So that's why my basement is damp!

When first I bought my house, something I thought I'd do right away (right after replacing the kitchen counter) was go to the archives and look up my house's history.  I didn't know exactly what I could learn there, but I was hoping at least to find out when it was built and who first owned it.   The kitchen counter took fourteen years to get to, but I'm proud to say it only took eleven years for the trip to the Archives to happen.  

Back in 2011 when I got to the Archives at Davenport and Spadina, I was surprised the first thing I had to do was sign up for a membership card, and even more surprised when I had to put everything I'd brought with me into a locker.  All I was allowed to bring into the room was a pencil and paper - no phone, no camera, no pen to take notes.   I guess those are precautions the archivists take so nothing in their care gets damaged or taken.

City of Toronto Archives "Stagnant Pond" 1913

Goad Fire Atlas 1903 - Plate 24

Goad Fire Atlas 1913 - Plate 24

Goad Fire Map 1924 - plate 24

Once those formalities were taken care of the archivist was very friendly and helpful.  She suggested we look for photos first.  Aside from being beautiful and old and belonging to me, my house is pretty unremarkable so it seemed unlikely someone would have saved a picture of it at the archives.  "You never know," she said, so we looked up my neighbourhood as I expected we didn't find my house, but we did find this picture taken by a crew of City surveyors in 1913.  "Stagnant pond" it's labelled, and it's of a place near my house where there are no traces of a pond anymore.  

"Wow, that explains why there's so much moisture in my basement!" I said.  "The cement floor is always damp, like there's water seeping up from underneath."  I decided I'd been wise never to finish my basement.  

Next the archivist showed me how to look at the old Fire Plans for the city, which are available online.  She said they were made to show where buildings were that might burn down, and whether they were made of wood (shown in yellow) or brick (shown in orange or red).  The 1903 Fire Plan shows only a smattering of buildings in my area, and the pond looks like it was a marshy gully that extended southeast to join up with the old Garrison Creek, now also underground.
 

After that there must have been an explosion of construction, because the 1913 Fire map shows practically the whole neighbourhood built up, including my house.  The pond/gulley is still there, but I assume the photo the surveyors took was to help plan how to bury it in culverts, because by the time the next Fire Map was done in 1924, all traces of the pond/gully are gone. There are buildings and roads on top of most of it.

So, from the Fire Maps I knew the construction of my house happened somewhere between 1903 and 1913.  To narrow it down further was much more painstaking.  I had to look through successive annual Assessment Rolls and City Directories on microfilm. Eventually I determined that the first year someone lived in my house was 1907.  The Directory told me his name and profession, and even his religion!  

There's still more I can learn, the archivist told me.  If go back through the files for each street for each year, I might be able to find the building permit, which would tell me how much it cost to build and who the architect was.  I still plan to do that.  Hopefully it won't take another eleven years.