How it works
From an address to an heirloom.
You give us an address. We give it back as a book: found in the archives, written with affection, designed with care, and bound to be kept for generations.
1. Tell us the address
That is all it takes to begin. We find your house in the public record and take a first look at what the archives hold. Some houses have left a long trail of paper behind them and some have left only a few footprints; either way, we tell you what we find before we write a word.
2. We go looking
This is the part we love most. We pore over old fire insurance maps and county atlases, census pages written in careful longhand, city directories, aerial surveys, newspaper notices and the files tucked away in local libraries. We follow the street back to the field it once was, and the house back to the year it went up.
Every fact we find goes into the book with its source. Where the record is silent, we say so. The true story is always the better one.
3. We write it, and we design it
The findings become a story: who built the house and when, how the neighborhood grew up around it, the people who lived there, the small details that make it unlike any other. Then our designers set it in an 8 by 8 inch linen hardcover, each page composed for what we found, a map laid on blue paper, a typed card enlarged to the edge of the page.
4. You make it yours
Your book opens in your browser, ready to read. Change it however you’d like. Add the photographs, the letters, the dedication, the year you carried the first box through the door. Choose another layout for a page, or the cloth for the cover. Everything saves as you go, and you can always return to an earlier version.
5. We print it and send it home
When it is just right, approve the proof. We print it exactly as you saw it, bind it in linen and send it to your door, or straight to the people who will treasure it most.