Sorry I haven't posted much lately. April has been a busy month and I haven't had much time to post another blog lately, but at long last, I am on vacation for the next week, so I will be able to catch back up to what's been going on with me lately. I will begin with an update on the house that I posted about a while back that some of us are trying to save from demolition. A few weeks ago, I had a weekday off because I had to work a Saturday, so I took advantage of that to go to the County Recorder's Office to do some deed research. It was my intent to see if I could find the original deed to the house because the week before, I had gone with several other people to a City Council meeting to talk about the need to preserve this house. I made my presentation on what I believed the history of the house was based on some anecdotal evidence. At the end of my speech, and feeling as if I had done a good job convincing Council of why the house should be preserved, I sat down, confident that I had spoken well, when one council member asked if we had the original deed to prove who owned the house first. Well......the answer was, quite simply, no. I found myself wondering if that would cause skepticism among the members of the City Council, so I told the Council that I had an upcoming vacation, during which I had planned to seek out the deed. As fortune would have it, I had a weekday off to spend in the Recorder's Office the next week, so I took full advantage of that to do a full day's research on the house. Not only did I locate the original deed, but I was also able to research the entire provenance of the house, from its beginnings in 1858 all the way up to present day. At our next visit to City Council, I put together a packet that included a photocopy of said deed, a transcription of it, a provenance of the house's history and a close up of the section of plat map where the house was built so Council could see the block and lot numbers mentioned in the deed and know for themselves where it was built according to the description in it of its location.
It was at that meeting that we found out that the University has pledged up to $40,000 to help us move the house, which we consider to be most generous indeed, but now we face the obstacle of where to put it. We have searched many sites and each one presents various challenges, whether it's topography, site owner, utilities, location, visibility, future use or what have you. It's frustrating trying to identify where we might move this house. So many factors must be considered and it doesn't make it at all easy to find the best location. Time is growing short and even if we must identify a temporary holding site until a permanent one may be found, so be it, but we've got to move quickly before the University moves in with their demolition equipment and tears down this historic home. My last ditch choice would be to hand it over to a private owner to once again be used as rental property, which can be a lucrative business in a college town. If it turns out to be the only answer, so be it, but I would not want this house to suffer such an ill fate as this. So many lovely old residential homes near the University have suffered ill treatment at the hands of absentee landlords and party-hardy students that I do not wish this house to end up being used for that purpose. We'll just have to continue working to identifying sites where we can move this house in order to keep it visible as an important historic landmark. We also need to make a decision as to what the house will be used for once moved. We've thrown around some ideas, some good, some questionable, but we need to make a decision on location and use in order to help us do some fundraising. Otherwise, we will just continue struggling to identify places where the house might be moved, some of which may end up costing a significant amount of money that we don't currently have. So, the work continues on, and we hope to have something in place sooner rather than later, but.....time will tell. We all have our parts to play in this project and while we've made significant progress, we have so much more to go to make our dreams a reality. It may take up to 5 or so years before the house is settled in a permanent new location and is ready for reuse as a viable business. Until then, the work goes on...and on....and on......updates as they become available. Stay tuned. The adventure is just beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment