Looking Back

[mckenney99]

Has anyone else looked up current photos of your childhood home(s) on the computer or other homes that were significant to you when you grew up?

I looked up my childhood home (18 years) not long ago and was pleasantly surprised that it had not changed much from my memories. At least not on the outside. I was last in the house in about 1996, when I was settling my moms estate and I turned it over to my brother as his part of the estate. The house has now changed hands at least twice since I was last in it.

I looked up my Paternal Grandmothers house (I never got to meet my Paternal Grandfather) and was surprised by how much it had changed over the years. It was a really nice smaller 2 bedroom/1 bath brick over a full basement. I spent a bunch of hours in that house since it was walking distance from my grade school and mom or dad would swing by most weekdays and pick me up on their way home after work. I can still smell the freshly cut up potatoes that Grandma would fly up for me in an ancient iron skillet as an after school snack. I can still visualize the old b&w Zenith console TV in the livingroom with the ever-present soap operas playing throughout the week. On Saturdays it was Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton followed by Laurence Welk.

When I looked up my Maternal Grandmothers house I was DEVASTATED to find that the house my Grand Parents built with their own 2 hands was GONE. The corner double lot that my Grandmother spent so much time manicuring and the large garden that she planted each year were completely GONE. The old homestead was replaced by a modernistic monstrosity surrounded by what can only be described as a jungle walk. I discovered a while later that the original house was supposedly burned to the ground, unknown how/why. I spent some of my most memorable days with my Maternal Grandmother. She was a very loving and guiding force in my life. Grandma was also a tough, fiercely independent ole bird who slept with an old S&W .32 revolver under her mattress. Every time I smell moth balls I flash back to that old house and the smell of old wool carpet with the old jute padding underneath.

If you do look back, be prepared to be surprised and also be prepared to have your heart broken.

 

[lihpster]

My paternal grandparents house, which my grandfather built with his 2 hands, is still standing and the structure is mostly the same as the original, with some changes to trim and such. However, it no longer sits on an acre and a half lot with an adjoining acre and a half bare lot adjoining it. It now sits on a postage size lot and the rest of the land has had a huge apartment complex built on it. Other places I have called home are now all completely different than when I was living in them.

 

[Rudi]

Everything looks much smaller in the old neighborhood.

 

[Rustyt1953]

This is a recent photo of the home in Warrington, England my folks brought me to after I was born.

The current residents removed the Anderson bomb shelter behind the house.

 

[Golddollar]

Has anyone else looked up current photos of your childhood home(s) on the computer or other homes that were significant to you when you grew up?

I went one step further. I went back to the old house itself. The first time I came to a Northeast Ohio Bunch event, I realized that my old childhood home, the first home my parents owned, wasn't that far away. Luckily from my trips with my dad to track down deadbeat tenants I knew the street name had changed and I remembered the house number. So I put the address into the GPS and off I went.

I lived in that house from age 4 to age 8. I remembered the house was yellow. When I got there, I saw it was white, so obviously somebody had repainted it in the interim. I didn't see anybody around, so I didn't walk up the driveway to introduce myself. But what really amazed me, after some 60 years, was how TINY that house really was.

I found my old elementary school too. It had been converted to a day care center. Now it has been totally razed. But I'm glad a had a chance to go back to see them.

 

[Old 44 Guy]

I leaned a long time back you can't go back. I went back to the house my dad & grandfather built in 1938 and 39, WOW never again. It was still there but much smaller than I remember. Larger homes all around and the lot we played Baseball in had 2 2 story homes on it. Never again.

 

[DWalt]

My childhood home was built in 1920, and I have driven by it several times on infrequent visits back to my old Ohio home town, most recently about a year ago. I sold it 37 years ago after my parents died. It appears to be much the same as it always has been as it is brick and sturdily built. It was bought by the now-deceased country music star Earl Thomas Conley (he died in 2019) for his parents. I checked, both his parents are now deceased, so no idea who lives there now. I would still like to live in that house today. It was a very nice place but its features are dated in comparison to more modern homes, but in compensation it is located in a quiet and peaceful community where nothing bad ever happened and not much ever changes. Even today. Sort of frozen in time.

Zillow and Google Street View will allow you to view almost any house or building anywhere if you have an address.

Over 50 years ago we had a house in a Western Maryland housing development. I looked for it on Street View several years ago. It appeared that the entire area around that house had simply vanished, nothing there. Not even a street. Zillow still has zero information about our former address there. A true mystery.

 

[Alk8944]

The expression is "You can't go home again". The principal reason is that it doesn't exist anymore!

Between birth and today, 80 years in a few days, I lived in five houses, and attended four different schools. All except one house and one grade school are still standing where they did, and in good condition. But, seeing them now only makes me sad as I have changed so much in those years! The emotional response isn't anything like I remember being Six, Eight, Eleven and Sixteen years old as I was when we made the several moves.

The one house became a parking lot for the grocery store on the adjacent corner the year we moved out in 1958. The one grade school was replaced many years ago by a single-story brick cookie-cutter building. Originally built in the 1890s of Limestone, it was beautiful and the greatest emotional loss I have of all the buildings.

 

[LVSteve]

I've done most of my viewing via Street View, although I did visit a couple of my old haunts during trips to the UK. I moved a lot as a kid, I mean I even had two addresses and went to different schools in Fort Worth inside 18 months.

#1 was an upstairs flat. Street view shows what I would expect. Updated double glazed windows, but otherwise much the same.

#2 was in a small village, and I lived there twice. House looked the same from the outside from the lane, although the access gate to the property had been moved next to the very detached garage. Given the UK rules on Post Office access, I wondered how that worked. Village school was closed in the 80s I think, it is now a home. First time I went there it had 17 kids and two teachers.

