The last time I visited my home town, I went for a walk through the neighborhood where I grew up. It was a depressing exercise. Most of the houses are nearly 100 years old. Most of them look like it.
Some of the houses, including the one in which I grew up, were built by my grandfather and his two sons. Most of them were one-story, no-basement structures built of wood. After you look at a dozen or more, you can perceive the original structures and then the additions over the years. Some of the original houses had water wells and no indoor plumbing. They were heated by coal stoves. Air conditioning was a half-century away. In the back corner of the lot was a shed that served as a stable, coal bin, and storage building.
When the town ran water lines and sewers along the streets, most of the houses added a bathroom, still visible because it jutted out from the main structure and the roof line did not match. Other bedrooms, porches, and kitchens grew ungracefully on the side and back of the structure. The stable became a garage. Some of the larger houses were bisected into apartments, with a second bathroom tacked on.
The neighborhood changed little in its first half century. Many families who built the houses still lived in them. During the national depression that began in 1929, there was little new construction. Out at the edge of town, a subdivision planned in the 1920s could be detected by tracing the overgrown streets and sidewalks marking the undeveloped lots.
Prosperity returned with World War II. When it ended, the vacant lots began to fill with new homes. My father built some of them. The new ones had brick facades and central heat. Some had garages attached to the house. A few had cellars and a second floor for bedrooms.
The older houses began to show repairs. Wooden siding was replaced with aluminum. Other rooms were added, still not conforming with the original architecture. When a natural gas pipeline came through the area, coal stoves were junked in favor of gas heaters in each room or a gas furnace with vents laid in the crawl space below the floor. Insulation was poured into the attic and, for a few, the outside walls were stripped so that insulation batting could be added.
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