The two photos today have in common only that they both are of the area around the Hammell residence at 122 N Sherman in Albany. They were taken roughly four years apart.

This is a photo of the neighborhood in about 1908.

The house just left of center is the Hammell residence at 122 N Sherman. According to county records, that house was built in 1890. That was the year the Hammells moved to Albany from Nebraska, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they built they did not build that house. In 1892, according to a city directory, they were living in a house on Sixth Street near Thurston Street.

The house just right of center is 130 N Sherman. That house (again, according to county records) was built in 1907. I don’t know that John and Sarah Hammell built that house (though they may have remodeled it), but they apparently owned the house starting soon after 1907 it was built if they didn’t build it themselves. A fire map from 1890 shows a house on the corner of Water and Sherman, but the relationship between that structure and the current one is unclear, given the date in county records.

It appears as though a retaining wall and sidewalks had been freshly installed at the time this photo was taken, and that a parking strip had been created along the streets. Wooden cages evidently protect newly planted trees. I imagine this was to be followed by improvements to the streets themselves.

The street sign at the corner indicates (as expected) Sherman Street as the cross street running in front of the houses at 122 and 130, and Water Street (now “Water Avenue”) as the street in the foreground of the photo.

The simple lean-to porch that can be seen on the house at 122 would be replaced by a more elaborate one within a few years after this photo. The adequate, but small porch on the house at 130 would also be replaced within a few years after this photo by a larger porch covering the entire front of the house. This new porch can be seen in the photo included in this recent post.

This second photo shows the side of the house at 130 that faces Water Street. John Hammell’s 1912 Cadillac Model 30 is parked on the street (which provides some idea when the photo was taken).

Just right of the car is a new feature on this property, a brick garage John Hammell built to house his car. This brick garage still stands, and was discussed in previous posts here and here.

This photo also shows that the back porch of the house at 130 had been screened in since the first photo was taken.

So it is evident that there was a lot going on in this corner of Albany between 1907, when the house at 130 was built, and 1912, when the second photo above was taken. And John Hammell likely played no small part in that activity.