Two Buildings Become One

A client in the Irish Channel wondered why the floors near the center of her brick home stood a few inches higher than the floors around the perimeter walls.  With the knowledge that this structure had commercial uses at various points in the past, we considered the possibility that the storage of heavy equipment caused the stress in the floors.  Or perhaps a past owner had altered the corner entrance, leading to the slope.  The floors are solid brick, however, not wooden floor boards.  If not a structural issue then perhaps the ground itself had sunk under the weight of the walls.  Whatever we came up with was, unfortunately, only speculation.  Truthfully, one may never know the cause of such architectural phenomena in a home or business.  

In this instance, however, I discovered a valuable piece of evidence in the chain of title that provided the real answer to the riddle.  While tracing the route of conveyances beyond a transaction from one Emile Lasére to Guillaume Rozés in February 1860, I found a reference to Lasére's purchase of the property at a Sheriff's Sale several years previous.  Most of the time, an act of sale will reference the previous sale of the property as an assurance that said property had clear title.  Since the last transaction concerning this property had not been an ordinary purchase, I walked eagerly from the Notarial Archives on Poydras Street to the Louisiana Division at the Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library.  Once there, I pulled the microfilm with the records of the Civil District Court for the relevant date, September 1854, to gather the extra information offered by the sheriff's records.  


I found a detailed advertisement for the auction, describing the condition of the property and a description of the buildings on the various plots of land involved.  The auction concerned a total of eleven lots in the upriver faubourgs, one of which is the subject of our present day investigation.  

The first paragraph describes the lots.  "Lot No. one forms the corner of Pleasant and Chippewa streets," the ad reads.  Yes, that's our lot of ground.  The next paragraph provides more details.  "Together with all the buildings and improvements on lot No. one..."  We are on the brink of an official description of our building, not a set of information that every sale includes, believe it or not.  "First," the ad continues, "a good, substantial brick dwelling house, having 40 feet, 10 inches front on Chippewa street, by 51 feet in depth on Pleasant street."  Indeed, this is our lot but the building that stands there today measures nearly the entire length of the lot on Chippewa Street, nearly 58 feet.  Could it be that the present building, despite its solid brick construction and walls four bricks wide, simply is not the same building that stood there in 1854.  It is possible, yes, but the next sentence solves the mystery of the sloping floor.  "Second, another brick building of 16 feet, 9 inches in front on Chippewa st..."  

1896 Sanborn
Note the Chippewa St. municipal addresses

1887 Sanborn
Note the municipal address of 37 Pleasant

When we add the lengths of the two buildings on Chippewa Street, we get 57 feet, 7 inches.  The single building today measures only a few inches wider than the combination of the two 1854 buildings.  The evidence suggests quite strongly that a previous owner joined the two original buildings into one larger structure.  The five inch gap between the two 1854 buildings accounts for the rise in floor elevation at a point 40 feet from the Pleasant Street wall.  These two images from the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, show a single building at the corner of Chippewa and Pleasant.  The next phase of our investigation seeks to discover who joined the buildings and why.   

Let Our House Stories delve into the historical record to solve the mysteries of your home.  Visit our website, www.ourhousestories.com, to learn more.