FINDING YOUR BUILDING'S HISTORICAL NAME

You can learn what buildings were named — perhaps your own, perhaps those around you, as a springboard for ideas — through such low-cost, readily available books. Taking New York City as one example of the kinds of resources available to residents even in smaller locales, which often have resident historical societies and a local-history section of the library...

• Alone Together: A History of New York's Early Apartments (Cornell University Press, 1990) by Elizabeth Collins Cromley

• Living It Up: A Guide to the Named Apartment Houses of New York (Macmillan, 1984) by Thomas E. Norton and Jerry E. Patterson

• Naming New York: Manhattan Places and How They Got Their Names (NYU Press, 2001), by Sanna Feirstein

• The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins (Fordham University Press, 1990) by Henry Moscow

• * West of Fifth: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Manhattan's West Side.(Atheneum, 1987) by James Trager

• The Encyclopedia of New York City (Yale University Press, 1995) by Professor Kenneth T. Jackson

The main branch of the New York Public Library has resources on local architecture and history, primarily at the Art & Architecture Collection, in room 300. The library subscribes to the Avery Index of  architectural periodicals, to help you find article that may contain floor plans, drawings, sketches, photos and construction information on structures.

The other place to find blueprints, plans and drawings of buildings in New York City is the Department of Buildings. Also, the Landmarks Commission publishes reports on its website, which can be a great resource. And Columbia University has its searchable online New York Real Estate Brochure Collection.