LANSING - Ever wondered what your house looked like 50 years ago?

Maybe there was a one-car garage that is now a two-car garage. Or perhaps there was a trellis off the front porch. Was the house flanked by trees? Maybe there was once a porch that's no longer there.

As of last week, it became a bit easier for Lansing residents to find out.

Capital Area District Libraries Local History Online has added nearly 17,000 images of homes in Lansing.

"Most of the photos were taken between 1963 and 1965," said Heidi Butler, local history specialist at Capital Area District Libraries. "There are some that are into the '70s, maybe a few early '80s, but the bulk of the photos are from the '60s."

The photos were transferred to the library from the city assessor’s office at some point, Butler said, probably in the 1990’s.

There are no specific records of when they came or who received them or what the reason was for transferring them.

"Around that time, according to some of the comments I’ve seen on Facebook, that came from somebody in the city planning division, the assessor system changed and a lot of the responsibility was transferred to Ingham County."

The library knew how interested people are in house research in general, because of its Stebbins Real Estate Collection.

The Stebbins collection has information cards, photographs, newspaper clippings, negatives and other information.

"We thought this would be a nice complement to that and, compared to Stebbins, because this is only photographs, it was a lot easier to digitize and catalog. It was really straightforward – black and white photos and that was it."

Over about the past 10 years or so, a number of volunteers in local history have scanned the photos in batches as time was available.

"This last year, we’ve had a really great volunteer named Sarah Fitzgerald, who completed the scanning," Butler said. "There were others before her, but she got it all done.

"Once all of that was done, then we kind of figured out a quick way to get them cataloged. Then my other employee, who happens to be named Sarah, also, Sarah VanAcker, did the catalog records, and it just turned out that this week we were able to get them online.

Unfortunately, the houses cannot be searched by address.

Everything is identified by the older parcel number system which is similar to the parcel numbers that are used today, but not identical.

Dan Danke, an engineer in the public service department with the city of Lansing, who is knowledgeable on rights of way, easements and other assorted things, posted information on CADL's Local History page, that is helpful in searching for a home.

"3 means it is in Ingham County. If it starts with 23, it means it is in Eaton County. 3301 means it is in the Lansing Township part of the City. 3305 would mean it is in the Delhi Township part of the City. The next number is the section number of the township. Downtown Lansing is in Section 16. The next three digit number is the assessor block number. If it starts with 1, it is in the northwest part of the section; 2 is northeast; 3 is southwest, 4 is southeast. The final number is the three digit parcel number.

He also said the new assessor parcel numbers are very similar to the old, except there is now a 01 after the 33 or 23 to indicate it is in the City of Lansing.

"The people at CADL did not have a clear understanding of what the numbers meant, the old assessor's numbers, so I knew it would help," Danke said. "I was hoping it would make it easier for people to search."

In some cases, the address of a house was written on the back of a photo, and CADL has been able to include that in its catalog records.

"One of the things that has happened since we posted it is people are identifying their houses and sending us emails to say, 'Hey, that’s my house and the address is such and such,'" Butler said. "So we are able to update the records to add that information, but unfortunately we don’t have an easy way to cross-reference those old parcel numbers with current addresses to get them identified."

The photos hold historical values for several reasons. For instance, Butler said, when people are pulling siding off their house, they might want to know what it looked like before. Or, if they have to replace a porch, they want to know what it looked like originally.

"People are curious about how their landscaping has changed over the years," Butler said. "Sometimes, we find people that they’ll get an old picture of their house and say 'Oh my gosh it had a pond in the front yard, I didn’t know that.'"

"Old pictures tell a lot of stories about how things used to be — about garages that were in the back. You can tell if it was painted a dark color, and now it’s light. So just kind of the visual history of the home and how it has changed over time."

Since the information was posted on CADL Local History on Facebook, it took off. People have posted it and shared it with their neighborhood associations and with friends and neighbors.

"Most people are so excited to see older pictures of their houses," Butler said. "Definitely we’ve had people writing in with stories of particular houses."

One of those stories was of a woman who identified her house on the west side and said that she learned from neighbors that it was the house where actress and playwright Lisa Kron grew up.

Kron made history in 2015 when she won two Tony Awards for her Broadway musical "Fun Home," a story she adapted from a 2006 memoir by cartoonist Alison Bechdel.

Kron and songwriter Jeanine Tesori became the first female writing team to win a Tony for musical score. Kron also won for best book of a musical. "Fun Home" was also named best musical and Director Sam Gold won his first Tony.

"She grew up on the west side of Lansing and that was her parent’s home and it was able to be identified," Butler said. "So that was kind of cool. It’s been really fun, I think, to see how the neighborhood used to look for some of these people."

Find the site on Facebook at CADL Local History or go to http://bit.ly/2wBZop9

Contact Vickki Dozier at (517) 267-1342 or vdozier@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickkiD.