight ahead, we see the ridge beam supported by a series of posts, in line with the first floor wall below.

Looking to the left, we see the rafters for the flat roof framed into the rafters of the gabled roof. The pitched rafters rest on the beam at the living room ceiling, which we now know appears to be largely supported on a block foundation in the crawlspace.

Rafters for the flatter roof of the former porch are fastened into the pitched rafters of the gable roof.

Outdoor Examination

Let's take a closer look at that flat-roofed portion of the addition from the exterior again. As I pointed out earlier, this area has windows lining the entire perimeter with the exception of the door. The very corner of the house is pretty clearly a post supporting the roof, something reminiscent of enclosing an outdoor area, like a porch, rather than being built as an indoor space from the start.

Someday that aluminum soffit will wave bye-bye

A step backwards, showing the porch enclosed with windows along its entire length.

Examining the spot where the addition meets the original house, we can see how the more recent exterior wall of the porch enclosure rests on what was likely the line of the porch floor.

Although the rear wood deck was built after 2001, it is easy to see the concrete steps underneath it that led to the back door, serving as the main entry for the tenant during the time period that the back of the house was a rental unit.

"Conclusions"

Although I'd prefer more documentation or floor plans to back it up, I feel confident with the working theory that the 1946 rear porch enclosure only encompassed the small flat-roofed section of the house, about 100 square feet, and that the bulk of the rear addition came earlier. The continuous windows, the corner post, the walls inset from the original house and from the rest of the addition, and the plane of the floor surface seen from the outside all tell me that this was a porch that was enclosed. Another clue for me is the construction cost of this work in 1946, listed on the permit, amounting to $125 (roughly $1600 in current value). This does not, to me, seem to be a sufficient amount to enclose the entire 350 sf rear addition with exterior walls.

I believe the larger pitched-roof portion to be earlier, from sometime between 1936 and 1946. I use 1936 as the early end of that range because only the original house appears on a 1937 map (assuming that the map surveyor may have recorded the house a year before publishing). It is quite possible that the open porch and its foundation were built concurrently with the larger addition and its foundation. The flat roof of the porch may have been constructed with the 1946 porch enclosure, or may have been designed into the rear addition from the beginning, creating the attractive assymetrical roof line seen today.

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Learning About the Home's Expansion by Looking at the Building Permit

Last week, I discussed a visit to the local building department to find out what the Township has on record in the way of building permits for the house. While I didn't find any permits or drawings from the home's original construction date in the 1920's, I did find a building permit dated April 11, 1946 for the enclosure of a rear porch. In actuality, there were three pages included-- a two-page permit application, plus the actual permit itself.

Permit Application to enclose rear porch dated April 11, 1946.

Although it's quite difficult to read, this is the actual building permit, dated April 17, 1946.

So, these are some pretty exciting documents to view, as they document a major piece of construction on the house. Back in the beginning of our history hunt, we could tell that the rear portion of the building was some sort of an addition, since the original foundation ends before you reach the rear living room. Further, this portion of the house exhibits a minimal amount of differential settlement, evidenced by the separation of asbestos siding at the juncture of the two building portions. This document now appears to confirm the assumption and tells us a bit more as well.

The Permit Application

Let's spend most of our time analyzing the permit application, as the permit itself merely simplifies the application information down into a few key pieces. There is actually much more information on the application. So, starting at the top of the application:

Although it's a bit difficult to read this scan of the microfilm, the top of the form includes the Permit Number (#4226), as well as Type (5) and Class of Occupancy (3), which, although we are only hazarding an educated guess here, likely indicates a wood-framed, single-family dwelling. The permit fee, which is typically a percentage of the cost of the work, was $5.00 (more on this when we get to page 2 of the application). The next few paragraphs serve to indicate that the Township Building Inspector (L.R. Brigham) approved the permit application on April 12, 1946, one day after owner John J. Cantlin applied.

The boilerplate print of the application form covers multiple construction project types, including "to Alter, Repair, and Remove, Demolish or to Move any Building." It is always interesting to me to find the signature of a person I've been researching, and John Cantlin's signature appears here, dated April 11, 1946.

Moving on, the application prompts a further description of the proposed work:

As we've already mentioned, the work is to enclose the rear porch. Although the application instructs that applicants shall "furnish building plans and specifications in duplicate", sadly we did not find these. Mr. Cantlin's application does indicate the planned use of 2x4 wood stud framing, joists, and german siding (to match the original wood german siding used on the main house).

And on Page 2 of the application:

Although several additional fields are not completed, the application does indicate that work is intended to begin "at once," and although it is very difficult to read in this scan, the actual permit verifies that the next bit of information is an estimated construction cost of $125 (equal to roughly $1600 today). No architect was consulted on this work, but the contractor is listed as Joseph Dolan of Jenkintown Rd in Ardsley. Sure enough, in the 1940 U.S. Census, 34-year-old Joseph J. Dolan appears at 850 Jenkintown Rd, Ardsley, in the household of his mother, Susie Dolan, along with his wife, son, daughter, and his two sisters and their children as well. The address number 850 on Jenkintown Rd is currently out in Rockledge, not Ardsley, so the street numbers must have changed at a point since 1940. A similar address number, 2850 Jenkintown Rd, is currently right around the corner from our subject house. However, since this batch of Jenkintown Rd households on the census was enumerated amongst households on Hazel Ave and Monroe Ave, I am guessing the Dolans actually lived a bit further down the road towards the Ardsley train station. Nonetheless, Mr. Dolan certainly lived nearby.

1940 US Census entry for Joseph J. Dolan, living in Ardsley at 850 Jenkintown Rd

Curiously, Joseph Dolan's occupation in 1940 is listed as "tree surgeon," not contractor or carpenter. Perhaps Joseph Dolan became a builder after his arborist days, however I tend to think a more likely scenario is that John Cantlin may have hired a handy friend of his to fill in his porch with exterior walls and throw up some siding.

Although a space appears at the bottom of the form for the Building Inspector to indicate that the work has been completed satisfactorily, it has not been filled out on this particular document. This building permit application is not quite the treasure trove of information for which I hoped, but it did fill in a few blanks and provide some more leads to pursue. It also gives us cause to examine the building itself with a closer eye...

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