For those of you who think that the ol’ mud over the box trick is new – well it seems that it is an older trick than I thought?

It seems there were hacks back in the early days as well.

Whenever I realize that there are buried boxes somewhere, I dig them out carefully, not just because I have come across live conductors in them, and sometimes from not just other circuits, but other metering as well. But one of the benefits is that you can get the news paper from the day they stuffed it in there. For the most part I usually only find the 1970’s and 80’s sometimes early 90’s. But this is the first I have found from the 30’s - June 12th 1939

Originally this building was a Hotel built in 1931, later becoming apartments roughly when this hack decided to bury the sconces in 1939, and fish two cambric and rubber conductors down the metal lathe & plaster wall, and install an outlet with no box just screwed right to the wooden baseboard. They did this all over this building… And on top of that, sometimes pulled the conductors from adjacent units to do it. I can tell that a professional did the conversion from Hotel to apartments – splitting the units, and adding the kitchens. (With a little permit search I found the company name too, as well as the inspector.) Four months later some hack got into a bunch of the units to do this in 50% of the units I have been in so far.

Piecing together other parts of the newspaper (wish those pic’s came out better… Unreadable….) I got some good insight to local, national and international history – as well as a look at a portion of the funny pages.

• Apparently you could by a house in that neighborhood worth ~$2.5M today for $5k!
• The Old Cadillac Dealership that is now a movie multiplex used to sell Packard’s too.
• And people in Algeria were not happy about the Nazi’s interfering with the flow of oil through their country – and that war in Europe might break out “any day now”. (Wish I had more of that article – Maybe its stuck in some other box I haven’t found yet?)

These apartments later were used as Officer Housing for the Presidio Army base, and have unobstructed picture perfect views of the Golden Gate Bridge which was being built around the time it was a hotel.

Mark Heller (e57)

and that war in Europe might break out “any day now”.

With a little permit search I found the company name too, as well as the inspector.

Usually they only taped the live wires and stuffed them into the wall.

Hacks are around since the days of Edison I guess... the house where I live was wired when it was built in 1914 and it seems already the original wiring was a wild mix of conduit and cloth conduit wire direct buried in plaster, some very creative wiring runs,... sconce wiring plastered over is fairly common too. Usually they only taped the live wires and stuffed them into the wall. No big surprise then when the wall is hot...

A groove 1 1/2 in. deep is chiseled into the plaster and brick, and a piece of very thick walled rubber hose, greased with soft soap on the outside, is laid in the groove. Th whole is then plastered up and surfaced off smooth. Both ends of the rubber hose, however, extend from the plaster. After the plaster has hardened the rubber hose is pulled out, the soap preventing the plaster from sticking to it. The result is a hole extending under the surface of the wall through which the rubber-covered wires are fished.

This system, however, is now being superseded by the Peschel system, since the latter is only slightly more expensive and much more substantial.