What businesses operated in your neighborhood fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred years ago? The grocery store where your grandparents shopped, the drugstore with the soda fountain where teenagers gathered, the factories that employed thousandsâthese businesses shaped community life but often left limited records. This guide provides strategies for discovering what businesses existed at specific addresses and uncovering their stories.
Why Research Old Businesses?
Historical business research reveals how communities functioned economically and socially. The types of businesses in a neighborhood indicate demographics, economic health, and community needs. Ethnic groceries suggest immigrant populations. Multiple factories indicate industrial centers. Numerous banks and professional offices signal commercial districts.
Individual business histories tell human storiesâentrepreneurs' dreams, family dynasties, innovation, and resilience through economic challenges. These stories enrich understanding of local history and provide context for understanding how neighborhoods evolved.
City Directories: Your Primary Resource
City directories, published annually or biannually from the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s, are invaluable for business research. These directories listed residents and businesses by name, address, and often by type of business. The address-based listings (reverse directories) let you search by street address to discover which businesses operated at specific locations.
Finding City Directories
Most public libraries maintain collections of local city directories, often in special collections or archives. Many libraries have digitized their directory collections, making them searchable online. Major digitization projects through Ancestry.com, Internet Archive, and university libraries have made thousands of city directories freely accessible.
Start with your local library's reference deskâlibrarians can direct you to available directories and demonstrate how to use them effectively. For online access, search "[your city name] city directory digital collection" to find available resources.
Using City Directories Effectively
To research a specific address, look for the street name listing section, which typically comes after the alphabetical resident listing. Directories show each address with the occupant's name and often their occupation or business name. Following the same address across multiple years reveals business successionâone restaurant replacing another, a residence converting to commercial use, or long-established businesses remaining for decades.
Pay attention to directory publication dates and the information currency noted in the introduction. A directory published in 1925 might contain information gathered in 1924, important for accurately dating business operations.
Newspaper Research
Historical newspapers are goldmines for business research. Advertisements reveal not just business names but also what they sold, their slogans, and their unique characteristics. Business news sections covered openings, closings, expansions, and changes of ownership. Society pages mentioned where people shopped and dined.
Types of Business Information in Newspapers
Advertisements provide the most consistent business documentation. Many businesses advertised regularly, sometimes for decades. These ads reveal product lines, pricing, services offered, and how businesses positioned themselves. Display ads often included images of storefronts or products.
Business news articles covered significant events: grand openings, anniversaries, new construction, fires, bankruptcies, and sales. These articles often included business history and owner background information. Legal notices published information about business incorporations, dissolutions, and foreclosures.
Accessing Historical Newspapers
Many libraries provide access to newspaper databases like Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive.com, or regional databases through library cards. The Library of Congress's Chronicling America provides free access to thousands of historical newspapers. Google News Archive includes historical newspaper content, though coverage varies.
For best results, search business names, addresses, and owner names. Try variant spellingsâbusiness names weren't always consistent, and OCR (optical character recognition) of old newspapers isn't perfect. Search business types ("drugstore" or "hardware store") combined with location ("Main Street" or neighborhood names) to find businesses even if you don't know specific names.
Fire Insurance Maps
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, created from the 1860s through the 1960s, documented building footprints, construction materials, and often business names for insurance underwriting purposes. These detailed maps let you see exactly which buildings housed which businesses, how properties subdivided, and how commercial districts evolved.
Accessing Sanborn Maps
The Library of Congress maintains the largest collection of Sanborn maps, available digitally through their website. Many state libraries, historical societies, and university libraries also provide access to Sanborn maps for their regions. Your local library might have copies for your community.
Using Sanborn maps requires some practice. Colors indicate construction materials (yellow for wood, pink for brick). Numbers and abbreviations show building uses, stories, and special features. Business names sometimes appear directly on maps, especially for larger establishments.
Business Permits and Licenses
Municipal governments issued business licenses, building permits, and various regulatory documents that left paper trails. These records, when preserved, provide definitive documentation of business operations including exact dates, owner names, and business types.
Where to Find Business Records
Check with your city or county clerk's office about historical business license records. Building departments may maintain old permit files showing commercial construction or conversions. Some municipalities have transferred historical records to archives or historical societies, while others maintain older files in storage.
Availability varies dramaticallyâsome cities methodically preserved records, others discarded files after retention periods expired. Even if complete records don't exist, you might find valuable fragments that confirm business operations.
Tax Records and Assessor Files
Property tax records sometimes include information about business operations. Commercial properties were assessed differently than residential ones, and assessor files occasionally note which businesses occupied properties. Tax lien records also provide business documentation.
Access to historical tax records varies by location. County assessor or treasurer offices might maintain older records, or they might have been transferred to archives. These records often receive less attention than other historical sources, so asking specifically about business-related information in tax files can yield unexpected discoveries.
Trade Publications and Business Directories
Industries often published specialized directories and trade magazines. Grocery store journals, manufacturing directories, banking guides, and other trade publications listed businesses by type and location. These resources are particularly valuable for researching specific industry sectors.
Finding Trade Publications
University business libraries sometimes maintain historical business publication collections. Trade associations might have archived historical directories and magazines. HathiTrust Digital Library includes many digitized trade publications. Specialist researchers familiar with particular industries might have compiled business directories.
