Research Your Vendome Home
One of the great things about living in a historic neighborhood is learning about your home and neighborhood history. Luckily for us, the Hotel Vendome era documentation is well known. However, not much has been written since the neighborhood was built in the 1930s.
Here are some techniques and resources to help you learn more about your Vendome neighborhood home.
- Use the resources at the California Room at the San Jose main library, The Dr. King branch. There you can find early maps of San Jose and the Vendome.
- If you can find the lot number for your home, you can then look at the old city tax records. They will show a jump in value from when the lot was empty to when your home was built. The year before the jump in value is most likely the year your home was built.
- Now that you have a date for when your home was built, you might be able to find out the name of the first owner. You can look at an old reverse-directory for that year and find the name of the occupant -- if the family had phones. Your house might not have had an owner when first built, so keep moving forward through the years.
- Another resource is the San Jose Historical Society, located in Kelley Park. They have an extensive collection of postcards and other documents about San Jose.