Mysteries of the Sheridan House
The Sheridan House undoubtedly has quite a bit of mystery surrounding it. Nobody has lived in the house since 1975. The next door neighbors have lived in their house for 12 years and all that time nobody was ever in the house. We’ve definitely heard some interesting stories and rumors, some of which have proven to be true.
One of the things that I love about buying an old house is trying to figure things out about the house. Especially when it comes to renovations, you uncover weird things that take some work to figure out and sometimes you never do figure them out. Here’s a few of those kind of mysteries that we’ve encountered.
The sewer. (I posted about this on the houseblogs.net discussion forum a while back.) Shortly after we bought the house, I was calling the various utilities getting the name/billing info updated. When I called the sewer company, the woman told me that they had no record of the house ever being connected to the sewer! She even went back in the historical records and saw when the neighbors were connected in the 50s, but nothing for this place. Eventually we were able to confirm that the house was connected to the sewer, thankfully, but there is still the mystery of how it got connected. Our best guess is that when the city was putting the sewer in, the owner just connected it up himself.
The archway.
The house was originally built as a little 750 sq. ft. rectangle in the early 1920s. Between the 20s and mid-30s, two separate additions were added at two separate times (this we figured out from some clues in the framing in the attic and basement). Both were 7×13. Originally the back addition was a porch. It makes sense, as the old kitchen would have opened onto the back porch. Then, however, at some point, the kitchen was moved to the other back corner of the house and the porch was enclosed and turned into a room (7×13) and they had an archway between the former kitchen and this room. Then, the corners of the arch were cut out and a regular door was installed making that 7×13 room a bedroom, as well as turning the old kitchen into a bedroom. Follow that? Somehow, all that happened prior to 1936 from what we understand. A lot of changes in that short span of time. We still have no idea what the two rooms would have been with an archway between them.
The doorbell. This one still remains unsolved too. There is a doorbell button outside the front door. But there it doesn’t do anything and there is no sign inside of there ever being a doorbell. The paint on the walls is from the 1930s, so it’s pretty easy to see where things have been on the walls and there’s definitely no sign of a doorbell. The wire must go up into the attic (which I haven’t explored much lately), as it doesn’t go into the basement. None of the relatives remember there ever being a working doorbell.
(Note: in case anyone is following along with the 30-in-30, I posted this last night but somehow set the status to private, so it didn’t show up until today when I figured that out. So, today will end up looking like a double-post day, but this entry really was written on Saturday, I promise!)
July 29th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
I’m so excited to start uncovering the history to my house too! (closing on Weds.) I also took a cue from your blog and decided to try the 30 in 30! I figure it should keep me motivated to work harder since nobody wants to read about what I had for lunch and what I watched on TV!