Legal - Courthouse records
- Deed Records (Travis County Courthouse) - sequence of owners.
- Builders & Mechanics Liens (TCCH) - date of construction, builder,
cost, major additions or changes.
- Probate Records (TCCH) - death dates (for obits.), furnishings
inventory, heirs.
Neighbors, former owners
- Historic photos - may be snapshots rather than building portraits.
- Letters, diaries, scrapbooks, invoices, account books, etc.
- Oral histories - invaluable but not always reliable. THC has Oral
History for Texans.
- Other contemporaneous buildings, details, landscapes.
Period restorations
If information on your property is lacking or yields unfortunate results,
research other properties of the period - R. Moss & G.C. Winkler's
Victorian Exterior Decoration, Victorian Interior Decoration, C.
Brandimarte's Inside Texas, Dover Publications reprints of
Stickley & other bungalow books, original lumber yard catalogues
etc. Many of these will be found in the U.T. School of Architecture
Library in Battle Hall.
Your own Restoration Scrapbook
Document all phases of your own property, its occupants and evolution.
Make copies of findings for future owners and Austin History Center.
Include photos (black & white preferred), drawings, sketches, samples
of wallpaper or paint, plant lists.
Partial Glossary
- Maintain
- preserving a building without alteration.
- Restore
- return a building (or building detail) to its
appearance at some point in time using evidence.
- Rehabilitate
- modify existing structure, perhaps restoring,
perhaps changing appearance or use.
- Reconstruct
- recreate entirely new buflding or feature based
on evidence.
- Period feature, appearance, etc.
- an element typical of a
given time and not necessarily historically associated with building.
A period bungalow paint color, for instance, would be taken from
the palette of paint colors popular from 1915-1930, rather lhan that
known to have been used.
Home: Kopperl House. 4212 Ave F. Austin 78751 452-3044
Office: 601 W. 14th Street. Austin 78701 474-1912
Last modified: Sun Nov 9 18:21:01 CST 2003