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Suzanne Stallings, resident
241 West Walnut Street
Lancaster

Case Study: Tradesman's Dwelling

The house at 241 West Walnut is part of a row of eight semi-attached one-and-one-half-story brick houses that are late Federal period examples of multi-unit urban housing, and significant remnants of a house form that was probably once quite common in the city of Lancaster. This set of four paired houses is, in fact, the longest row of contiguous one-and-one-half-story houses extant in the city.

David W. Graham, Jr. has owned the house at 241 West Walnut Street since 1979. I have rented the house from him since moving to Lancaster in August of 2000.
Since leaving college, I have lived in three other cities – New York, London, and Washington, D.C. – all distinguished for their cultural and historic character, but also for sky-high housing costs. Finding the West Walnut Street house was a tremendous joy, since I had previously lived only in apartments. Its modest size seemed spacious to me, since I live alone and was accustomed to tiny apartments. Here was my first house, and an affordable one, conveniently located downtown, with a responsible and attentive landlord. For a rental property, the house was in strikingly good condition, with architectural details intact. It’s been my first experience with two floors of living space, plus a basement. I was also delighted to have access to a rear yard, where I have a small urban garden (yielding plentiful tomatoes all summer) and a patio (providing a wonderful vantage point to observe said tomatoes ripening all summer).

While I appreciated the house’s historic character and charm, and I could guess at its approximate age, I knew nothing about its actual history. It thus served as a perfect research project when I took the Historical Society’s house history course in the spring of 2002.