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Discovering it’s History

September 27, 2011

When I had my building inspection, they told me that the house was approximately built in the 1920’s or 30’s. Naturally I was dumbfounded. I mean, I knew it was old, but that  old!? The inlay in the front hall was what tipped them off. Walnut inlays, similar to the one in my foyer, were only installed around that time. I kinda thought they were making this stuff up, until we hit another piece of evidence.

See the walnut inlay that borders the hallway.
That is a 1930’s original.

While tearing up the old carpet in the upstairs bedroom, we discovered a set of old newspapers that were used to level out the floor, oh so many years ago. The Hamilton Spectator, which still exists today, was dated April 28th and May 3rd 1933!! There were several sheets of the newsprint with headlines about the Nazis, local dance recitals, advertisements of products that still exist.

Discovering the newspaper under the linoleum.

Here is a close up of the front page. Historical
headlines that blew my mind.
Lifesavers ad from the 1930’s.
As we kept ripping, we then noticed another interesting archive. A small school note book that belonged to Charles Smart. It was his history workbook from Westdale Techincal, now known as Westdale Highschool.
Charles Smart history notebook.

Uncovering the History Notebook. 
Now this was an exciting find, I must say! Not only did it solidify the decade the house was built, now I can imagine a young boy in this house and all the memories that have happened between these four walls. History is one powerful thing!

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Comments

  1. TLC_Designs says

    September 28, 2011 at 1:25 pm

    OMG that is so awesome!!! You should frame those newspaper articles (after you spray paint them with an acidic free coating so that they don't continue to yellow and fade) and hang them up in your house somewhere.

    Amazing 🙂

    *Tania @ Passport2Design.com

  2. Aimee Carreen says

    June 13, 2012 at 1:05 pm

    I did miss this post! How cool to discover hidden treasures that help tell the house's story….love it!

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