Houses are packed with clues about their history. From floor to ceiling, if you look closely at the details, they may reveal when the house was built and how people lived in the space over time.

Tin ceilings were very popular in the mid-1800s and early 1900s. These mass-produced ceilings, stamped with decorative patterns, were lightweight, hardy, and fire-resistant. They offered an ...

In the late 1970s, Barbara Schiller and her husband bought a decaying brownstone in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, then in its early stages of gentrification. The house was structurally ...

Editor’s note: An updated version of this post can be viewed here. As Americans, we can feel patriotic when considering tin ceilings. It’s one of the few decorative elements found in the Victorian Age ...

Ceilings are the Rodney Dangerfield of homes. They get no respect. But there are plenty of easy ways to make over this oft-overlooked area, from the quirky charm of Victorian-era, pressed-tin tiles ...