The files
Each file begins with one address and follows whatever the records still remember about the people who passed through it. Sources are preserved so anyone can pick up the trail and carry the research further.
FELLS POINT, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Baltimore, Maryland
A narrow wooden house. A shoemaker. A ship carpenter. A dressmaker. And two women associated with the cigar trade from the same doorway, more than a decade apart.
DUBLIN, IRELAND
36 Fitzwilliam Square West, Dublin, Ireland
A single line in Ireland’s 1926 census led from a Georgian doorway to Mainie Jellett—the artist who helped force modernism into the Irish conversation.
OpenGREENPOINT, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York
A nineteenth-century brick house, a family of seven, two additional women in the household — and one directory entry that still resists explanation.
OpenROME, ITALY
Trastevere, Rome, Italy
We chose this door without knowing what was behind it. The property it opens onto carries part of Rome's Aurelian defensive line — and, in the nineteenth century, someone's home.
OpenPRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Nusle, Prague, Czech Republic
Two brass stones outside this doorway carry the names of two girls born in 1928. The surviving records carry the rest: a family, three consecutive transport numbers, and a question we are still asking.
MONTRÉAL · 1927
Montréal, Québec, Canada
A 1927 Montréal record named Léopold Beauchamp, bijoutier — jeweler — at this Old Montréal address. One name, one trade, one doorway.
PARIS · 1931 – 1936
Paris, France
A 1931 census found a family of three behind an ordinary blue door — and Hélène, listed as concierge, may have spent her days watching a doorway just like it.
