I just moved into an apartment in a place that was built around the turn of the century. There are all sorts of weird structural things about the building; and the resident manager speculates that the building was originally two buildings built right next to each other.
I’d like to know the whole story of this place, just out of curiousity. The people who work at the property company main office are rather chilly, and I don’t see them having little spiral-bound packets of Neat Building Stories to pass out to people. Someone else suggested possibly reading through microfiche at the city library. Would there be some way to put a street address into a database or something? (I checked on google, and it’s not a historic building with a listing in a historical society or anything, just a real old building.)
The only clue I can offer about the two-building thing is this:
Usually if they were seperate buildings, they would each have their own seperate sewer pipes leaving independent of eachother. I’m sure the other utilities would be the same too but sewers are burried into the ground and often as old as the building. Redundant utility access lids in the sidewalks would be a sign of that too.
Talk to Kathryn Rankin in the Madison City Planners Office. She’s the unofficial (maybe now official?) building historian for the city of Madison. She has a lot of research available, or can point you in the right direction for you curiousity.
You should be able to find tax records (including a description of the property) in the City Assessor’s Office. In Richmond, they have photographs attached to each work card and a detailed description of construction. It will also tell you ownership changes, prices, and assessed values throughout the years.
plnr, the City of Madison Assessor’s Office does not keep those kinds of historical records. As I said above, the Department of Planning and Development does.