23 March, 2008

1926 -- The Year Our House Was Built

The information from the seller's realtor says The Box House was built in 1928, making it eighty years old this year. But the Cook County Clerk's Office has it as 82 years old, putting the construction date at 1926. We'll have to do a little more investigating, but for now we'll assume the tax records are correct and it was built in 1926.

So, what else was going on the year our house was built?

First flight over the north pole (Richard Byrd).

First public demonstration of television.

First transatlantic phone call.

Henry Ford announces an 8 hour a day, 5 day a week work schedule (blame him!)

Hirohito becomes Emperor of Japan.

Walt Disney Studios is formed (Mickey Mouse himself is created in 1928).


George Burns marries Gracie Allen.

Joseph Stalin establishes himself as virtual dictator of the Soviet Union.

Hugh Hefner, Queen Elizabeth, Gus Grissom, Don Rickles, Miles Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Griffith, Jerry Lewis, Alan Greenspan, John Coltrane, Chuck Berry, and Fidel Castro were born.

Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman to become a pilot (and the first American woman to hold an international pilot's license), dies when she is thrown from her plane during an accident. Rudolph Valentino, Harry Houdini, Annie Oakley, and Claude Monet also died that year.

And, perhaps the most important event of 1926: Winnie-the-Pooh is published!

Images and random factoids courtesy Wikipedia.

5 comments:

Jen said...

Interesting on how things were.
We bought our house thinking it was built in 1919 but the courthouse records stated 1915. So I really don't know, which is right. The courthouse didn't have all the deeds.

Marilyn said...

Joanne - clever! You win the Visual Research of the Week Award.

We spent 12 years in our old house thinking it was a 1939 Colonial Revival - that's what the realtor had told us - but when we went to sell it, we found out it was actually 1929. Silly, but we suddenly felt like we'd been seeing someone with a secret past all that time!

Joanne said...

It's crazy, but I really wanted to have a Happy 80th BBQ this summer--Happy 82nd doesn't have the same ring to it.

Amalie said...

Looks like 1926 was a pretty good year.

HUD told us the house was built in 1940, but the directories, fire map, neighborhood history, architecture and knob and tube wiring all tell a different story...1922 is looking like it's the year!

Ethan@OneProjectCloser said...

Puts a nice world perspective on your home.