If you’re looking at ages on homes for sale in Columbus, Ohio, you’ll notice that many homes in areas surrounding downtown appear to have been built in 1920.  Many Columbus homes date to 1920 because, as I understand it, there was a fire at the courthouse in that year and the actual dates of construction on many of Columbus’ older homes was simply reset to 1920.  I’ve never confirmed that though and I know that City Hall burned in 1921 so that may be the actual case but….

On Sunday I held an open house at my listing on 1224 Fair Avenue in Olde Towne East. It was the first open house we have had and it generated somewhere between 150-200 visitors.  Of course, it helped that the Olde Towne East tour of historic homes was happening around it on that day and that the garden next door was on the tour.

Even before I closed up the Open House -which was dated to sometime between 1900-1910, I had this email from one of the day’s visitors…

“I went through your open house today on Fair Avenue.  I got home and poked around in some online sources and thought you might like to know  for your marketing purposes that the house WAS around as early as 1900 (Thomas M. Lilley – the original owner is listed as living there in the 1900 Census).  He and his wife Ida lived there with her two parents and a servant.   Sometime between 1910 and 1920, they moved to Los Angeles, but must have maintained the residence here in Columbus.   They had two sons, but neither made it past a year old.  The entire family is buried at Greenlawn.   Thomas is listed as a bookbinder, the superintendent of the State Book Bindery, and as an insurance salesman in California.   No clue if that’s of any interest to you, but I always like to know who built the houses!  Good luck with your sale!”

I was amazed that he was able to go into so much detail in so little time — Thanks Hal!  Currently the best place to research your home is the 3rd floor of the Columbus Library (which, by the way, was built by the same person who built and lived in my house!). Maybe some day soon I will do a post about researching your Columbus home’s history.