It Pays - Part 2

The original owner's grandson, Harry, was a remarkable, kind, and generous man.  We'd only just been introduced to him, yet he went out of his way to gather information for us.  His love of history was readily apparent.  He went to the Historical Society Archive to gather what information he could find, including contacts for other sources of information about the house.

One of the stories he recounted was that though it was the house his mother grew up in, she didn't much care for the living room.  She thought it much too small for proper entertaining.  This is not a problem we've encountered thus far.

And as luck would have it (it's not really luck, it's just old Saint Paul), Harry was an old friend of the son of the 3rd owner of the house.  He had contact information and suggested several lines of inquiry around various changes that he was aware of over time.

Though he hadn't been back to Saint Paul for many years, the 3rd owners' son filled in more details:

• The front porches were removed by his parents because they were constructed of wood, had no cover, and eventually began to rot.  The resulting changes to the front were done by a Mr. Salt.
• There had been a fire in the attic causing total replacement of the top floor around 1940.
• The new carriage house was built by his parents in the 1930s using stone form a home torn down at the corner of Nina and Summit. Finally, I have a definitive statement for the source of the stone...
• Sadly, he mentions, "If you look carefully at the bar on the second floor of the garage you will note an autograph of Jascha Heifetz the violinist."  We've heard rumors and stories about this bar, but it was removed by the previous owners and there is much debate in the neighborhood over its current whereabouts...