Mining the history of a home
Old houses are more than bricks and mortar. They provide snapshots into eras when mining dollars built mansions and wheat crops sprouted entire small towns.
“You name it, people want to know the history of whatever the thing is,” said Linda Yeomans, a certified historic preservation planner from Spokane.
They also want to know more about how to restore it.
On Saturday at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, a handful of restoration enthusiasts attending an Old House Workshop learned how to discover the history behind their homes and how to repair aging plaster.
With magazines, Web sites and television shows devoted to preserving old houses, the workshops – held for 15 years – have found an appreciative audience.
Ann Marra learned tools to help people preserve the history of Colfax, a farm town of nearly 3,000 people.
The town’s City Council recently passed a preservation ordinance that opened the door for tax incentives, like those enjoyed by Spokane homeowners.
The preservation incentives cut property taxes for property owners who spend a certain percentage of their home’s assessed value on certified historical rehabilitation projects for their registered homes.
Now a preservation committee is creating a written inventory of the town’s homes and businesses and photographing historical properties.
“We’re pretty excited about that,” Marra said. “We’ve done quite a bit of work already.”
Susan Burke found her Corbin Park Victorian on the “Historic Landmark Survey,” an old guide to some of Spokane’s most recognizable historic homes.
“I think it’s really exciting. I’d like to know who built it and the names of the original owners,” Burke said.
Interest in preserving historic properties in Spokane County and outlying towns is increasing, Yeomans said during a telephone interview Friday.
Yeomans currently is working to list the downtown district of nearby Sprague, Wash., on the National Register of Historic Places.
In the past decade, Yeomans said she has researched and prepared nominations for about 1,500 regional properties that were added to local, state and national registries.
“I see surges of interest after large, important buildings have been refurbished,” Yeomans said, adding that calls peaked after projects at the Davenport Hotel, Hotel Lusso and the Holley Mason and American Legion buildings were finished.
During the Saturday workshop, retired librarian and preservationist Nancy Gale Compau suggested that do-it-yourself researchers use Spokane Public Library’s Northwest Room and the MAC’s Joel E. Ferris Library to access collections of neighborhood home inventories, photographs, home plan catalogs, newspaper clippings and resource books.
People who want to trace the sagas of small to midsize older homes can browse through catalogs of home plans, dating back to the early and mid-1900s. The catalogs boast so many familiar homes that turning the pages is like driving through local neighborhoods.
Also, homes from the 1950s are starting to qualify for historical listings as they reach the 50-year or older benchmark.
Marra, who has been active in preservation projects for 30 years, is working to refurbish an English cottage home that some Colfax residents nicknamed “The Rock House.”
“We’re trying to preserve it for the next 100 years. Hopefully what we do will keep it alive. We”re just the stewards.”