In 2006, when Jo Kwan and her family moved into the yellow house on School Street, she was certain they wanted to redo the basement.
Easily accessible, the basement is a bright, airy space that looks easy to renovate to create a finished room or more storage. It is, in short, far from the sometimes dank, unpleasant holes-under-houses that carry the name “Basement.”
“We just always wanted to do it,” she said.
The work got underway in the early part of the winter, and shortly after they started, the workers discovered a mystery. Someone had painted a mural on a wall abutting the garage.
Buried under decades-old insulation and crumbling drywall, the mural is a nature scene, painted from what appears to be a balcony with a railing overlooking a valley full of trees.
It’s big, too, running the full length of the wall from a door toward the back wall.
“It looks like there might have been more here,” Kwan said, pointing to a back wall marked with colors similar to the mural.
The house was built in 1930. But when the mural was painted and why is a mystery. There are some context clues: Workers found yellowed copies of the Boston Herald stuffed into the ceiling under the drywall.
The papers are from May 5, 1946. The war in Europe had ended 12 months earlier, the war in the Pacific about 10 months earlier.
Randolph Scott was starring in “Badman’s Territory,” with Ann Richards and Gabby Hayes. Wayne King was playing Jordan Hall in Boston. The funny pages were in color.
Belmont Historical Society President Viktoria Haase shared a digitized version of the town resident record. Residents of the house in 1946 were Mary Murphy, 56, a secretary; Edward Murphy, 53, a salesman; and Peter Murphy, 59, a shipper. Their names are attached to the house as early as 1938.
Odd things turn up in house renovation all the time. Architectural Digest has a list of odd things people have found. There are myriad stories about letters stashed in walls, lost until someone renovated the home.
Kwan plans to try to preserve the mural as best she can. It won’t be on display — the studs are already in place and ready for new insulation.
“We’ll cover it with plastic or something to try and save it,” she said.