While many of the New York City agencies can often be difficult and cumbersome to deal with, one that is a bit of a pleasure is the department of records. A real treat for many homeowners and history or herstory buffs in the five boroughs is looking up historic tax photos of old buildings. Taken in the 1930’s & 1940’s they often reveal buildings before the stoops were torn off, stain glass windows before they were discarded and cornices that have vanished with the ravages of time. Each photo is a priceless time capsule that is well worth the money spent and a real treasure if you are intent on restoring an old building. You could build a souped up DeLorean with a trusty flux capacitor or just order it online from the city for $50. Full disclosure, we had to order it twice as the first time we placed the order, it got lost by the department of records. Oh well…
Its kind of a cool story that during the 1930’s, local governments began to use photography as a tool for appraising real property for taxation purposes. New York City was the largest municipality to adopt this technology. The result was 720,000 35mm black-and-white pictures of every building in the five boroughs. We were lucky enough to find ours which is shown above. I would love to know the identity of the man partially hidden behind the tree staring into the camera. I bet he also has a cool story…
Low and behold the mystery of the window buried in the wall has been solved. It appears that the mysterious window was placed in the wall after the door to the balcony was removed. Who knew there was originally a balcony on the outside of the building above the bay window for Rapunzel and her long luscious hair. In the image you can also clearly see the stain glass windows, the cornice perched below the slate tile and ornamental metal work on the roof line covering the shingles. Pretty cool if you ask me…
Eventually we are hoping to restore the exterior of the building to its original glory, but that will take some time as we trying to manage our budget. We are hoping that we can access some historic tax credits to redo the facade of the building. As this work is not a necessity to inhabit the building, we may attempt this portion of the renovation in the next 2-3 years when we may be able to find the extra money to do the required work and do it properly.