Need help researching house build date

[KristenS]

If you want research tips I've got plenty to share!

I'll take any research tips you can give me! And anyone else in NJ or elsewhere too!!

We're 75% sure we know who built our house and when. But I cannot cannot cannot figure out how to get real confirmation.

Timeline of house facts:
1904?-1920s? Nutley Realty Company, a prolific local developer. They buy and sell land and houses, and also build to suit, and also sell their plans to others to build elsewhere.
March 1906 Nutley Realty bought a large plot of land that includes ours.
March 1907 They have the land surveyed, and call it Lakeside Tract on the survey map.
February 1909 Title shows James Gray buying our plots in Lakeside Tract from Nutley Realty. Title does not specify whether a house is there. Only uses typical vague "land and any improvements" that other titles of the time use.
July 1909 NY Tribune article of recent real estate purchases lists James Gray as having bought a 7-room house.

So, it seems obvious that Nutley Realty Company built our house between 1907 and 1909. Right? Well, I'd like some proof!

Further evidence against and for:
Here's the thing... the house isn't really up to the specs of other Nutley Realty houses. Their president was architect William A. Lambert. He was no Frank Lloyd Wright. But he built some gorgeous houses all over NY and NJ. Ours really just isn't grand like his other houses. It looks like the younger, cheaper kid brother to his houses. And the town has lists of Lambert houses, and we're not on them.

So, it's not a Lambert house. Right?

Well...here's the next thing. I've got a book on area history that says that Lambert's earlier houses in our town were simpler and smaller. They were geared toward working folks, not wealthy people. And it says that his grand houses were mostly in two other developments in town. Those are the developments that everyone associates with him. No one now even seems to realize there was a Lakeside Tract-- including our town historian. (I've got the maps to prove it, though!) So not being on the lists could just be because the town lost track of houses he built on my little development.

So...where do I go from here? I'm thinking of tracking down William Lambert's grandkids and dragging them over to the house to see what they think! I'd track down James Gray's kids, but he and his wife Susan don't seem to have had any. (I'm all over the 1900-1930 censuses!)

Any solid ideas anyone has would be SO GREAT to hear!

[Vaso7]

What about finding the building permit?
Ask around to see where those are kept.
In my town all building permits from 1800 and up are neatly kept in the city hall in the building department. Same place you go to pull a permit when you need to do work on your house. I went in there in disbelief and asked for my house's original building permit. To my astonishment they opened up a file and just handed it to me. I was shocked. That easy. The permit states the name of the original owner, the builder, the architect and of course the date. Also how much money it cost to build it!
I searched for a year looking at maps and deeds and all that and the answer was just in the city hall.
I heard that other towns keep them in the library or the historic society etc. See if you can find it because by far is the best information!

[KristenS]

Vaso7: Thank you!! I just left a voicemail message with the Code Enforcement office. Apparently, they're the folks that give out building permits in my town.

I'll let you know if it's a successful try.

Anyone else with brilliant ideas?!

[melissakd]

Oooh, you have good information and plenty of options left. Yay!

The New York Tribune reported that James Gray bought a house in Nutley, five months later? Doesn't seem exceptionally recent to me.

Property tax rolls might show the assessed value of the lot and the improvements separately. Even if they don't, you can look at all the lots still owned by the realty company; the difference in value between undeveloped lots and ones with houses should be easy to spot.

City directories can show you whether Gray lived at that address, but probably won't slice it any finer than you already have.

Does your house have any Lambert 'trademark' features ? I was looking through a 1923 plan service catalog, representing a bunch of different architects, and some guy named Ackerman put 'tray closets' in every house he designed. Nobody else used them at all. (A tray closet is a second bedroom closet, only when you open the door there are pull-out drawers. The blurb said it would save you the space normally taken up by a chiffonier.)

[KristenS]

Vaso7: I called the Code Enforcement people again. They have no info on original build (she said their records usually start in 1920). But she had a record of a garage permit in 1920. We have no garage. I'm going to go down to their offices soon and look for myself.

melissakd: I don't think the delay on the NY Trib article is significant. They weren't listing all purchases ever. It was more like a roundup thing that they would run periodically. (Having been in publishing myself, I actually think it was in order to drum up advertising. You pull together a short "article" on who's buying what. Then you contact developers and such and tell them you *may* chose to run their info, and would they like to buy an ad on the page. Wink wink nudge nudge...)

I'm 100% sure that James Gray lived in the house. Sorry if I wasn't clear in my OP. I've got him on the 1910 census, and I've got the title with his name on it. (Hand written, too!)

Hmm...Lambert tell tales. That's a very good idea. I'll need to do more research on him, which is tough. His one book on architecture is completely unavailable. Our library has a photocopy of it, and the reference Librarian is the only person who can look at it. I'll have to sweet talk him.

If he had some sort of calling card, that would make it a lot easier to know for sure. Thank you for the idea!

[melissakd]

About Gray living at that address: I meant that if the 1909 city directory showed him at that address, that would be evidence that the house already was there and he moved right in at the time of purchase. If he's not living there until 1910, that leaves time for a house to have been built after the lot was purchased. But since the directories are prepared in advance, or put another way, post-dated (another publishing habit that I love the way I love long division ), if he moved into the house in 1909, it might not show him until the 1910 directory anyway.

