Online tools for finding oldest homes in a town?

Dougmeister · Sep 5, 2014

Other than driving around and guessing (I'm no expert) the oldest houses, is there any way to do it online?

If I have a specific address in mind, I can use Zillow. But actually finding the year the house was built is awkward when browsing an entire *neighborhood*. I have to click on the house, then open in a new tab or click "Details", etc.

Has anyone done a mash-up w/ Google maps or anything else that would (ideally) just show the age of the house?

cheffu · Sep 5, 2014

Your county tax appraisers office should have a tax map application. Find the house by map, owner name, address etc. The profile will tell you who owns it, when it was built.

Dsm_mechva · Sep 5, 2014

Historic aerials website, you can look at older aerial images and even older topographical maps

type in address ..overlay different images/maps....overlay current roads..drag map around to look at areas around ..zoom in and out ..etc.

Just google "historic aerials"

Doesn't tell you the date a home was built but if it's on map 1950 and not on map 1920 etc..you can get a good idea.

Works better on PC than mobile device.

GKman · Sep 6, 2014

Search your area on Google for historic home tours is one way, but there are many others...

Historic Aerials, and Topo's are not going to give you much to go on if you are looking for 110 year old plus homes.

Get some maps together from any number of sites online and start georeferencing where those homes existed, if you are lucky the map may already be referenced for overlays.

To answer your question, I have not seen a Google Map overlay that lists the exact ages of homes....

Logan74 · Sep 6, 2014

It's going to depend heavily on your location, how well records were kept, and whether or not these records were "digitalized" (scans of hand-drawn plat maps, etc).

For example, I can go to the historical society for my county (Ellis Co, TX) and view scanned plat maps and township maps going back to 1838. Most of the plat maps are just land-ownership maps (no buildings shown), but the township maps go into great detail and show where each and every building was located.

These rarely ever actually give you build dates on homes/other buildings, though. At least they can show you if the building was even there when the map was made.

As for doing overlays... I use Google Earth a lot because I mostly hunt in rural areas and it helps to get a "bird's eye" view of things (to find possible old home sites that are not easily spotted from the road). I did take a township map scan from Palmer TX, 1858, and overlayed it in Google Earth, so I know which buildings are possibly good MDing candidates.

Also, keep in mind if/when doing an overlay onto a current map, that the older hand-drawn maps were done before aerial photography was common, so a lot of these will not be very accurate to the real world. I found that out when I tried to overlay a whole county plat map into Google Earth... creeks, rivers, and even county borders were all off by hundreds of feet.

Dsm_mechva · Sep 6, 2014

"Historic Aerials, and Topo's are not going to give you much to go on if you are looking for 110 year old plus homes. "

where I am the historic aerials topographical maps go back 120 years to 1894. I guess it depends on your area. Works here for me though.

GKman · Sep 8, 2014

Dsm_mechva said:
"Historic Aerials, and Topo's are not going to give you much to go on if you are looking for 110 year old plus homes. "

where I am the historic aerials topographical maps go back 120 years to 1894. I guess it depends on your area. Works here for me though.

Yes, we have the 1890s aerials here... Ten years off in my quick math. Regardless I think the op is looking for the oldest in town and you are going to have to research the historic atlases or other means to find that type of information. Especially if he's looking for around Pennsylvania. If he was out west where a town may only be a hundred years old a topographic map may be helpful not in this case though

Dougmeister · Sep 8, 2014

How do topos help? They don't show houses, right?

GKman · Sep 8, 2014

Dougmeister said:
How do topos help? They don't show houses, right?

They are most definitely helpful. They do show houses. Both myself and the other poster know there are value in them, but your town is probably older than 1894 so you are going to want to look at older maps to help you find the oldest houses in town. I have one 1867 map near me that actually says on it "oldest house in town". I haven't seen that on other maps so it is unique in my experience researching. Topographic map will show the houses as black dots normally. Sorry for any grammatical errors I'm using voice recognition while driving naughty me.

cheffu · Sep 11, 2014

FFX2 said:
You're talking about an online map or one that has to be purchased through the office?

Go to your county tax assessor's Web site. It is public info and free to use. They should have an option to search records. When you do so, you can choose to search by map. Zoom to the location and click on it. Should give you property info including age of home.

Dougmeister · Sep 11, 2014

Again, it is no problem to find info on a SPECIFIC house.

I'm looking for a broader solution that will show me at a glance where the oldest houses in a neighborhood/town/city are.

I'd be willing to pay programmers smarter than me to do it, too.

GKman · Sep 11, 2014

The county you are living in (based on your user information) has a fairly decent GIS site. I just checked it out and found that it does give you all of the year built information as a scrollable list. However I did not find a way to narrow down the years built so you would have to scroll through them to find the earliest homes or find a way to export it into excel as list.

ronfromtemple · Sep 15, 2014

Census records can be useful. They give addresses and people who live at that address. A skip in addresses means vacant lots. Any address means that there was some type of building at that address. Since the census is taken every ten years you can get within 10 years of any building's age.

Online tools for finding oldest homes in a town?

Dougmeister

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cheffu

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Logan74

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Dsm_mechva

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Dougmeister

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cheffu

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Dougmeister

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