Hey guys, thought I'd post an update as we've done a bit and I've learned some more info.
We've nearly finished the basic upstairs stuff, enough to get the bed moved in,
finally!!! No more sleeping on the couch and air mattress!!
We've painted everything upstairs, second bedroom, which I now call the mint chocolate chip room:
Don't love the color, but whatever. We won't be in there too often.
Bedroom:
Awful picture, but we actually love this room. I don't know if its the placement of the windows or the angles of the ceiling or what, but it feels so cozy now that the bed is in there. I actually look forward to going up to bed every night cause it just feels really nice in there haha.
And a close up of the floors in the hallway:
And of course, the cat. Ugh, I love him, and he's adorable, but he was
such a nuisance during painting. I would sit on the floor to do the baseboards and he constantly wanted to be in my lap. I had to shove the poor guy away over and over.
So the plan is to eventually strip and refinish the upstairs floors. They look like they're in excellent shape, I don't know that they've ever been sanded before. However, it was just too big of a job for us to take on right now. There's the same lead paint and linoleum adhesive as there was downstairs, so it's just a massive procedure that we need to put off for right now. They're painted for the time being (and were painted when we bought the house), of course would rather have them refinished, but we do need to tackle some other things around here first.
I finally visited the town historian yesterday. I will be going back next week because I have a LOT more to look into. One thing I did realize, before I went actually, is that I think the town's date of 1870 is a little too early. The original deed is from 1876, and it says that Conrad is buying a "certain lot of ground" and makes no mention of any building. I've looked at a number of other deeds and have noticed they usually mentioned "a house" "all buildings thereon" "two dwelling houses", etc. Our deeds says nothing about any building. This led me to believe the house was actually constructed closer to 1876/1877. There is a little blurb in the paper from July 1877 where it says that Conrad is making some "needed improvements" to his house. Perhaps this is the kitchen addition? Or just doing more work on the house in general? Idk. The historian did say that if the deed doesn't specify anything about a house, he probably just bought a lot. So 1870 vs 1876 isn't a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but I'm happy to have a pretty concrete date.
The historian had a little information about the house from when they did an inventory of historic houses in 2008:
Most of this I already knew. However, what struck me was that the historian categorized our house as a greek revival. I had always thought the house had very little style, but there were a few things that kind of hinted at a little greek revival influence, so it was a little affirming to see the historian had said the same.
The 1876 date is of course very late for a greek revival. However, now knowing that Conrad built the house for himself, rather than the factory building it as employee housing, makes the think hey, maybe he just liked them and wanted one haha. Our door is one of the things that pushed me towards Greek revival:
We have two of these and believe them to be the original front and side doors. The shell and acanthus leaf motif, those three raised panels, they just look greek revival-y to me. Our interior trim too, while plain, just feels like it has a little bit of a greek influence. Please, if I'm way off base, someone let me know haha. I'd rather be called out for being wrong than going around doing work on it with a nod to greek revival when it's totally wrong haha.
So, while there we dug a bit into Conrad's life. Unfortunately mis-management by the probate court judge at the end of the 19th century means that his will and estate records are lost. However, we did find that in 1882 he gave up guardianship of his kids for basically a summer (May 31-September 9). The kids were 15, 17, and 19. The 19 year old, Herman, was pretty independent, he was living with a neighbor in the area (down the street from us) as a boarder and worked at the factory. I'm not sure the reasoning for this. 1882 was a rough time for Conrad though.
Turns out that Conrad was part-owner in the town's brothel. For almost 10 years the place operated, to the disdain of most of the townspeople. Perhaps this is why our deed has a restriction that the sale of alcohol was prohibited on the premises. He bought the "hotel" in the beginning of 1875, perhaps a year later everyone knew what he was up to and the seller made the alcohol prohibition a condition of the sale in order to discourage him from taking up the same type of activities at our place?
Anyway, by 1882 the townspeople were fed up, and 13 of them and a minister got together and basically forced him and the other owners to sell the "hotel". Interestingly, he had put the property in his son's name, he actually had to have it transferred to him in order to sell it to the minister. So it seems like there was definitely something sketchy going on, as if the brothel-owning isn't sketchy enough to begin with haha.
So the "hotel" was sold in the summer 1882, he gave up guardianship of his kids summer 1882, and moved down to a nearby city. He spent 5 years down there with one of his sons before moving back to our house in 1887. I guess things had cooled down a bit by then?
So definitely some interesting things to keep investigating, but overall it was a pretty fruitful visit. The historian was pretty excited about it, the brothel is a little (in)famous part of our town's overall pretty squeaky-clean history. He was laughing how I kind of just showed up looking for info and it turns out the guy who built my house owned the brothel! His dad was the former town historian and said he would have been so excited if he were here.
The historian said he didn't know of any pictures that exist of the house, but they have a couple of books I'm welcome to go through, so I'll be looking for that on my visit next week. Also need to keep going through Conrad's records/life, and then of course move on to the next owners, Conrad died in 1893, I have at least 50 more years I need to get through when I'm done with him!
Anyway, sorry for the length, I don't think I'm capable of writing anything succinct. Just thought I'd update with some progress pictures and some interesting things I found about the history of the house!
Oh also, another question, how might I determine if there were ever shutters on the house? I can't figure out if there were or not, and I'm not exactly sure where the attachments would be. A bit of the exterior trim is covered by the tracks for the storm windows, not sure if there's a specific place I should be looking.
