Dignowity Hill: A New Adventure in Restoring an Old House

In May of 2016 Barb and I closed on a decrepit old beauty on Cherry Street in historic Dignowity Hill in San Antonio, Texas. I'm talking about an another old house restoration project. This will be our fourth restoration/rehab project that we have taken on since moving to Dignowity Hill in 2007. Crazy, right? This is time, however, our vision for this old house is to convert the existing structure into commercial office space.

May 2016

This property had been on my radar screen for a couple of years, mostly because of it's location. As far as we can tell from our research the house was built around 1912 although it could be older. We found the house footprint on a 1912 Sanborn map so we at least know that it was already in existence in 1912.  As you can see from the images the house is bungalow style structure with hints of Craftsman details. The house was modified several times over the last 100 years.  The original house had a porch that was enclosed at some point. Then an addition was added presumably to gain some living space.  Before started any work on the structure we contacted the Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) to request permission to demolish that addition. Fortunately, OHP agreed with our plan to demolish the addition and gave us administrative approval to move forward with our proposed scope of work. 

Rear of House 

In June 2016 we contracted a general contractor to oversee the project. We hope to complete the project by December 2016 if all goes according as planned.