Comments on: Another twin found!

By: stephanie

stephanie — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:27:08 +0000

That’s fascinating Robert! The house we used to live in (about a dozen blocks from here) also has at least one twin that we know of, so I know it’s a fairly common occurance. I’d love to get inside one of these twins and see how the detailing differs – is the hardware different? Wainscotting? Box-beams? It would be fascinating to see. I do kind of wonder if ours was a kit though because the front doors are identical down to the door knocker.

By: robert

robert — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:18:33 +0000

We have found architect-designed twins in Portland. In some cases, an architect would sell mirror-image plans on the East and West side of Portland. We found the much-altered twin of our NE Portland house in NW Willamette Heights

By: stephanie

stephanie — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:44:27 +0000

Thanks so much for the tip, Artemis! I didn’t find our house but looked through the entire HM Fancher link and saw a lot of houses that looked familiar! Fascinating!

By: artemis

artemis — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:28:50 +0000

(Oh, and check out the H.M. Fancher link—I was just flipping through those since I hadn’t noticed the name in the past; seems like the style is similar, and they were a Portland firm, too…)

By: artemis

artemis — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:18:04 +0000

If you have some time to kill, here’s another great resource: http://www.antiquehome.org/site-map.htm

It also includes plans from some of the California and PNW regional companies—apparently a lot of West Coast bungalows came from there as opposed to the mail-order kits that had to be shipped from the Midwest or back east.

By: stephanie

stephanie — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:05:30 +0000

Sears is just one possibility, Julio. There were lots of companies that sold kits Aladdin was a big one….

By: julio

julio — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:57:53 +0000

Well, that didn’t take long. I didn’t see anything close to ours in their catalog.

By: julio

julio — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:53:06 +0000

Ian,

We had never thought about our house being a kit, because until last fall we never saw any even remotely like ours. Now I’m starting to wonder…

I was going to ask if you knew of any online resources for researching this, but then I did a search and found this link to all the Sears plans:

http://searsarchives.com/homes/byimage.htm

I’m going to check it out and see if I can find ours!

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:42:02 +0000

Have you looked to see if the house was a Sears house, or a kit? There seem to be lots of houses in Portland that are similar, with minor trim differences.

We haven’t found anything like our house, a 1908 folk victorian with craftsman influences. We’re still looking!

By: artemis

artemis — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:51:32 +0000

Ooh, I love the twin hunt! And I have to say—even with our house’s *real* twin (the house next door, which we know was built from mirror-image blue prints at the same time by the same family) there are odd differences—our house has oak floors throughout, for instance, while the house next door just has a fir subfloor in the bedrooms; the window and cabinet choices are slightly different though we believe all are original; our woodwork is more elaborate in a couple of rooms. (Our neighbor likes to joke that the daughter in our house chose the “deluxe” finish package while the son in his house picked the “economy” package.) And because we’re on the down slope of a hill and he’s up on top of it, the houses do sit somewhat differently, so people sometimes have to look twice to realize they’re looking at identical and not just similar bungalows. So definitely possible that they could have tweaked window styles and posts and such in small ways to make your house and the twins more unique, too.