We heard from the former owner that there may be a staircase buried in the wall connecting the first and second floors. Hearing this aligned with our suspicions, having scoped out what appeared to be a stairway above the basement flight of stairs.

Sure enough, we found it!

The walls of the staircase are a lime green painted plaster above high gloss black painted beadboard wainscoting. The stairs themselves are also painted high gloss black – and they have a rubberized surface on the tread with an aluminum nosing, presumably from the Cora Miller Hospital era of the building.

We now have 3 staircases between the first and second floors, and one staircase each for the basement and the third floor. We will be getting our steps in!

Given the building’s multiple uses over the past 140 years, trying to age the various changes that were made is important to us. As for closing up this staircase, we’ve determined when that took place by the plywood used within the new floor structure over the stairwell. This plywood had an ink stamp that gave us what we needed to know.

• CS 45-60 was the standard this plywood met. CS stood for Commercial Standard. 45 refers to the year the standard was introduced, and 60 refers to the year of its last revision. This standard was not used after November 1, 1966.
• DFPA stood for Douglas Fir Plywood Association, which was founded in 1933, but became the American Plywood Association (APA) in 1964.

So, we’ve deducted this plywood was manufactured between 1960 (the year of the standard applied to this plywood) and 1964 (the year the DFPA stamp would’ve become the APA stamp). Thus, we assume the building was being used as a nursing home when the staircase was covered.