New Office Project Starts Today!

January 7, 2020 4 Comments

We are excited today, as our new office renovation project at the old Pope Residence is starting! The first thing to do is, naturally, demolition, where we clean out everything we aren't going to use and create a blank slate.

We aren't getting rid of any rooms, so that will help. The house has lovely, huge rooms already. But was a big staircase that doesn't meet any building code anywhere that had to go! It was the first thing that got demolished. Here it isn't!

That staircase is gone! (Thanks to Lee Bruns for all these photos.)

(Historical note: The Pope Residence started out as two separate entities, with a doctor's office on the ground floor and a family residence upstairs. At first we were confused about the lack of a space for a kitchen upstairs, but then we saw on the old maps a separate kitchen behind the house, to reduce the risk of house fires.)

The Pope house is at upper right. This is the first map the house appears on. Note it's labeled "brick 1st" - that was exciting at that time!

Electricity is the priority after getting rid of all evidence of the stairs, including the big hole in the ceiling. The house was built in 1905 and has some "interesting" electrical setups, especially on the second floor. So, our friends at Choice Builders are going to start with that all-important safety concern first off.

This is what was underneath wallpaper and paneling,

After that, we will do some leveling on the floors, deal with some water damage and do the fun things that will bring this old lady back some of her former glory. The demolition reveals some intriguing hints at the way the house used to look. It appears that the downstairs had large, arched openings when it was first built.

Obviously there used to be an archway here!

By the 1930s, the first floor of the house was a boarding facility, so we think that's when the smaller doors went in.

1931 map of the area, where our house at top left and the first floor  is labeled boarding house. At this time, Pope family members still lived there. The red means brick. Note that there's now another couple of houses and a filling station on the block.

What else will we learn about the Pope Residence? Who knows,

4 thoughts on “New Office Project Starts Today!”

    1. I don’t think so, only because we will be having a lot of documents in our offices that need to be secured for privacy reasons or we will get penalized. But we will showcase where they once were!

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