Yeah, it's crazy how different things are now. My neighborhood dates from the turn of the century. The houses that date back to the original days of the neighb

Yeah, it's crazy how different things are now. My neighborhood dates from the turn of the century. The houses that date back to the original days of the neighborhood are easy to spot, because they're built up on a berm about 3 to 4 feet higher than the street level. This is because when they were built, the street was just a bunch of mud and horse manure. The standard house design would dig out a half under grade basement, piling the excavated dirt into a berm around the house to keep it above the surrounding muck.