Posted by Jason on Friday, Apr 22, 2016
Back in November I wrote about using the City of Iowa City Housing & Inspection Services’ permit activity lookup tool for finding more information about Iowa City house history. A coworker recently showed me another great house history link hidden at the bottom of individual accounts on the Iowa City Assessors parcel search results page. If you are looking at a house result you can scroll to the bottom of that page and you'll see "related information links" below the GIS map. There are a few useful links for house hunters here including former tax information for the property as well as a quick link to the GIS map with coordinates. The most interesting link for local history buffs is the "Old Property Report Card" in the lower right corner which will show you a past record of ownership with names and prices paid. There's also often pointed comments on these cards regarding the huge leap in sales prices that happened in the 1990s such as these :
About the Author
Jason is Adult Services Coordinator. He oversees reference services offered at the Info Desk, Switchboard, Digital Media Lab, Koza Family Teen Center, and Page Station. He coordinates programming opportunities for adults and teens.
Autobiographical stories of his work as Tropical Senior Botanical Horticulturist for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England. Carlos describes coming from a family that encouraged exploration, as well as respect and caretaking for the plants and animals of Asturias in Northern Spain. When wanderlust overtook him at 28, he travelled to London where a trip to the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew changed his world. Their efforts to save highly endangered plants mirrored his passion for caring for the land back in Asturias. He has an energetic, driven personality that comes through in his recounts of his intense Kew education in the greenhouses and beyond. Most of the book recounts his journeys to save seeds or cuttings of rare plants found in the islands of the Republic of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Amazon backwaters in Peru, and many other far flung locations. He’s a great storyteller and has set up each chapter as if he has to solve a puzzle with life or death stakes, how do these rare plants produce fruit, seed, and ultimately a new plant? He includes simple overviews of the science behind his a-ha moments, so even if you don’t have a botanical background you come away with an understanding for how these mysteries were solved. His passion for plants is infectious and it carries through in his writing, the stories are often zany and move quickly and you’re left feeling that we need many more people with the drive and desire of this plant messiah. -Jason