Well, that looks like an interesting house I need to check out, I thought to myself, proceeding to St. Michael Street. I was greeted with a vacant lot. It clearly didn’t make it from 1933 to the present day.

Likewise, the house next door, visible in Google Street View just a year ago, was now missing from its lot, as well. It had been demolished.

These early vernacular houses, very much indicative of German settlement, have been disappearing over the last one hundred years, with only old photographs to document their existence.

There are plenty still down in the city, where access to brick and stone allowed for sturdier construction, but up here, many more were built of wood.

They were simple, as this interior photograph shows.

The lathe was wide, and the insulation was shoved in between the wood studs. The wallpaper was something else, wasn’t it?