Real Estate Appraisal of Oaklands, 1950

I was at the Overington Family Reunion last weekend and brought some of my family documents. This one was a favorite and I was asked to scan it and post it here so that everyone can have a copy. It's the real estate appraisal of Oaklands on August 4, 1950, two months before William Overington, Jr. passed away.

You can read it for yourself; it's pretty self-explanatory.

The last paragraph there on the back is blocked by the photos and reads:

Valuation based on its Best Possible Usage. Dwelling is very old & in very poor condition. Would not pay to re-condition or remodel same. Eventually dwelling will have to be removed so that building can be developed to its Best Usage. (Apartments or dwellings, or both.)

Oaklands Photo Album

I wrote a post about Oaklands nearly a year ago now, with what I knew about the house. In that post, I said that there aren't very many pictures of the house. As it turns out, that is a completely untrue statement. I simply had not found (or identified) many of them yet. In this post, I am including photos from my personal collection as well as photos from the Philadelphia Department of Records. This latter set were taken when the city took possession of the property, to document it before demolishing the house.

I have reused the map from my previous post, but not any of the photos so refer to that post, as well, for more pictures.

Let's start with a plan of the property from a 1920 atlas of the city. This is oriented so that the top is NE, bottom is SW. The house faces southeast - towards Leiper Street - and has a curved drive up to the back of the house on Pilling Street. The other large building is the stable or barn.

On to the photos! I've put in a jump break because this is a long list of photos, so click "Read More" to see the rest of the post.

Oaklands - the Overington Family House

At the request of Mrs. Garvey, who lives across the street from Overington Park, I've taken the time to look at my pictures for glimpses of Oaklands, the house my ancestors lived in on that property. According to Brian H. Harris's book on Frankford (a neighborhood of Philadelphia) for the Images of America series, the house was built in 1847 for William Overington, my 4x-great-grandfather and the first of the Overingtons to come to America. The earliest map I have found is from 1849 and clearly names the 37-acre property "Oaklands" under the ownership of W. Overington.

On later maps the buildings' footprints are shown more clearly - probably more accurately, as they are in different places - and the property has visibly shrunk as parcels were sold off. On this map from 1920 (note: rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise from the one above), you can see that Allen Street has been renamed Overington Street. There is also a semi-circular drive approaching the back of the house from Pilling Street. Earlier maps show an L-shaped drive that came off Leiper Street to the front of the house. In fact, the house's address was 4606 Leiper Street. The other visible (square) building on the property is the stable. 

There are not too many pictures of the house itself. The earliest I've ever seen is in Harris's book. I have reproduced it here, hopefully not in violation of copyright. I assume that it must be an early photograph because the trees around the house appear quite young, and in later photos the columns on the porch are white.

Here is a picture I had of the house, showing the driveway up to the front. It is probably not much later than the one above, based again on the trees and the appearance of the porch.

And here is one we've had hanging on our wall for years. On the back it lists all the babies that were born in the house, ending with my grandmother's uncle William Overington III in 1910. My grandmother wasn't born in the house but she was the last child to be raised there.

Here is a much later photograph showing the drive off Pilling Street, visible in the second map:

And here are two more pictures of the front of the house. Apparently the driveway remained in the front but does not appear to be paved, which may be why it was not drawn onto later maps.

This picture is from the "big snow" one year:

A much earlier photograph of my grandmother's grandmother and her sister on the porch of the house, showing the doorway:

This photo appears to be of some kind of theater group but in any case it's a better angle to show the porch and doorway:

Here my grandmother is a baby, being held by her mother on the porch (ca. 1925-26):

And finally, my grandmother's mother as a girl at the pump by the stable. This is the only photograph I know of that has the stable in it.

I apologize for all the time-skipping in this post but I thought this arrangement would be best for showing the house.

Oaklands was in disrepair by the time my grandmother came along. I am not sure when it happened, but I suspect it was in the 1930s that the property was sold to the city or some such body, which subsequently leveled the house and turned the lot into Overington Park.

Four Generations of Girls

Ladies of the Family, a photo by nameless.ship on Flickr.

The baby there is my aunt Mary Margaret Gammon. Holding her is her father's mother Carrie (McKee) Gammon. Left to right the others are her mother's mother "Poppy" (Overington) Jones, her mother Claudia (Newman) Gammon, and her great-grandmother Claudia (Fries) Overington.