Don't know much about history...

We are both total Old Map Nuts and have been curious about the history of our house and neighborhood since we moved in, but I'd always assumed that finding any cool information would take multiple trips to a big dusty old library archive. That sounds kinda fun, actually, but it's not at the top of our list, you know? So when I was procrastinating at work and discovered that the University of Pittsburgh's library has all of the building permits for 1895 - 1917, (the Schack was built in 1910), I gasped out loud. (As a coincidence, it also turns out that the Archives are right around the corner from our old apartment - who knew!) A few breathless clicks later I found out that Pitt also has a TON of great online databases of historic images, maps, documents, etc. A seriously impressive collection. Some of my favorites so far are the Pittsburgh Print Collection, the Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection, and Historic Pittsburgh, where I managed to find some maps of our street from 1904, 1923, and 1939. The one up top is from 1904, which was 104 years ago, before our house was even built. SO COOL.