There are many old houses in CU.  This page is dedicated to resources and tips for learning and sharing the history of old houses in Champaign-Urbana

 

Researching Your House
  1. City Directories
  2. Newspapers
  3. Maps
  4. Existing Research

 

Resources

  • City Directories

City Directories are basically phone books.  They list the people living in the area and the address at which they lived.  Meaning that you can associate names with your addresses and sometimes the occupation and marital status of these individuals. For the most part City Directories were published every year.  

  1. The Internet Archives has several years of the Champaign-Urbana City Directories digitized available here.  
  2. The complete set is also available at the Champaign County Archives.

The plus to using the digitized version is searchability.  For the years that the directory does not have Street-by-Street listings this can save you a lot of time.  Be aware that the search function is not particular sensitive so rather than searching for your full address, you might try just the street name (minus Dr. St, etc).  You will have to flip through more results, but it will ensure that your address is not missed.  A list of streets existing at the time of the publication of a particular edition can be found at the beginning of the earlier directories- you should verify your street name here.  If you don't find it, this either means that the street did not exist yet or that it has been renamed (considering cross-streets can give you a clue to which is the case). For example, Birch Street

  • Newspapers

Newspapers are a great to discover rich details about your house and those who have lived there. Newspapers used to have an extensive "Social Notes" section that gave information about sickness, celebrations, dinners, meetings, and accomplishments of the local community.  

  1. The Illinois Digital N​ewspaper Collection is a fantastic digital resource that does not require registration.  Local papers available through this collection include  The Daily Illini (from 1874-1945 and 1962-1975) and the Urbana Daily Courier (from 1903-1935).  Searching for this collection is pretty functional so you can search either your address (minus St., Dr. etc) or for names of people that lived there.  You will then be able to look at the articles online.
  •  ​ Maps
  1. The University of Illinois has a digital collection of historical maps of Champaign-County accessible here​.
  2. Visit the Champaign County Archives to take a look at Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.  The librarian can assist you.  These maps date back to 1887 for Urbana and were released every ten years or so until 1945.  You will be able to see if your house had been constructed yet for the particular year of a map (assuming you live close enough to downtown) as well as the building materials and rough blueprint of your house.
  • Existing Research

You won't necessarily need to start from scratch when researching your house.  

  1. Check to see if your house is on Urbana's 100 Most Historically Significant Buildings
  2. Check to see if your house is included in  Karl  Lohmann,  "One  Hundred  Houses  of  Urbana,  Illinois:  who  lived  in  them  and  when," available in the Champaign Co Archives.
  3. Check Frank  Heitzman  survey,  "Architectural  Survey  of  Champaign-Urbana,"   
  4. Stewart Berlocher has compiled a study of Pre-Civil war houses in CU based on an 1869 panormic map of CU.

Tips

 

Sharing

If you have or come across any old pictures of local houses share them here.

Learn some great history about your house?  Share it here. 

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