#3 Apartment complex in Ft Worth. Cannot recall the address, and I haven't found it just by trawling street view. I might have found the school. I do recall that it was not far from what I think was I-30. I recall walking on a bridge over a major highway to get slushies one evening.

#4 Ranch home in Ft Worth. Somebody has since converted the double garage into more living space. The school is still there just up the street and looks just like it did in 1967.

#5 Another upstairs flat, two streets away from my first home! Used to have a nice little front garden behind a hollow stone wall that I was allowed to plant sweet peas in. Wall and garden are gone, paved for car parking. Progress. Elementary school is still nearby, a forbidding stone built place that will likely rival the Hoover Dam in longevity.

#6 Back to the village to the house we still owned. When I returned the school now had kids bussed in from another village, doubling the pupil count. Today, kids from multiple villages get bussed to one central elementary school of about 120 pupils. Secondary school I went to was closed in 1976. The only part still standing is the boarders' house. The rest was flattened and along with the playing fields turned into a housing estate.

#7 Duplex in a medium UK town. Been extended upstairs over the ground floor, flat-roofed extension that was an original feature. Knowing how the extension was built in the 1950s, I wonder how that was done without a lot of work. The secondary school I attended is still there, being one of the oldest schools in England.

Maternal grandparents lived over a shop in East London. The building has had floors added and the appearance modified with swanky looking new windows. I'm not sure this has gone well, as street view nearly always shows scaffolding attached. Strange, as I thought that place was built like a fortress.

Paternal grandparents home I only recall visiting once. I'm unsure of the address, but all the homes look period correct (late 1930s) except for better windows. Never knew my paternal grandfather, he died a few months before I was born. Paternal grandmother was a nasty piece of work and my father cut off contact.

 

[Beemerguy53]

When I was two years old, in 1955, my parents bought a beautiful, elegant old rowhome in north Baltimore. Built in 1918, it had French doors leading to the dining room, a beautiful entry parlor, a large pantry off the kitchen, four bedrooms, and a big old clawfoot bathtub. The community was clean and safe and just plain nice...a great place to live.

The neighborhood began deteriorating in the 1960s, and by 1965 my folks were forced to move. The community today is not quite as crime-ridden and violent as some other areas in Baltimore, but still, it's pretty run-down: houses in poor condition, trash and debris all over, etc. The old house is now an end-of-group rowhome, due to a fire having destroyed the house next door.

I look at the community now and then on Google maps, and I feel terrible for what it's become.

 

[zeke]

yes, have looked at pictures of every house i ever lived in, plus mother's parents house. Brought back a lot of memories, while testing how good my memory is/was.

 

[NYlakesider]

I spent my first ten years in a nice row house in downtown Albany NY. (mid 40s -mid 50s)

Moved out to a bigger better place so my father could expand his funeral business. That house looks pretty much the way it looked when I moved out in 1970.

Back to the first house. Went by it a couple years ago in the day time. It looked deserted. The demographics of the area have certainly changed. Have been a few murders and other serious problems in the area I used to play kid games in. I'm referring to about a 100 yard square with the old house in the middle.

Doubt I will ever go back there again, if I do I hope to be in a Bradley or Abrams!

 

[SMSgt]

My childhood home, the entire neighborhood in fact, is now a giant asphalt parking lot for rental cars. It was very much a "Leave It To Beaverville." They literally paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.

 

[ladder13]

Our first “home” was a Quonset hut. Second was a 6 story prewar walk up, third was a 13 story apt building in “the projects”.
My parents bought a modest home after we were all grown.
We never saw any silver spoons.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

Looked up the first 2 houses I lived in on Google Maps using their 360 degree view, yes, they look smaller after 60+ years though they and their neighborhoods have changed little.
The apartment building I lived in on the Upper East Side of Manhattan gone, redone, the rest of the block the same. The elementary school I attended there gone, replaced by a high rise, don't have good memories of that school year, that teacher, so they've gone into the Memory Hole. The Junior High I attended for 7th and 8th Grades became a nursing home, now an apartment buiding, a few years ago a manager let me inside, changed completely, he said they still had the architects drawings, floor plans.

 

[Onomea]

I have lived in — three months or more — 27 different places/homes that I can recall since starting out 72 years ago. Twelve by the time I left home at 18. I don't remember, or even have records of, most of the addresses.

 

[pawngal]

Just 2 days ago I drove by my childhood home on the Iowa farm. It is in better shape now than when my mother last lived there 20 years ago. The farm was sold to a young couple, it is great to see kid's play equipment in the yard. House was built in 1942, the old house is still there that was built in the early 1900's. The family and friends use for practice area for their local band.
The farm home my mother grew up in during the 1920's is still owned and lived in by extended family. Has been added onto and updated various times.
Homes on family owned farms tend to be well kept, remodeled, added onto. In the cases of cooperate or absentee farmland ownership the houses are left to wind and weather.

 

[CalifEd]

I drove past my old home and neighborhood from 60 years ago.
The entire neighborhood needs a good dose from a flame thrower followed by several passes from an excavator/backhoe/loader tractor so it can return to open desert.
Sad to see what was once a nice middle class neighborhood go down the tubes.

 

[Walkin Horse]

The first home I remember living in has been moved…….possibly to another park.

 

[lkabug]

My childhood home doesn't exist anymore.
Ethel Hollow, WV once had hundreds of homes. Not fancy homes, but those that the coal company built and rented to the miners. Very little exist there today as I knew it.
Once up on a time, Ethel had schools, doctor's office, theater, ball field, and that "company" store we used just like Safeway. Today, nature has reclaimed most everything, except the memories.