Researching "This Old House" in Cook County
When my wife and I bought our current home, we were told that it was built in 1906. That made me curious about (1) whether this was indeed true and (2) the previous owners of our house. So, I made a trip to the Cook County Recorder's office yesterday to see what I could discover.
The Recorder's office is located in Room 120 of the City Hall - County Building at 118 North Clark Street (here's a map).
If you are planning on doing this type of research, you should bring along a deed for the property you are researching, including the PIN (Permanent Index Number) and the legal description.
You'll need to go through Room 120 and down the stairs to the basement. There you can ask an employee to help you find the book where records for your property are located. Books are arranged by information included in the legal description. My home is located in "Section 18, Township 39 north, Range 13 east," so I was pointed to one of the books labeled 18-39-13. There I found two pages containing a list of all of the recorded documents for my home since it was built in 1906 (ending in 1985 -- all documents after this date are available online here). Some of these documents (especially those related to mortgages) aren't really important to me, but I am interested in the deeds by which previous owners bought and sold the property.
There is a document number next to each document, which you can copy down and take to the microfilm library down the hall. (For some older documents an employee will need to help you by converting the old numbers to microfilm numbers.) You can then get the microfilm and a viewer, and print out the documents you want.
Happy hunting!
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