When researching specific business types (breweries, movie theaters, banks), search for industry-specific historical resources rather than relying solely on general city directories and newspapers.
Telephone Directories
As telephone service expanded in the early 20th century, telephone directories supplemented city directories as business documentation. Business sections (Yellow Pages) provided categorized business listings, while white pages included business phone listings with addresses.
Many libraries maintain historical telephone directory collections. Online resources like RetroYellowPages.com provide access to some digitized phone books. Telephone directories are particularly useful for mid-to-late 20th century business research when traditional city directories were declining.
Oral History and Community Memory
Long-time community residents remember businesses from their lifetimes with remarkable detailâwhat stores sold, who owned them, where exactly they were located. These memories provide information that might exist nowhere else in the historical record.
Conducting Business History Oral Interviews
When interviewing people about historical businesses, bring maps or photographs to help orient discussions. Ask open-ended questions: "What stores do you remember on Main Street?" rather than yes/no questions. Inquire about what businesses sold, who owned them, what they looked like, and why they closed.
Record interviews (with permission) and take detailed notes. Follow up on names and detailsâif someone mentions a store owner, try to find that person or family members for additional information. Verify oral history information when possible through documentary sources, but don't dismiss it when documentation isn't available.
Photographs and Postcards
Historical photographs and postcards often captured business districts, showing storefronts, signs, and commercial activity. These visual records document businesses and provide context about commercial life, street scenes, and how neighborhoods looked during different eras.
Finding Historical Business Photographs
Check local historical society photograph collectionsâmany societies have organized collections by street or business type. Library special collections often maintain historical photograph archives. Online sources like the Library of Congress, state archives, and digital collections from universities provide searchable historical images.
Private collections among community members often contain valuable undocumented photographs. Community photo-gathering events, where people bring images to scan and catalog, can uncover remarkable visual documentation of historical businesses.
Census Records for Business Research
While primarily documenting population, census records include occupational information valuable for business research. When you know a business owner's name, census records can provide biographical information, family relationships, and confirmation of occupations. The "industry" field in census records indicates what kind of business employed individuals.
Special business censuses, conducted sporadically in the 19th and early 20th centuries, documented manufacturing and commercial establishments with details about production, employees, and capital investment. These records, available through the National Archives and some state archives, are incredibly detailed though coverage is inconsistent.
Historical Society Resources
Local historical societies maintain files on businesses, particularly those with historical significance or colorful histories. These files might include newspaper clippings, photographs, correspondence, business records, and research compiled by previous investigators.
Historical society staff and volunteers often possess deep knowledge about local businesses even beyond what's formally cataloged. Explaining your research interest might prompt them to remember relevant information or direct you to sources you wouldn't find otherwise.
Discover What Businesses Existed at Any Address
The When It Was app consolidates business records from multiple sources, letting you explore what operated at specific addresses throughout history. Add your own knowledge to help build the most comprehensive business history database.
Explore When It Was âSpecialized Business Records
Banking and Financial Institutions
Banks and financial institutions typically left more extensive records than retail businesses. The FDIC maintains historical banking information. State banking commissioners' reports, often available in state libraries, listed banks, their locations, and financial information. Banking trade publications provided industry news.
Restaurants and Bars
Liquor license records provide excellent documentation for bars, taverns, and restaurants serving alcohol. These licenses were regulated and recorded, leaving paper trails when other business records don't exist. Sanitary inspection records might also document food service establishments.
Manufacturing
Industrial directories, trade association records, and special manufacturing censuses documented factories and industrial concerns. Labor statistics reports included information about manufacturing employment. Company histories, often published for anniversaries, provide detailed business narratives.
Overcoming Common Research Challenges
Address Changes
Many cities renumbered streets during the late 19th or early 20th centuries, making address tracking challenging. Historical maps and conversion tables (sometimes available through archives or historical societies) help translate old addresses to current numbers. City directories sometimes note address changes.
Name Variations
Business names weren't standardizedâ"Smith's Grocery," "Smith Grocery Store," "B. Smith Grocer" might all refer to the same business. Search multiple name variations and look for owner names, which were more consistent than business names.
Limited Records for Small Businesses
Small businesses, especially those serving ethnic communities or operating in residential neighborhoods, often left minimal documentation. These businesses might have operated without advertising, maintained minimal records, and not appeared in directories. Oral history becomes particularly important for documenting these establishments.
Organizing and Sharing Your Research
As you research, maintain organized files with source citations. Create timelines showing business succession at addresses. Take photographs of documentary sources for your files. Compile your findings into narratives or databases that others can use.
Share your research with historical societies, libraries, or digital platforms. Your work contributes to community historical knowledge and might help other researchers. Consider presenting findings at historical society meetings or writing articles for local history publications.
Conclusion
Researching historical businesses requires detective work, persistence, and creativity. Records are scattered across multiple repositories, preserved inconsistently, and sometimes exist only in community memory. But the effort rewards you with rich insights into how communities functioned, how people lived and worked, and how commercial landscapes evolved.
Every discovered business represents real people's livelihoods, community gathering places, and pieces of neighborhood identity. By researching and documenting these businesses, you preserve important aspects of local history that might otherwise be forgotten, contributing to a more complete understanding of your community's past.