some house history

According to the city, our house was built in 1900. We’ve heard from a few people, though, that 1900 is often given as an approximate date when actual date is unknown, and that our house could’ve been built anytime before or around then. We’ve been intending to look into this, and yesterday we got a chance to spend a little time at city hall and at the Library of Virginia.

We were directed to old insurance maps of Richmond, the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. We also found an atlas that shows when parts of the city were annexed from the surrounding Henrico County. We found our house on the 1905 map,but not on the ealier 1895 map. That the 1895 doesn’t have our block is inconclusive, as until 1906 thus area was not in the city, but was still part of Henrico.

We found out that, as of 1905, the house next door was not built, and that there used to be house on the other side of us with the exact same footprint. In less than 100 years, the one house was built, lived in, and then abandoned, and the other was built, lived in, and then torn down.

The next step to finding out more would be a comprehensive title search, to get the names of the previous owners as that is how most of the records seem to be arranged (as opposed to by address).