By Sandra Fleishman, Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 8, 2000

When Alys Campaigne wanted to surprise her boyfriend on his birthday in February, she hired a detective.

No, not the kind of private eye who wears a trenchcoat and shades - the kind who investigates houses.

The Senate staffer hired neighbor Paul Kelsey Williams, a mild mannered 33-year-old District resident who tracks down histories of houses and published them for curious homeowners. Williams' company, Kelsey & Associates, operates out of his own historic row house in Shaw-Cardozo and has been digging up the dirt - or just the facts, on Washington properties for almost a decade. Though he's never actually found a real skeleton in any closet, he had received payoff's in the form of fascinating information gained from dogged, unglamorous legwork.

Williams's mysteries get solved by sorting through piles of historic records or filing cabinets of microfilm. The clues are buried in documents such as building permits, tax and deed records, census documents, old city directories and photos kept by the city, National Archives and local public and private historical libraries.

Campaigne wanted Williams to trace the history of the 110 year old row house on T Street NW that she shares with George Abar, another Hill staffer. "We had lived there for two years and begun renovating," recalls Campaigne. Behind a fireplace, "we found some old newspapers and a set of dog tags, and that reminded us that the house has been there since the turn of the century and that a lot of other people have lived there."

Though Campaigne had done some basic property records searches after the two bought the house, she got bogged down quickly. So she contacted Williams to finish the job for Abar's 31st birthday.

Most interesting to Abar were extensive biographies of former owners. "We found out that all the people who lived here were attorneys and nurses and bureaucrats, very much like the two of us," Abar said. "We're another couple in a long line of not-so-interesting people, but now that we've read about them we've found them fascinating."

While a handful of others have done similar work in the Washington area in the three decades since historic preservation caught on, most have moved from writing individual house histories to bigger projects. Typically, architectural historians do historic survey work required by governments and funded by grants and the historians cater to corporations seeking tax credits for therenovation and preservation of historic buildings and sites.

But Williams, for now, is sticking with the little guys. At this scale, he can wrap up each history within two to three months, compared with the many months associated with big research proposals. By specializing, he can reuse some research if he hits the same architect, builder or neighborhood.

And the real estate boom has had big reverberations for his business, since it has drawn many buyers back to older properties in the District and close-in suburbs.

"It's kind of taken off lately," Williams said. "I get most of my business through word of mouth: People hear about it at a party or some other function and they want it done too. With the real estate boom and the good economy, it's really been growing."

Homeowners of typical two- and three-story town houses pay Williams $535 to $900 for a history. But the price can go as high as $2,500 for a large property or one with a complicated past. Commercial building histories run from $750 to $3,500; most of Williams' commercial clients are nonprofit groups or small businesses.

Williams's business brochures and Web site (www.washingtonhistory.com) entice clients with free estimates and the promise of a complete report within 10 to 12 weeks.

Williams said he now writes 12 to 15 house histories a month, compared with six to eight a month last year. He also has branched out from the District to Arlington and Alexandria. Most of his clients are the house-proud young couples and gay men who are the latest round of enthusiastic buyers in the Shaw and Logan Circle neighborhoods.

"We never had a market like today's," Emily Eig said a bit enviously. Eig started in the same field with partner Judy Robinson 23 years ago, just as government incentives for historic preservation were emerging. Both women now have their own companies, concentrating on corporate or government clients. But both remember the old days with fondness.

"I miss it sometimes," said Eig, owner of E.H.T. Traceries Inc. in Chevy Chase. "For most of us, buying a house is the most expensive purchase we make . . . and it's usually such an emotional investment too. . . . It's very satisfying to see who lived there before and to see who designed it and what other houses the architect built and what went on in the neighborhood when it was being built."

But Eig and Robinson say they don't miss the tedium of poring through old documents and microfilm in the hunt for information on a particular house. "It's really a labor of love," Eig said.

"It's a lot of fun," insists Williams, though he acknowledges that his two research assistants "do much of the grunt work." And, he said, "You never know what you'll find. I go at it like a detective. You hit a cold trail where nothing's working and then you hit something that will click."

An example of a cold trail, he recalled, was a house with 28 phone lines. "We never could find out anything about that, whether it was used for surveillance or something like that."

He said, "People are always a little nervous about finding out too much. They'll say, 'If you find out that there was a murder in the house, don't tell me.' "
Williams's love of history started in the sixth grade after his parents bought "a big old Victorian pile in upstate New York." In high school, he wrote walking tour books as a Boy Scout project and whipped up historical calendars with his own drawings of Skaneateles landmarks.

He earned a bachelor's degree in historic preservation and architecture from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and graduate credits in historic preservation planning at Cornell.

He realized the potential for a house history business when he bought a century-old French Mansard on a triangular lot at Vermont and T streets NW in 1992. Williams paid $110,000 for the 1,341-square-foot row house.
"A neighbor tipped me off that the house had some interesting history," Williams said. But because he was working in a preservation job during the hours when city agencies and research libraries were open, his research dragged on. When he tried to hire a historian, "I found that there weren't people doing it. So I started the business on the side."

He went full time in 1994, after discovering that his house had been built in 1879 and was turned into the Frelinghuysen University for working black adults by Anna J. Cooper in 1921. "It's hard to imagine that there were once 60 students packed in here," Williams said. The house is so narrow, Williams can stand in the center hallway and almost touch both sides of the building.

"It was just a mess when I first got it," Williams recalled. "There were rats and a big waterfall gushing water from the roof." The renovated building recently was appraised at $335,000.

Sleuth of Historic Houses Finds Cold Trails, and Hot

Williams said many clients contact him when they're updating a house.
"They might pull a radiator out and find an old letter on Victorian stationary, or they might find a baby shoe. . . . They usually come to me with a few of the puzzle pieces.

"I get a lot of business from the Washingtoniana division of the [Martin Luther King] library and the D.C. Historical Society," he adds. "People go there thinking they are going to do their research in an afternoon," but it can take weeks to get through the files around the city.

James D'Orta, a physician and Democratic fund-raiser, was very familiar with the immediate history of the Georgetown house he bought in 1995--its celebrity status came from its days as one-half of the property where Democratic movers and shakers Averell and Pamela Harriman held court. But he hired Williams to fill in the blanks about who else had lived there.

Also he wanted to document planned renovations to the house, which had no central air conditioning and outdated plumbing and electrical wiring. The house, for which he paid $991,000, also had no kitchen because the Harrimans had lived in a larger, adjacent house and used his building mainly as a private art gallery and an office for Democrats in the 1980s.

"Paul did such extensive research that it really brought the house to life," D'Orta said. "We live in a very historic city, and we sometimes take a lot of things for granted. But when you find out you're living in almost a museum . . . it makes you feel very humble."

The 32-page report weaves together mountains of information: how the first frame house on the lot figured in the beginnings of Georgetown in 1703; details about an early owner known as "Father Miller" to Indian tribes who visited Washington; and a complete rundown on the existing building, constructed in 1891 for prominent Georgetown merchant Wolf Nordlinger.

From 1915 to 1970, the house was used as an upscale boardinghouse, known in its later years as the Colony Club. In 1970, Harriman, a former New York governor, and his first wife, Marie, bought the club to expand their house next door.

Before renovations could begin, Harriman married his next wife, Pamela.
D'Orta said the house is best known now for its years as a political gathering place, "a haven when the Democrats were in exile." The report chronicles the legions of famous people who came through the doors.

D'Orta is proudest of President Clinton's reaction to the report. Clinton saw it during a recent Democratic fund-raiser at the house. Clinton was "very excited about it," D'Orta said. The president had not only used the house during his first presidential campaign, but had also spent time with the Harrimans when he was a student at Georgetown, D'Orta said.

Not all of Williams's houses are glamorous, the historian said. He remembers checking out a well-worn two-story rowhouse just off Florida Avenue and R Street NW whose first owner operated a plumbing business out of a stable in the back yard. The current owner is the daughter of a prominent black lawyer and former bar association president who wanted to document her family's connection to the property. Williams's research includes the purchase of the house by the owner's mother in 1939 and chronicles her father's impressive rise from dishwasher in high school to a nominee for various judgeships.

Williams recently has ventured into television, serving as the local host for a segment of "America's Classic Homes" on PBS, and providing the history for a 13-part series on cable channel House and Garden Television.

Even when he's not working, Williams is involved in historic research. He spent four years helping to secure designation of the Greater U Street Historic District and volunteers as co-president of the Cardozo-Shaw Neighborhood Association and with a variety of nonprofit historic preservation efforts.

"He's been very helpful to us," said colleague and friend Sally Berk of the D.C. Preservation League. "I don't really like doing research--I have trouble sitting still for a long time and I'm a little bit claustrophobic. So I sometimes subcontract with him. I can't tell you how very grateful I am that he gets excited every time I ask him to do some research."