Insurance Records & Ownership Data
Insurance records from Mutual Assurance and the Franklin Fire Insurance Company provide extensive, if occasionally illegible record of historic structures built in 18th and 19th Century Philadelphia. In addition, the Philadelphia Historical Commission's records for Almond / Kenilworth Street often contain record of ownership and miscellaneous notes. What follows below is an excerpt from several surveys and ownership records of Almond Street properties. Together, this information provides a view to the kinds of structures built and a sense of their age and history and can provide a starting point for further research.
Click on a property along the south side of Almond / Kenilworth Street to view detail.
126 Almond St. - Mutual Assurance Policy #1816
March (1802)
Benjamin Jones Jun. - SS Almond between Front & 2nd
Front – 2 story house, 18’6”x20'
Lower story –
- Breast
- Surbase
- Washboards
- Windows cased
- Single cornice
2nd story –
- Simple garret
- Plastered
- Trap door
- Winding stairBack building – 2 story, 27x11
Lower story
Parlor
- Breast
- Surbase (chair-rail)
- Washboards
- Windows cased
Kitchen – finished as customary2nd story
Chamber over Parlor -
- washboards
- Windows cased
Chamber over Kitchen – entirely plain
- Winding stair
- Old roof
- Yellow pine floor
- No battlement1911 Oct 9 – Building recorded as torn down
Rebuilt & re surveyed 1919 as below.Front - 2 Story brick with tin roof 19’7”x29’4”
Reported in fair condition with:
- Plaster / lath
- Yellow pine floor
- Cased stairs
- Heat by stove (wood)
- Petroleum lamps
- Broken pitched tin roof
- Plain box cornice
- 1 pedimented dormer with 12 lights
- Plain paneled front door with four light transom
- Plain wood frame with 12 light sash, all single thick glass
- 2 rooms each floor
- Outside toilet in yard under drained
- Outside shuttered
- No plumbing in building
- Plaster / paper throughout
- wide yellow pine fl
- Plain box stairs, stock finish
Private residenceBack building - 2 Story brick with slag roof