House Research Update

While it is fresh in my mind!

Earlier this week I looked through the online versions of the Earnest photography collection and the Benjamin Epps scrapbook, looking for photos of my house (Ben Epps, a famous early aviator, lived two doors down from my house in the 1930s. Unfortunately almost all the photos in the scrapbook were of airplanes - crashed ones, as often as not.) No luck.

Today I skimmed the vertical file folder on Cobbham in the Georgia Room at Hargrett, and learned a lot about the politics of a historic district in the 1970s-1980s. No pictures of my house, though.

Then I was able to look through some archival materials in the Hargrett Reading Room. The 1946 aerial photos are quite nice and detailed; my house is on sheet 50. The porch is visible. There is no magnolia tree visible between our house and 858 Hill (currently there is a very large one!) There are trees visible in the backyard, a bit blurry and not leafed out (clearly the sensible people in charge of the photograph took it in winter/early spring.) There's no deck on the back, two chimneys and no dormers are visible on the house, and there is no outbuilding. The roof looks, to me, like it is probably asphalt shingle. (Alas for our wishes for a metal roof.)

I then asked to look through the records of applications to connect to the sewer. My original owner E. J. O'Kelley appears in the indexes for 1913-1922 (twice) and 1922-28. None of the proerties mentioned are my house, alas. One is the store on Broad and Pope (looks like where Ben's Bikes is now), one is a house at Dearing and Finley (a 2-story foursquare), and another a house on S. Pope, IIRC. I then paged through the records starting in October 1921 (when E. J. O'Kelley bought the land) and ending in February 1924. No luck. There were several houses on Hill Street mentioned, including both houses on the N corner of Hill and Billups, and several interesting other locales (a pool at the Lucy Cobb institute, a building at the (now demolished) old High School, and Chase Street school (19 toilets, 7 lavatories, 2 urinals and 2 sinks.) There was one house on Hill with no address listed, but the application had so little information that even if it were the right house, it wouldn't have given me much.

I had a lot of fun, and a pleasant chat with Steven Brown, and some other Hargrett staff, as well.