5.12.2005

Playing detective

Our real estate agent is really cool guy and found an amazing link for us. The city of Boston has digitized all of the building permits in the city records and made it searchable from this link.

It's a clunky page, but work the time to get it working. You MUST use Internet Explorer. And when you enter an address don't put in the full street name. For example, "Beacon St." returns no hits, whereas "Beacon" does.

Here are some crazy things that I found out.

  • The building we currently live in used to have an elevator that was cited for violations at least 5 times since the 1920's. There also used to be a dentist's office in the front (Dr. Austin Cheever).

  • Our new place was built in 1890, by a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

  • The place I lived in up the street when I was single was nearly condemned while I was living in it. There was structural damage in a brick wall in the basement. The inspectors really should have looked at the stairs too. Jen was always convinced it was a deathtrap, and now she has documentation for it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No shit, those stairs were gonna kill me.

Willy

Blondie said...

Here, here. If the stairs didn't do it and the structural wall in the basement didn't collapse, it's a wonder the incredibly stank-ass smell of old garbage in the hallway with a tiny hint of RAID or the way the smell of a gas leak permeated William's entire apartment didn't kill you. *Shudder*

Great, now I'm having flashbacks - this can't be good for Chickpea. *Shudder*