old house photos

[bigmark]

I recently learned that the King County Archives has old photos of houses available for purchase. Apparently, there is at least one picture of virtually every house in King County that was built prior to 1937. I contacted them and they have a 1937 photo of my house, and I was going to order a print of it. I’m trying to figure out how big of a picture to get and wanted to check to see if anyone else had gotten pictures from them. If so, what is the quality like? How big would you recommend? Any interesting findings from the old pictures?

Here’s a link to an article about getting pictures:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/athome/309352_archives31.html

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[j]

We have two photos of our house built in 1929, one of it first built and another a few years later. They actually have been passed down by all the different owners who have purchased our place. They are King County photos and they are great quality. We have them in 8 x 10 frames because the photo paper is 8 x 10 though the pictures are a little smaller.

We also have all the original paperwork for when our house was first sold. I die a little inside when I think of it initially being sold for $7,500!

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[JimmyG]

I have the 8 x 10 photo of our house from 1937 and it’s great. (Reminds me I have to get a frame for it.)

I also ordered the 1972 photo of our house, but only got a 5 x 7 because the man at the archives was nice enough to tell me he’d pulled the negatives and the 1972 one was slightly out of focus.

I still ordered it since I wanted to compare changes to the house over the years, but it certainly isn’t frame-quality.

So my advice is go for the 8 x 10. And my interesting finding was that my house still has the same screen door as was on the house in 1972.

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[RonM]

At one time the photos of every house were used by the assessor’s office. Add a garage without a building permit and eventually they’d catch you, adding the improvement to the value. My folks bought this house in 1935 for $2,500 and had to take out a 6 year mortgage. I remember the mortgage burning party.

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[Bonnie]

Our house was built in ’84 but as a gift for my SIL years ago I got the info re: her home in Wallingford (built in 1909) and it was an 8/10 photo and I also had the info re: the original purchase and subsequent purchases. the house was originally built for about $900 or so and now worth well over $500,000 (probably more but I’m assuming it has lost value recently. LOL!)

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[homedk]

Rather than ordering prints, we had the Puget Sound Regional Archives email us digital copies of our house photos. We then had the option of printing the photos in various sizes. We ended up framing an 8 x 10 to hang in the living room, & we had smaller sizes made for inclusion in a photo album.

The archives sent the photos to us in .tif format. There was a photo taken in 1937 & another taken in 1952. File size for each was approximately 2 MB.

We also visited the archives in person, as the article mentions. That was very interesting & worthwhile, because they have quite a few general photos of different Seattle neighborhoods & landmarks. We live near Camp Long & found that some of the general photos of Camp Long had views of our house in the background.

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[Anonymous]

When I first ordered pictures of my house in 2000, I chose the 8×10 but like others have stated, the actual size is not quite 8×10 because of the old negatives. The quality of mine have been great. They used to use bigger negatives in the 30’s and 40’s so the prints are better quality than 35 mm. Worthwhile and at that time, they had house info for an additional $3 which included a partial list of owners and sales info/value for tax purposes. The paper work also had a drawing of the original floor plan. Paperwork probably varies from house to house though. Good luck.

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[Gina]

My niece gave me a framed copy of the assessor photo from 1942. They caught my father spreading topsoil in the picture, makes it extra special. Must have taken a few months for the tax photo to be taken, I have the original occupancy okay for the house, from 1941.

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[Anonymous]

That is awesome Gina!

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[Homer]

We have a 16 x 20 print of our house picture which looks great, and it was enlarged from a print, not from a negative. It may not be perfect quality, but we have it framed, and it looks good to me! I think it came to about $30 for the print and the paperwork that came with it. Not a bad price, and great history to have!

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[Author]

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