If this house could talk… is a community-based history and public art project, first created in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Residents and businesses post handwritten signs telling stories and offering history the of their homes and neighborhood from the recent or not-so-recent past. Temporary signs are mounted on posts, fences, and directly on buildings.

The project is described in an article in History News, the National Trust’s Preservation Forum, and in the Exhibitionist. (See: Zusy HNSummer10  and 10 Zusy EXH Spring 2015-10. ) To jumpstart your own project, see our guidelines and graphics (above), resources for local research, and our list of sign text and sign location map.  Here is a feature on WBUR’s Radio Boston, and a newsletter about Cambridgeport and Cambridgeport History Day published by the Cambridge Historical Society. Finally, here is an audio recording about ITHCT, from a 2012 presentation at the American Association for State and Local History Conference.

The Cambridge work has inspired new projects in Sacramento, CA, Mesquite, NV, Meridian, ID, Fairfield, CT, Newburyport, MA and in Calgary, Alberta. Want to launch your own? We’d like to hear about it and post links to it here!