History of Our House

District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds
Our house was sold by Michael J. Colbert to Anthony J. Casale on November 29th, 1921. The ownership of the house was then transferred to Ralph W. Howard Jr. in the form of a trustee's deed on October 5th, 1930. It was then sold to Elizabeth E. Lanahan on January 16th, 1931. It was sold to the family we bought it from on December 2nd, 1988 and it was sold to us on May 8th, 2012.


DC Property Information Verification System
No permits have been issued for this property that have been recorded in the electronic building permit database. The "effective year built" is 1953. It seems that the house had a gut remodel. The walls are all drywall, which didn't exist when the house was originally built. Based on the EYB, 1953 is a good guess of when that remodel was done. The addition at the back of the house was likely done at this time as well.


Census 1940
In 1940 John and Elizabeth Lanahan lived in the house with their 3 adult children and daughter in law. John and his two sons were plumbers, his daughter worked as a salesgirl at a department store. 

Elizabeth and Helen Marie, the daughter-in-law, didn't work and had a 8th and 10th grade education respectively. John and the married son (John Jr.) had 2 years of college education, the other son (James) and daughter (Alice) finished high school. 

The Lanahan family had been living in their current house for the last 5 years, but Helen Marie was living in Greensboro, North Carolina. All of the Lanahans were born in DC or Virginia.

John worked 40 hours a week, but did not report his income, probably because he was self-employed (a common reason to not report income in the 1940 census). John Jr. made $1840 ($28000 in today's dollars) that year, James made $1000 ($15,000), and Alice made $850 ($13,000).

Census 1950 (Update 2022)

In 1950 Elizabeth Lanahan and her daughter Alice were still living in the house. Elizabeth was widowed and had apparently taken over her husband's plumbing business. Her occupation was listed as Proprietor of a Plumbing company. Alice was 35 years old, never married, and worked as a typist for a retail clothing company.