A blogger who writes about the town I'm researching posted a list of named apartment buildings, taken from a 1950 City Directory.
So -- just like a residence event for a person -- this establishes those buildings as still standing as of the time that information was collected, and gives me a list of addresses to cross-check with the residences I have in my database. On the principle of 'start with what you know' I could work backwards in time to see what other directories they are listed in, and see if other Named Buildings 'appear' in the list in the City Directories as I work backwards in time.
These buildings could also be searched for by name in newspapers, directories, and other published material. If they have been torn down to make way for other buildings since 1950, articles about them are likely to mention them by name.
A research plan might be:
- choose a building from the list of named buildings
- check the street name changes list
- check the locality's property tax records and note the type of building and date of construction
- work forwards or backwards as needed in the City Directories to see when the building appears and disappears in the Named Lists (always keeping in mind, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence") to narrow the window
- search for newspaper articles for events mentioning the building by name
One advantage of tracking the 'life' of buildings vs. that of people: most of the time they stay in the same place. Unless the boundaries of the municipality change, you have a much better idea of where they are 'born' and 'die'. There are exceptions -- one large house in my own community was moved several blocks away from its original location -- but on the whole, buildings are much less mobile than their occupants, and when they move, it's far more likely to make the local news.
See also:
How to Research the History of Your House at This Old House, which has many good ideas for sources of information about buildings, including the Sanborn Maps.
New York City Land Conveyances 1654-1851: What They Are and How They Work -- a Research Guide from the New York Public Library. (Land conveyances might be a way to work backwards from the current owner to the historical period in one's research.)
Newspaper articles have been the most productive source of information so far. The blogger I mentioned above posted about one of my areas of interest; through her posts I learned about a fire that damaged a building I was researching, and when it was torn down. Her posts gave the dates that the story was written up in the local papers, which made the articles much easier to search for.
Another possibility is the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Several series of maps exist for the locality I want, but I haven't been able to locate copies online, so this is one of the tasks on my To-Do list.
A post on the blog Upfront with NGS: Highways and their impact on cities: so many neighborhoods no longer exist talks about the problems of researching in cities where whole neighborhoods were wiped out by highways or whole cities were drowned by reservoirs.
A project at The University of Oklahoma, 60 Years of Urban Change: Midwest has now-and-then sliders for several midwestern cities that allow the user to compare before and after pictures. This post includes links to some cities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. There are "More then-and-now sliders" with navlinks to the Northeast, Oklahoma and Texas, the Southeast, and the West.
The "now" and "then" pictures are laid over one another -- they are not a side-by-side comparion -- so use the slider widget in the center of each pane to see the entire "before" or "after" picture.