House History
Researching the history of a house or building can be a remarkable opportunity to dig into history and see the world around you with fresh eyes. Whether you are working on a school project, pursuing a historic designation, or making the case for a building project before the City’s Historic Resources Commission, some questions you want to answer might include: When and why was the building built? What historic or cultural factors influenced the way the building was built? Who lived there or used it? How has it changed over time? Here are some things you should know, and resources that might be useful, as you research your building:
Address & legal description: Knowing the address and legal description of the property are important pieces of information. Note that in Lawrence, most properties outside of the downtown area did not have street addresses until 1885, and the street names didn’t finally settle into their modern configuration of north-south named streets and east-west numbered streets until 1913, so the address of your property may have changed over time. A legal description is a precise description of the property’s location and measurements that is unique to that property. In Lawrence and Douglas County, a truncated version of a property’s legal description can be found through Douglas County Property Search; the Douglas County Register of Deeds can provide the full legal description for a property. Legal descriptions might include block or lot numbers, subdivision or addition names, or, usually in rural areas, Section-Township-Range descriptions. Legal descriptions describe plots of land, rather than buildings.
Property abstracts and the Douglas County Register of Deeds: A property abstract is a comprehensive, chronological summary of the legal transactions associated with a property, including deeds, mortgages, sales, and legal proceedings. Sometimes a property abstract will be passed from one owner to the next, but that isn’t always the case. The Watkins Museum has an extensive collection of property abstracts, and the legal documents that are referenced in a property abstract are generally filed with the county Register of Deeds office. A significant portion of the documents filed with the Douglas County Register of Deeds office have been digitized and are available online (you’ll need to create a free account to be able to view documents).
Tax rolls: You may not find definitive evidence that a building was built or renovated at a specific time, but you can sometimes find circumstantial evidence. County tax rolls can provide circumstantial evidence: If the tax rolls show a substantial jump in value from one year to another, that can indicate that a previously empty lot now has a structure on it, for instance. You can find historic tax rolls for Douglas County at the Watkins Museum and the Spencer Research Library.
City directories and phone books: City directories are similar to phone books in that they usually include an alphabetical listing of an area’s residents as well as business and municipal information. City directories often have additional information such as the occupation and workplace of a resident, the name of a resident’s spouse, racial designation (in older directories), and (in more recent directories) details about whether the resident owns or rents the property and how long they’ve lived there. Late Lawrence city directories also include a “reverse” listing by address, so if you don’t know who lived in the building, you can look up their name by address. The library’s collection of city directories, available in the Osma Local History Room, begins in 1860 and continues intermittently until 1930.The collection resumes with the 1961 Polk directory, and onward from 1961 our collection of city directories is nearly complete through the current year. Digital access to several years of Lawrence city directories is available through Heritage Quest. The earliest telephone directory in our collection dates from 1916; coverage is sporadic for the 1930s, and nearly complete from the 1940s through the 2000s. A selection of Lawrence telephone directories have been digitized and are available on Digital Douglas County History.
Newspapers: Newspapers are an extraordinarily rich source of information for researching the history of a property. Here is a deep dive into the library’s newspaper resources.
Sanborn Maps: In 1866, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company began compiling maps of towns and cities across the United States. These maps were intended to help insurers determine a community’s fire risk, so they provide detailed information about individual structures, including the building materials, footprint and number of stories, and the use of the building. New maps were drawn every few years, making the Sanborn Maps extremely useful for helping to determine when a building was built and how it changed over time, as well as how the municipal infrastructure of the community developed over time. In Lawrence, the earliest maps are focused on downtown Massachusetts Street and the neighborhoods in immediate proximity to downtown; subsequent maps expand their scope to include additional neighborhoods. The dates of Sanborn maps for Lawrence range from 1883-1949.
Bird’s eye views: In the mid- to late-19th century, bird’s eye views–maps drawn as if from an angled, overhead view–of thousands of towns and cities across the United States were created to document their rapid growth and to serve as advertisements for those communities. Several bird’s eye views of Lawrence were drawn, including one in 1858, an 1869 bird’s eye view of Lawrence which is available online through the Library of Congress, and an 1880 Lawrence bird’s eye view which is available online through Kansas Memory. Print copies of the 1858 and 1880 views are included in the map collection in the Osma Room.
Douglas County Air Photos: The Douglas County air photo collection offers another overhead view of the development of Lawrence and Douglas County, this time in photographic form. The earliest Douglas County air photos date from 1937; subsequent sets of photos were taken once a decade until 1986, and then at various intervals from 2000-2024. You can access the Douglas County air photos through the Basemap Gallery of the Douglas County Property Viewer, the Lawrence Atlas, or through the KU Libraries GIS data page.
Subdivision plats: While some of the resources mentioned here are mostly useful for researching older properties, subdivision plats can be helpful for researching more recent buildings. Subdivision plats typically include dates associated with the creation of the subdivision, names of people who may have been involved in the development of the subdivision, infrastructure details, and the legal description of the property prior to the platting. Subdivision plat information is filed with the Douglas County Register of Deeds, and can also be accessed by turning on the Plat layer in the Lawrence Atlas.
County atlases and farm directories: It’s often easier to find information about in-town properties, but county atlases and farm directories (and other types of maps) can help shed light on the histories of rural structures. Both county atlases and farm directories usually include information about the owners or residents of land outside of city limits; county atlases may also note the locations of buildings on a property, as well as the locations of rural schools, churches, cemeteries, and transportation routes. Farm directories may include additional details such as the names of the spouse and children of the farmer, as well as length of residence in the county. The Osma Room collection includes multiple atlases, farm directories, and other county maps; Kansas Memory offers a broad collection of digitized Kansas maps and atlases.
Photographs: If you find historic photographs of your house, you’ve struck a gold mine! Photographs can be a rich resource for documenting the history of a building and its changes over time. However, the availability of historic photographs can be hit-or-miss, and are more likely for the homes of prominent citizens or significant commercial buildings. Images of a few homes, as well as a variety of views of Massachusetts Street, Haskell University, the University of Kansas, and other locations around Lawrence are included in the postcard collection available through Digital Douglas County History; the Watkins Museum and the Spencer Research Library both have extensive photograph collections.
Historic preservation surveys: Historic preservations surveys can be another source of information about homes and buildings. Surveys are typically done as projects that cover a specific area or type of structure. Surveys usually include an exterior photograph of the structure and at least some basic information, such as primary building materials (frame, brick, etc.) and architectural style. More extensive surveys may also include summaries of building histories. You can check the Kansas Historic Resources Inventory to see if the property you are researching has been included in a survey.
Historic register nominations: If the property you are researching has been nominated for a historic register designation, a lot of your leg work will likely have been done for you. Register nominations can be at the national, state, or city level and typically include a summary of the property’s history as well as an explanation of the property’s historic significance. The Kansas Historical Society maintains a database of Kansas properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Register of Historic Kansas Places; the City of Lawrence maintains an interactive map of properties listed on the Lawrence Register of Historic Places.
Still not sure where to look, or just not finding what you are looking for? We’re happy to help! Give us a call at 785-843-3833, chat us during business hours or email us anytime, or–if you need one-on-one research help–make an appointment with a librarian.