This house was a hatter’s shop first

The front room of this house — the one with the good light, where everyone eventually puts a reading chair — was a hat shop from 1911 to 1934. Aldo Ferretti built the house with the shop in front and three rooms behind for his family, which is why the front door is off-center and the front windows are a foot taller than any others on the street: display windows, for hats. The city directory lists him plainly: "Ferretti, A., hatter." When hats went out, the Ferrettis simply closed the shop door and kept living behind it, and the tall windows have been confusing carpenters ever since.

The Kowalczyk family had it from 1936 to 1968 and planted the pear tree that still stands in the back corner — there is a photograph of it as a sapling, with a boy in suspenders holding the watering can like a rifle. The attic stairs still carry pencil marks from their children’s heights; we found them under the paint and stopped painting. Between 1968 and 1994 the house passed through four owners, one of whom paneled the parlor in a wood-effect vinyl that the neighborhood has agreed never to discuss.

Every house on this street has a legend, and ours is this: Ferretti was said to have sewn a gold coin into the brim of one hat a year, "for luck, for somebody." No coin has ever been found. We have owned the house eleven years and I will admit, in writing, that I have checked the attic twice.

We bought the house in 2015 and have tried to be worth it: rewired it, freed the pocket doors that were painted shut sometime in the vinyl era, and kept the shop door — it still opens, and it still has the little bell. The bell is original. Guests always ask.

This placard hangs in the entry hall, where the shop counter stood. If you are a guest: yes, you may ring the bell. If you are a neighbor researching your own house: the county keeps the directories, and it is a wonderful afternoon. And if you live here now, years from us: add your chapter to this page, check the attic — everyone does — and whatever else you renovate, leave the tall windows. They are the whole story, standing in the light.