For more than 10 years, Brownstone Detectives has been researching New York City brownstones. To date, we have dug up the past on hundreds of our clients’ properties – from Civil War-era landmarked townhouses to structures built as recently as the 1930s. Each has a history. And each history is worth discovering.
Most clients ask us: “How much history is in my NYC house?”
It’s a good question, but we always respond…
“We’ve yet to meet a boring house.”
Once we begin to investigate a house, each clue leads us to several more, until we are inundated with “house history.”
For homeowners, realtors, and gift-givers, Brownstone Detectives offers a variety of investigative services to suit any requirement and budget. From by-the-hour basic research on some aspect of a property, to professionally researched and written hardbound books, we cover all aspects of the history of any property within New York City’s five boroughs.
Review the four services we offer (described in detail below) and let us know how we can help you discover the history of your home.
If you would like us to investigate some aspect of your house’s history (but not its entire house history), we are happy to perform this service for you on an hourly basis.
Some examples of research we’ve done for homeowners are: determining the age of their house, researching the architect, searching for old pictures & original architectural drawings, and helping homeowners in historic districts to determine which parts of their homes are original.
To begin discovering the history of your house, feel free to contact us.
All homes have had owners. From the time your home was constructed to the present date, it has been in someone’s legal possession – and recorded so with the City.
Pulling together this list of owners, along with the date of each conveyance, develops a House History Lineage – a continuous “chain” of ownership – also known as a “chain of title.”
To produce a House History Lineage we will research your property’s chain of ownership from when your home was constructed to the present date, creating that list of consecutive ownership particular to your property.
We will also provide brief info on these owners to give you some context about who they were and how they may have lived in your house. All House History Lineages take approximately a week to research and produce.
Since some houses are older than others and, therefore, require more research (i.e., visits to more than one location), our rates vary slightly. For houses constructed before 1895, our rate is $350.
To begin discovering the history of your house, feel free to contact us.
Our House History Report covers everything included in our House History Lineage, while including more in-depth research to build a more thorough and cohesive chronological revelation of the history of your house.
Research for a House History Report additionally involves searches through such resources as city property books, landmark reports, census data, photograph archives, newspaper archives, city agency online records searches, architectural references (to determine your house’s unique architectural style), research into the list of your home’s owners, and your house’s usage (I-Card & Certificate of Occupancy research).
Upon completion of our investigation, all of this information and evidence will be drawn together into a spiral-bound House History Report, to form a chronological narrative providing an overview of the history of your house.
To research, write, edit, lay out, and produce each House History Report takes approximately 6-8 weeks. Each runs approximately 30+ pages and is fully supported with footnotes and endnotes documenting our sources.
After you’ve received your House History Report, if you would like to convert it into a Presentation House History Book (within six months of receiving your report), we are happy to discount the cost of that upgrade by 25%.
To begin discovering the history of your house, feel free to contact us.
Our Presentation House History Book covers everything included in our House History Report, while involving a more intensive scope of research drawing from a more holistic variation of sources the evidence of which is then used to “tell the story” of your property.
Research for a Presentation House History Book additionally involves physical searches at the Department of Buildings (for architectural records), within historic map collections, accessing such resources as ancestral lineage archives, searching archived city directories to identify your home’s residents, as well as the inclusion of a current homeowner’s chapter featuring photographs and a family narrative provided by the client.
Each Presentation House History Book is laid out and bound in a durable, hardback, 8½” X 11″ portrait orientation format featuring a “wraparound” cover graphic, and runs approximately 60+ pages complete with narrative and graphics.
Our Presentation House History Book takes 2-3 months of extensive historical investigation, writing, and lay-out to produce the final bespoke story of your unique home. Each House History Book is fully supported with footnotes and endnotes documenting our sources.
At your request, we will also investigate the history of the land that your house was built upon, starting with the day construction began on your house and going back to the arrival of the Dutch in the 1600s. This additional research increases the size of your book by 15-20 pages for an added $925.
To begin discovering the history of your house, feel free to contact us.
I cannot think of a more meaningful purchase to commemorate our new home, and the book is truly a treasure that we will enjoy sharing with friends and family for many years to come.” – 101 Hancock Street, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Our Coffee Table House History Book involves everything included in our Presentation House History Book, but brings a no-holds-barred approach to research, writing, and lay out.
Our research for Coffee Table House History Books delves further into every resource we utilize, venturing into such spaces as searches for descendants of past occupants of your house (for unpublished and otherwise unavailable stories, pictures, &c.) and deeper analyzation of legal documents addressing official inspections, alterations, and changes in the legal use of the property,
Additionally, our Coffee Table House History Books are each professionally laid out by our award-winning graphic designer and are library-bound and published in a durable, hardback, 11″ X 13″ landscape orientation format.
Every Coffee Table House History Book features our illustrator’s detailed rendering of your home on its elaborately designed cover. Each is fully supported with endnotes documenting our sources.
Lastly, our Coffee Table House History Books are customizable in their content, allowing for the homeowner to select from a list of research parameters related to the history of their property.
The research, writing, layout, and production of a Coffee Table House History Book generally takes between 1½ to 2 years of exacting attention to detail. This process culminates in a final product that will complement and add value to your home.
To begin discovering the history of your house, feel free to contact us.
(Click HERE to see excerpts from inside some of our House History Books.)
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Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