Good luck! Most librarians are dying for someone to ask them something more interesting than where the bathroom is, but they can be kind of weird about rare books and special collections.

MelissaKD

[melissakd]

Happened to find a New York Times article describing a Lambert house, illustrated with plan and photo. I got it from Newspaper Archive, which my library subscribes to.

Sunday 16 May 1909
"Artistic Effects Shown In Suburban Architecture"
Price quoted as $5,250
The house is a 2 1/2 story Shingle with all the stylish features, but nothing too avant-garde. The features I think would be worth looking for are:
Main public rooms done "in Mission style, in dull greens, brown and Flemish [whatever that means]. The second story is finished in white enamel with birch doors, stained mahogany." Plate rail in dining room.
The upstairs front windows are a sort of semi-bay. Where there would be a single window normally, or three if it was a bay, there are two, forming a little point or prow sticking out of the house.
"Combination stairs" instead of separate front and back stairs, there is a single upper flight that divides at the landing. One lower flight goes down to the front hall, for family and guests, and the other goes to the kitchen, for the help.
He's used a corner fireplace and a bay window to create an octagonal parlor; the more popular dining-room version involves corner china cupboards

Other features, all extremely common for the period:
butler's pantry
pocket door
fireplace in front hall (a late-Vic holdover)
single full bath upstairs
small conservatory (a/k/a sun porch, solarium, etc.)
'colonnade' dividing, in this case, the den and front hall (one column on each side of the opening, on a pedestal that may have bookcases in it)
one closet in each bedroom, of completely random size, shape and placement

MelissaKD

[KristenS]

Thanks MelissaKD, for the research. I've got that article, too! It's one of the first I found, actually. And one of the ones that made me think our house was a Lambert house.

But ours is like a cheap Lambert House. Like if maybe he had a younger underachiever brother, Chuck Lambert. Here's how ours stacks up to your list (from the ad):

YES 2 1/2 story Shingle with all the stylish features, but nothing too avant-garde.
YES Main public rooms done "in Mission style, in dull greens, brown and Flemish [whatever that means].
HARD TO KNOW The second story is finished in white enamel with birch doors, stained mahogany."
YES Plate rail in dining room.
NO The upstairs front windows are a sort of semi-bay. Where there would be a single window normally, or three if it was a bay, there are two, forming a little point or prow sticking out of the house.
SORT OF"Combination stairs" instead of separate front and back stairs, there is a single upper flight that divides at the landing. One lower flight goes down to the front hall, for family and guests, and the other goes to the kitchen, for the help.
NO FIREPLACE He's used a corner fireplace and
YES-- though with our house (and Lambert in general) it's three actual walls sticking off the house to make the bay, not just the windows sticking outa bay window to create an octagonal HEXAGONAL parlor;
NO the more popular dining-room version involves corner china cupboards

Other features, all extremely common for the period:
NOT A FULL BUTLER'S BUT A PANTRY IN THE KITCHEN butler's pantry
PROBABLY NO pocket door
NO fireplace in front hall (a late-Vic holdover)
YES single full bath upstairs
YES small conservatory (a/k/a sun porch, solarium, etc.)
PROBABLY NO 'colonnade' dividing, in this case, the den and front hall (one column on each side of the opening, on a pedestal that may have bookcases in it)
YES one closet in each bedroom, of completely random size, shape and placement

So...you see my confusion. Ultimately, the house is just too small for the grand things that are typically Lambert. But the things that were recorded as being "typically Lambert" are all from his huge houses! So...who knows.

And you can believe that anything one can find on Google under the name "William A Lambert", "William Lambert", "Wm Lambert", and "W Lambert", I've already got! (Ditto Nutley Realty Company, Nutley Realty Co, and Nutley Realty.)

[KristenS]

Some more mud for the this topic's water... from a book on Nutley published in 1961:

"Nor was Lambert an architect with a single track mind. He almost never repeated himself. Seldom did he build two houses from the same set of plans. His homes in Nutley did not look like the houses he built in Hackensack. He did not line a whole street with one or two types of houses."


Though in the same book, here's the part that made me more hopeful about our modest 7-room house being a Lambert:

"His first houses were 6-room homes which he built to sell for $3600 to $4000. Then he branched out into bigger and better—and more expensive—homes. He offered eight and ten room homes for $5000 to $5500, and even built a few 12-room houses which cost $6000."

[melissakd]

Humph. Well, maybe the price points will help, compared to the dates. And speaking of dates, there's always the 1940 census, which will be out before too horrifically long. Obituaries are a good way to work forward from the census, by the way.

As prominent as Lambert was, so motivated were other builders to rip him off. Which is disappointing.

I have to love the underachieving Chuck. Probably out in his roadster half the time showing girls the houses he designed. For fun, you can speak of your house as "attributed to Chuck Lambert." By you, but who's counting?

Does this mean you have this mysterious "Flemish" the article talked about? What the heck is it? Flemish tapestry [which is a thing]? Wallpaper to look like same? Flemish blue [purely conjectural]? Some kind of paneling?

I was sloppy with my terms...shouldn't have said "bay window," I guess. Although sometimes it's hard to tell from a plan which it is, this one did have the drawing as well.

I'm also curious about the sort-of-combination stairs. How so? Do they divide only at a fairly low landing, with two sets of just the last couple of steps? That's how my house's stairs got remodeled, best guess at a date maybe 1910 or 1911.

MKD