Research a property
Looking for information about your historic home?
Knowing about your home’s past is a great source of inspiration for stewards of historic properties. Below are links to some resources and tools for researching your historic Seattle home.
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When researching a property, one of the first places to start is by looking up the parcel number. This will be the number that many sources use to identify the property. To find the parcel number, visit the King County Parcel Viewer, search for the address of the property in question, and look for the parcel number at the top of the info card that displays on the map. You can also click into “Property Report” to learn more about the property and current ownership.
The parcel viewer can help to determine built date, but keep in mind that it may not always be exact, especially for buildings constructed prior to 1900, which are typically listed as being built in 1900 when they were added to the tax rolls. Again, it’s best to verify by consulting more than one source.
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You may have friends who have old black and white photos of their homes and have wondered how to get your own. In the late 1930s, the King County Assessor started taking photographs of homes for the purpose of tax assessment. These photographs are part of the Property Record Cards, which detail the structure of the property. Scans or copies of all of these are available from the Puget Sound Regional Archives on the Bellevue College campus. You can order these over the phone or by email for a small fee. Provide the parcel number of the property and whether you want digital scans or hard copies of the photo(s) and any other data sheets they have on file for the property.
Email: PSBranchArchives@sos.wa.gov
Phone: (425) 564-3940
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Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) maintains records of all permits and property records for every property in the city. They also recently uploaded their historic microfilm library, which sometimes contains scans of a home’s original permits.
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If you’re looking for historic ownership information, it can be helpful to review the side sewer cards and when the sewer line was added to the property you’re researching.
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The Library of Congress hosts digital scans of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. From Wikipedia, “Originally published by The Sanborn Map Company (Sanborn), the maps were created to allow fire insurance companies to assess their total liability in urbanized areas of the United States. Since they contain detailed information about properties and individual buildings in approximately 12,000 U.S. cities and towns, Sanborn maps are valuable for documenting changes in the built environment of American cities over many decades.”
They can be challenging to navigate, but with enough patience, you can review multiple years of maps and see how different properties have evolved over time.
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Looking for who lived at a specific address during a particular census year? Genealogist Steve Morse has created a tool for reverse address lookups. Choose the census year from the dropdown at the top of the page, then fill out the form with the address information of the property you’re researching.
Note: You will need access to Ancestry.com to view census records, which is available through the Seattle Public Library.
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Browse the Seattle Municipal Archives Photograph Database by location. Click on the location within Queen Anne where you want to search and you’ll receive a list of relevant photos for that area. Hopefully the property you’re researching will end up in the background of a photograph!
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In the early 2000s, QAHS received a Department of Neighborhoods grant to survey Queen Anne area buildings constructed before 1962. The survey was supervised by a historic preservation consultant and completed by 2005. Keep in mind that because the survey was pre-digital age and relied largely on volunteers, some of the information included may be incomplete. As with all research, it’s best to verify by consulting more than one source.
Some additional commercial buildings and apartments have been surveyed at various times in relation to other projects, the most recent being in the Uptown neighborhood section of Queen Anne. These surveys are generally contracted for and funded directly by the City of Seattle or other governmental agencies.
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Researching your home’s address can uncover interesting, primary-source information about its past. Keep in mind your house could have been built elsewhere and moved at some point in its history, so its address could have been different than it is today.
Note: Viewing the archives requires a Seattle Public Library card.
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Researching the History of Seattle and King County Buildings is a Seattle Public Library Special Collections Online guide with links to city and county resources. As you continue your research, this is a good comprehensive guide to rely on.
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Though targeted toward landmarking, Historic Seattle’s Preservation Advocacy Workshop 4, Researching Historic Properties for Landmark Nominations provides a good overview for researching historic properties in general.