visit to the historical society

After reading a post on ThirteenEleven's blog about checking the old city directories for the names of previous owners and residents, I slapped myself on the forehead for not thinking of it myself. All those times I had to go to Special Collections and look up names and streets for library reference by email, and it didn't even occur to me to check for our own house!

So yesterday, B and I finally headed over to the East Point Historical Society. They had lots of great photos and mementos of old East Point, showing it to have once been a much more happening place. We discovered that when MARTA was added, Main St. was widened and took out several houses. In other parts of East Point, there were lots of photos of gorgeous old Victorians demolished in the name of progress.

The very helpful gentleman at the Historical Society helped us find our our street address before the numbering system changed in 1961. Our house was number 126 at one point, and the whole street was known as -- Ave...now it seems to be half St. and half Ave. He showed us the Sanborn fire maps from 1925 to the 1940s (one map book, with additions pasted in over the years) and it looks like our house was originally on one piece of property that also included the houses on either side of us. Not sure if that just means they were owned by one person and later divided with new property lines as they were sold off, or if members of one family lived in all three to begin with, but that seems unlikely. We also saw the plat drawings and advertisements for lots in Colonial Hills, which were in the $500-800 range.

I've posted the rest of the info we found in a box in the right column named "Bungalow Timeline." They didn't have a complete collection of Atlanta Suburban City Directories, so I hope to find more information next time I go to the Decatur Library (assuming they have Suburban and not just City directories...).