Protecting historic properties

New York

BENEATH the living room's Hershey-hued oak coffers and beside its stately red-brick fireplace stood a small wooden side table, looking as old as the house itself. A sign-in sheet lay on the table, and a pile of thick, colourful folders.

Inside each folder were two thick packets. They contained professionally shot photographs, detailed floor plans and facts about the house, a 1923 bungalow, and its neighbourhood, Broadway-Flushing in Queens, where suburban tracts were laid out in 1906.