what the asses or knows and also links to map's and ariel photos which can be useful in various stages. you know i think in order to talk about these records that we're launching into, i think it's a good idea to put into perspective why we look at our records. this is a good thing for me to go off on. that, speaking in the residential field especially, because that's where i do most of my work. the way the building department and planning departments view changes that you might propose, including legalization of existing features you take for granted as existing is all documenting how it got to be the way it is. it's important to think about these building records as being

a record of actions, not necessarily of things. so, quite often the best place to start is when did the building get built and what was it when it was built? how large was it, what was it's function and different uses there? once you established it's original use and original configuration, then you have a marker by which to track changes through the history of the building and that's where you'll find yourself going through many of the different resources that the chief inspector has laid out that we'll talk about today. >> i'm a very product oriented person. one reason i like being a building inspector unlike planning looking in the future, you look at a plan, approve it and the thing getsibility.

i like things in discreet little bits. my recommendation for that concept of myself is everybody for their house should have a notebook and in this, you should start to insert the records for your building. keep them all in one place in those acid free slip cases and that way you have a product and you can begin chronologically. when i upgrade my house i felt an electrical permit in the wall. i slid it in there it's kind of yellow, but it's useful if i ever have to say yes this work was done legally in 1932. the city does not retape that. so we want to keep hard copy. forget the electronic stuff.

>> can we get those on-line? >> map's are available on-line through subscription by various libraries through the sand born map company. the san francisco library for a period of one year had a trial subscription and the use did not justify the cost so they suspended and the public demand to return that may occur again. >> what is sand born. >> the short answer is, no. sand born was a mapping company that was part of a fire insurance program that went around cities all over the united states and maybe beyond and actually, physically, mapped by hand every building, hold that up for me -- every

building and every out building and set of stairs and updated these map's on an annual basis walking around the city and unfortunately someone had the mistakes of canceling the subscription ten or twelve years back but we have these historical map's and their fantastic in many ways. they don't give you a full history of the building but at the snapshot, i think this was in the 40s. you can look that building and actually see, if you look carefully, you can see the number of floors. two floors with an addition in the back and a bunch of an abbreviationses and the big key in front of the thing and the one with the little stairs. so how is that important to you. san francisco has amendment to the code that says if you have

a stairs and a deck on your back porch and you want to replace them you can replace them in their original configuration if they were properlyibility in the first place. how can you prove they were? in many cases that's hard to prove. but here it is this shows exactly where the shaping configuration of the stairs is. so we have a set of the most current inborn or sand born map's behind the planning department counter that will be happy to make or let you look at them and make copies of them there's a free copy machine. i've seen the old ones. not in the last year or two, do you know where they are? >> the series four books are on the sixth floor of the san francisco public library and early series are micro film

also from the library. if you belong to a library in another jurisdiction like san jose or oakland they might have subscriptions for their area and that might extend -- they have maybe all california map's. >> do you know where the ariel services are and where. >> the planning department has three that are as of yet unconserved. >> what does that mean. >> we have not had the time or resources to digitize them. they're very large. more than this book here. they're about 32 inches square and cover the whole city in 1948 to 1950, somewhere in the mid 50s or 60's. >> to go on the resources that

are available to us there's aerial photography that goes back to the -- actually pre first world war and they're amazing and held by pacific ariel survey off,,hagen burger road by the airport. what they did in the early era is they had a large format cameras that they went with the originals over the city and did long exposure photos with very high resolution lenses so when you want to find something in the archives, they'll give you aqua drant go to and a loop and you can't see much resolution but they will blow it up for you and the resolution will be so high you will be able to determine the make of many of the autos you see on the street.

in the teens and 20s. >> so let's go back to learning history of your building to find out when was your buildingibility and who built it. what do you think moses? >> for the newer buildings i believe their data base comes from building permit records. >> how do people access that. >> sfgov dot org. you're going to tell he is a historicle person. for newer buildings after the 06 earthquake. you mean the 89? >> one of the greatest faults with the assessors data base is they make up date for builds that pre existing 1906.

their records are not fully accurate for buildings after that but i think their 90 percent correct for after 06 so if there was building that was surviving when i started shop again in later 06 they said it was in the 1900's. could be from 1850s but they said 1900. so that's kind of how you know it's pre 06 and that's all you can do. >> power of bureaucrat. >> this is a remarkable thing the assessors records. first of all you can't get a copy of this unless your the owner or the owners agent. but it's remarkable because there were field inspections done of almost every building in san francisco and it contains photographs of those buildings and it's a terrific,

counted sinks and rooms and bathrooms. a tremendous resource. in addition to finding out from the assessors recores probably the place i would start is an original permit building for a building after 1906. here's a building permit and you can get these by filling out one of those little forms we have over there. micro film records request. right, alan? and you take it to the accounter and say, here's what i would say -- i want to see every record available for my building including the permits, the plans, the job cards because that's where the inspectors sign off on and what else do we have over there.

>> well, basically we have building permit applications or job cards or jobs done by district inspectors department to say it's final or not finaled with an expired job card and, plumbing, electrical permits. >> how come -- i thought we didn't. >> we do have some and miscallaneous documents and letters where people sent to the city and documents tham come through another department before us. now, what we don't have and we have building plans let me say buildings -- most wood frame houses residentials don't have plans in my recollection but commercial buildings almost always there's some plan, if there's a multi unit large

residential building will have plans? >> well, i was going to say what we don't have, inspection records, job cards, we have from about 1933 going forward, plumbing permits and inspections from about 1976 going forward and electrical permits from about 1985 going forward so just as mr. corn field said if you find a tag or something on your circuit breaker box or something and it's old. with a straight edge or something take it off and save it. it may be the only record that something was done at that time. >> yeah, you had a question? >> you have permits for modifications. >> the question is do you make a request for documents and nothing turns up which happens

frequently, maybe. where else would we look? where else would we look for the documents. >> the planning has historic files similar to what was said about the inner office between various city departments and ours have not been micro films. they're still in paper files so we have the originals. they're from about the mid 30s, um... forward. so if like the planning department approached the owners concerned something at that site, we would have our copy of that up there. >> here you go. block book has a notice in it. >> down on the bottom floor of the planning floor at 1660, we

have block books that are another source of research. >> this is book number ten. volume ten and right down on the first floor you can see them. there's a huge selection. must be 75 or a hundred for covering the whole city. >> we've got them from 1935, 46, 54 and current ones that are up to 2004. i think they've been updated. in the older sets in the 1935. with a lot the owner of record. also in a color wash is the zoning that existed for that time. pasted in are zoning changes that happened various lots during the 30s and the 1940s when the next set was issued and there are little pencilled

in notes, sometimes with permit numbers written in. especially valuable for billboards noted in the books. we will have the build board permit number written on top of the lot. if there was a variance decision or a zoning decision. >> like a notice of special restriction. >> like from the 1930s i've seen, like the parking for this buildings to be located at this other building because they were under the same ownership at some time. those sort of restrictions that are also suppose to be recorded against the deeds at the assessors reporting office would be also here if if it was a case of some decision.

>> some other things you need to know, the dimensions of your lot. 100 by 25 on this side of the street. it does not have the official addresses and all of us will talk about that in a second but it has a great deal of pencilled in information. notes from the planner and fantasticly valuable so find the old block books and use our free copy machine and make a copy of the page. how can you make sure it's the right building. this is the cities official address street from block 2129 which is,pachako, 2029, and this is maintained by the first floor on this building and this has the official address of the city. the date the address was issued

and maybe the date the address was changed and other alternate addresses we may initially applied to the building. when you look for the history of your building not only do you look at every address it might have been called by. example you might ask for both streets it intersects and always reference block 21, 29 block or block 1f. we're referencing blocks and addresses are nothing but trouble. people make them up. they come and go. 1125 abc. we have tremendous problems so use blocks primarily. >> in addition to map's

there's other resources showing characteristics of lots that are very valuable resources. that's title companies. your title companies the major ones in san francisco, all have original copies of the assessors block map's and changes to those individual blocks which include lot line adjustments and ease meants that often make all the difference in whether another city agency will accept something or agree to a change in that thing. with the -- after the earthquake there was -- and the fires -- many of those records were destroyed in the system and city. the entire ownership was gone. nobody had any records of who owned what. it was all people saying, this

lots always been in my family so the board of supervisors after the earthquake and fire created a function to allow ownership to continue. it was could a, makanearny, which claims ownership as a traditional right over a certain parcel and those are fascinating and historic documents when you come across them. >> so, learning history go to the assessor office in city hall or a title company and have them search for all the documents recorded against your property and if you're city hall you look at adjourning propertys so see if they have east meants or ease meants.

