Raise the Hammer

I was told that the origin of the city's list of historical homes was that they paid a summer student to walk around the neighbourhoods and write down the addresses of any homes that looked to be of a certain age. The reason some of the more northern neighbourhoods are underrepresented is that the student didn't get there before the summer ended. I'd have thought they could have simply run a filter through the land registry to see any houses built before an arbitrary date, say 1913 since that's 100 years ago, but perhaps that information is not available for this purpose, or is inaccurate. I know a lot of homes have 1891 as their build year because that's the year the city renumbered a a lot of streets, and therefore the year those addresses appear on the city register, so if you've been told that year for your house, get to the city directories at the library and see what address the people in your house in 1891 lived at in 1890 and you might be able to trace your house back 30 or more years before that. This all said, you do NOT want your house to be officially designated as historical, or else you'll be responsible to up to three levels of government to get approval for any and all modifications, and depending how historical they designate you, they will demand all repairs be done using historically accurate methods and materials, often making any required project cost thousands or tens of thousands more than it would have otherwise. These requirements are sometimes the root of the dilapidation of historical buildings, because owners cannot afford to make the renovations as outlined by committees that make expensive demands of the owners, but in turn offer no assistance in doing so, as although there are some interest free loans and grants available, they are almost impossible to actually actually get.