Comment on Tell us about your old house....

Diana Alm — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:41:04 GMT

I'm still learning how to manage blog entries. Thanks for writing. Diane O. said she would drive by your house in the next couple of days. Then entry is online now.
Diana A.

Comment on Tell us about your old house....

Tim Olson — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:35:27 GMT

someone told me once that my house was from a Sears kit. How can I verify that?

the house is at 724 27th Ave Moline

thanks

Comment on Questions about old houses?

Diane (also!) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:47:27 GMT

One of the best ways for you to find out about your house is to go to the South Rock Island Township Assessor's office. Ask to see the original "card" (not a printout sheet of paper). it should have a notation as to when the house was built as well as the cost (this would reflect what was on the building permit). Old city building permits were destroyed in the early 1960s, so there's no record in City Hall.

Once you get the year, you can go to city directories in the public library (microfilm) or in the Rock Island County Historical Society (library open Wed - Sat) and see who the first occupant was. Then you can get more info about them.

Let me know what you find!

Comment on Questions about old houses?

Diane — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:04:18 GMT

I am trying to learn the age of my in-laws home located at #8 Hawthorne Road in Watch Hill, RI. We have been unable to locate it via courthouse records.

Comment on Questions about old houses?

Diana — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:05:23 GMT

Are you about to undertake a renovation project and aren't quite sure how to do it? Here's the place to get answers to your questions from other renovators -- owners of old houses and probably members of rips as well.

Comment on RIPS offers new feature to website!

Diana — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:39:25 GMT

Preservation awards for 2006 will be given out at the City Council meeting on Monday, May 21 at 6:45 p.m.

Comment on RIPS offers new feature to website!

Diana — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:06:36 GMT

April 1, 2007

War Over a Building That Helped Win One

By BOB DRIEHAUS
DAYTON, Ohio — Plans to demolish an Art Deco building where a top-secret program broke Nazi codes have prompted a battle between preservationists and the University of Dayton, which owns the building and intends to have it razed to make way for a 50-acre campus expansion.

The university agrees that what went on in the building more than half a century ago is the stuff of legend. Its officials would create a memorial nearby to honor that feat. The demolition’s opponents say any memorial would be a poor substitute.

In 1942, the National Cash Register Company, working with naval engineers, was commissioned to produce an advanced version of the British code-breaking machines that unscrambled the German Enigma codes but that became obsolete after German technological advances.

Working quietly behind the building’s glass-block windows, a team led by Joseph Desch, an NCR engineer, succeeded in making the new code-breakers by early 1943, enabling American forces to decode messages nearly as fast as the Germans who received them and to reroute ships imperiled by German submarines. Then, after D-Day, the machines helped track German troop movements.

Mr. Desch, a University of Dayton graduate, took his secrets to the grave in 1987, several years before the code-breaking project was finally declassified. In 2005, the building where he had made such silent history was bought by the university from NCR.

The 1938 brick-and-sandstone structure, known simply as Building 26, has been obscured by 1960s steel-skinned additions wrapped around three sides. Some sandstone flourishes and most of the original brick exterior remain, and inside there are some original plaster walls and ceilings. But the stylized sandstone facade on the front of the building has been shaved to within one inch of the interior walls, university officials say.

Still, that is more than enough to preserve and restore, said Jerry Hauer, a Dayton music store owner who organized a town-hall meeting on March 21 to rally opposition against razing the building.

“If they do a sculpture or something,” Mr. Hauer said of one idea for a memorial, “it’s meaningless.”

Deborah Anderson, a daughter of Mr. Desch, has also pleaded for preservation, saying, “You can have wonderful exhibits and artifacts and whiz-bang experiments, but it won’t be the same as stepping into that building,”

Ms. Anderson did join a university-created committee that is studying options for a memorial, but only after the institution’s officials announced on March 9 that demolition, which they had raised as a possibility in 2005, was the course they would definitely pursue.

The university’s decision hinged in part on a survey it commissioned from the ASC Group of Mason, Ohio, a firm specializing partly in historical and architectural services. ASC concluded in January that given a failure to meet standards like those for design, setting, materials and workmanship, the building was ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places. “If the analysis had concluded this was a historic building, we would have gone in another direction, but this building has been altered too much,” said the university’s president, Daniel J. Curran, adding that the building’s remaining flag stand and other historical markers would be salvaged. The university plans to begin demolition as early as this summer as part of the expansion, which will accommodate research facilities, housing, retailing and other uses. The memorial, meanwhile, could take the form of public art, an indoor exhibit or a plaza that tells the story of Mr. Desch and his colleagues, said Vincent F. Russo, chairman of the university committee. “It’s a chance to do something permanent and conspicuous that will be a real asset to the community,” Dr. Russo said. But there may yet be hope for the preservationists’ cause. At the March 21 meeting called by Mr. Hauer, Michael R. Turner, the local congressman, threatened to withhold support for federal dollars that would subsidize the development. After that, the university promised a public hearing on the issue. In addition, the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, a part of the Ohio Historical Society, will review the ASC study. Should the public hearing or the review uncover additional historic value in the building, the university will reconsider its decision, Dr. Curran said. Tony Sculimbrene, executive director of the Aviation Heritage Foundation here, still laments Dayton’s loss of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s bicycle shop, which was moved to Dearborn, Mich., in the 1930s. Mr. Sculimbrene hopes the city does not lose the code-breaking building, too. “What I want,” he said, “is for the university master planner to sit down with the preservation community and explore options to see if it really does make sense to save the building.” Daniel Bluestone, a professor of architectural history at the University of Virginia, said that whatever the architectural integrity of Building 26, saving it for its historical significance would be in keeping with an American tradition dating from the 1850s, when New York State preserved George Washington’s Revolutionary headquarters in the town of Newburgh. “Why wouldn’t you want to harness that history?” Professor Bluestone said. “People going to do their work in that building would have that in the back of their mind. You would have a workplace with a soul.”

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