if on page 29 you see a notice of special restrictions under the planning code and we would ask you record it and it would be on file that assessors recording office and you can look it up and print this off and you would be surprised and who has the rights to drill on your backyard or exit across your front yard there are many, easements. >> i would like to add when the as see sore is taxing you on what's physically out there and not what's legally out there, many people come to us and say i have this apartment and this room in the basement -- they get the history of their building from our records management department and say say, there is nothing in the building department that says build this but i'm being taxed

on it and again, that's more money for the city because it's more square foot age and they tax you on what's physically out there. >> on page 22 of the hand-out you have is a certificate of final completion and occupancy. when a buildings put up we currently have and for many years up to -- when to the 50s maybe? >> in 1945 they issued those but unfortunately for every job that was ever done site may say reroofing and give you a,cfc, but it does not say one family or two family, just describes the job and in the 1950s it was five years later that it said only for conditions in the building code. >> so if you -- this document

is the key document for us to determine what is the legal use and occupancy of your building so we will always, if there's an issue we will go to the certificate of final completion and occupancy. that's you know, three story building and that's legally what you have according to our records. if you want to show us a mistakes has been made you bring that documentation forward. this is the key government document. someone mentioned the 3r report. it's a collection of records and not an original source. it's a collection saying yes there was a permit issued on such and such date. it's not the original. just a reference to the originals. if someone says my, 3r says two

units but it's three, the 3r report is not the controlling document. it's simply an information compilation. here's a report on page 316. >> again, the 3r report is made up from the dob meants from the micro film so theoretically they should both match. >> but there are many things were where their are questions if their good. >> is there anything that's good? >> what is this complete compilation. there is no single source of documents and that's message i'm trying give. >> i don't think that you should be or make a blanket statement that people are saying 3 r's are not good but

their limited utility. their intended to tell a buyer of a piece of property what the building department thinks it knows at any given time. that has substance and value. it isn't positive about the actual character of the building you need to go to source document. however if there is a conflict between what exists in the record and the 3r, that's something city agencies and repeal bodies will examine when you present that information. >> yes, sir.? >> you mentioned the certificate of completion and occupancy and the key document. how do we obtain those? >> that is one of the records you can request when you go to the micro film and say give us all certificates of final

completion. >> but again not every building has a certificate of final completion and occupancy. one is because we have ns certificates before a certain time. you may say and we take that's a gospel. >> how do we find out how the building was constructed and you have multiple sources that conflict. how do you come to the truth? >> there are source s we'll talk about. the water department jeremy, right? >> spring valley water company. >> this on page 8 item two describes what these records are and if you go to the water department offices down across unite had had nations plaza on

1155 market street they will bring out the original document and their very efficient and quick and it takes a few minutes. they are all written on pencil on onion skin. you can find out how many horse troughs were approved and things like that which is often very useful in determining when there are multiple buildings on a residential lot it will help determine if the secondary building has a history of habitant occupancy or what occupancy it was. >> once again you can get those at what? >> 1155 market street. the manager of the water department that time gathers staff while the city was burning and some people were

hauling buckets of water and somewhere hauling records out. if your researching a building that's pre 06. that's probably some of the best sources of information about your building that you will be able to find. you will be able to find who applies for the connection. sometimes it was the owner or the builder and the date it was connected and those go back to -- i've seen some from the late 18 60's. under the address. also the public library, 6th floor history room on micro film, the roll stuff, a copy of the ledgers by street. so if you're looking on 17th

street, they'll have the water department will have put in by year, every person on 17th street that came in. so, it's not by address but by street and year. a little odd but across reference. >> so after the original document there will often be taped and stapled additional service records from various points in time when changes were made and you'll see those on item 41 and 42 and 40 are all these things. in this case they all say the same thing but it gets much more interesting when we're trying to get a chronological stockpile of how a building came to be. this is not saying again, it was a legal change but at,x time in the past, water

department official acknowledged a new service hook up for that property, thus many city agencies will honor that's an accepting that's an a date when new water service was provided to a unit or something like that. >> other than the water department what other sources do we have for original information. >> sometimes the sand win map's. 80's to 96 you can bracket those. so it will show up on the 1899 but not the 1896 map you can narrow it down there if it existed on 1886 map and you don't know how much older than that it is and you can't find a water connection record,