Her 1929 Spanish Revival home on Termino Avenue that she shared with her husband, two daughters and family dog, peaked her interest in its birth and history. She wondered “who built it and why?” The librarian was a natural to find the answers to those questions, as she worked at City Library part-time.

“We are all just stewards of our places,” Neeley said. “We have to make sure the next generation has that same sense of delight.” It turned out Neeley’s home was built by Frederic Chubbic, a homeowner who purchased the plans and acted as the contractor.

A defining feature for Neeley is murals painted in her bathrooms by Jens Kristian Raven, a local craftsman who also built Hollywood sets. The discoveries about her own home led to the founding of HouStories, which offers house and property histories to homeowners, realtors, developers and others. Neeley has traversed almost every neighborhood in the city from California Heights to Naples to Downtown. The properties she has researched range from California Craftsman to Mediterranean Revival to Swiss Chalet.

Neeley first offered her skills for free in 2001, through a silent auction fundraiser at the Long Beach Preservation Awards. Since then she has completed more than 70 house histories. She has spent countless hours digging through records, squinting at microfiche records and calling descendents of original homeowners asking for photos and stories to include in the completed binder she creates.

Grown men who spent their childhoods in homes around the city have shared their memories with Neeley. Small tunnels running between rooms in a home were no match for Neeley, who discovered they had been for a train set. Even a small, eerie presence in another home did nothing to curb her enthusiasm about its history. In that case, she found the owners had brought the presence with them from their previous residence.

The information Neeley finds is all public record, but it is her expertise as a librarian that allows her to find long lost relatives, mine obscure databases, search old newspaper archives, contact historical and genealogical societies nationwide, and dig deep into the city records for architectural plans. “My sinister plan is to make history work for today,” said Neeley.

In a recent outing, Neeley recounted the little-known history of three well-known properties in the city:

Theodore Sten, an Austrian immigrant, built The Swan, originally known as the Sten Apartments, in 1921. The traditional-style, two-building apartment complex is located diagonally across from Bixby Park, and looks very much like it did when it was erected shortly after the discovering of oil in the city.

When Neeley researched the history of The Swan, she found not just how it was built, but also how it was almost replaced by a 16-story “own-your-own” apartment building that was both supported and opposed by influential women in the city.

In 1923, Sten and a partner had plans to build The Thalassia at the former Alamitos Beach Town site. Sten’s Thalassia was supported by Mrs. Beatrice De Mille, mother of well-known Hollywood director Cecil B. De Mille. She planned to live on the eleventh floor when the building was completed.

The city planning commission approved the plan, and the blueprint drawings were featured in the local newspaper. But it was not to be. The City Council killed the plan in its final stage, saying the area east of Bixby Park was restricted to buildings of three-stories or less. Neeley discovered that Mrs. Jotham Bixby, wife of one of the city’s founders, opposed the plan and sent her lawyer to the city council meeting.

This marked one of the first battles between the city and a developer, and resulted in zoning changes that limited building height to two stories on that side of Ocean Boulevard.

As for the original builder, Theodore Sten, Neeley was not able to find large chunks of his life after the Thalassia plan died. When she reached his granddaughter by phone, the woman did not want to talk about such old history or Long Beach.

The 1929 brick two-story storefront-style building, currently being restored by developers, sits on the home of Rev. Edward Mott of the Friends Church, the city’s original Quaker church. The church was built in 1904 on the southeast corner of Fourth Street and Elm Avenue, and the house was built at 422 E. Fourth Street.

In 1923, the Quakers moved and the property was redeveloped into apartments and commercial space, which eventually included Daley’s Inc., a chain grocery, and Reynold’s Furniture, owned by Earl Reynolds. Finding out the Quakers had been the original developers of the site surprised current owner Kurt Schneiter, of Maverick Investments. “Maureen is fantastic at unearthing the past,” Schneiter said.

In the 1930s, after the city’s earthquake in 1933 and during the depression, a bank owned the building. In the 1940s, Irving Schneider became the owner and he rented the stores out to tenants that included Magic Music Inc., Matthews Paint, and the County Bureau of Public Assistance.

Since then, the buildings have gone through several tenants and long stretches of vacancy, as suburbs grew nearby and the economy sagged. In 1959, Virgil Saylor owned Saylor Artists and Engineering Supply, at one time considered the western U.S.’s largest company for advertising art and engineering supplies. In 1964, Ben Messick opened an Art Center and Gallery in the building.

In the 1990s the Ishii, Fujimoto and Lyon families bought the buildings. The name was changed to Lyon Art Supply, and the family owned it until Schneiter bought it in 1998. It will continue to be an art and retail space once it re-opens.

Currently Schneiter is redoing the façade but keeping some of the old features, including interior cement floor tiles, and he is also exposing the original brickwork and wooden ceiling trusses. The original 12 to 14-foot-tall neon paintbrush that hung on the building for decades will be re-hung.

The brick storefront buildings, erected in 1924, sat languishing for decades after enjoying their heyday under the watchful eye of Jewish immigrants Manual, Jacob and Harry Citron.

In those early years, the area was populated by furniture stores — all vying to decorate the new homes being built across the city — including the Citron Furniture Company.

The Citron building was designed by Horace Austen and built by Graham Brothers Construction. The family had a long and storied history on E. Fourth Street, but decided to move the company to 3855 Atlantic Avenue in 1955. Since then, the building changed hands several times and was mostly vacant, with a few low-budget furniture retailers coming and going throughout the years.

Sometime in the 1950s, stucco was sprayed over an art deco façade, of tropical leaves and fan images, recently rediscovered by current owner and well-known historical building developer Jan Van Dijs. Before Van Dijs bought the building, at Fourth Street and Linden Avenue, it had become part of the famous SST Records. Van Dijs and partners purchased the buildings last year, and plan to convert them into the East Village Creative Offices.

“This is a great example of developers who are utilizing history,” Neeley said. “They are incorporating what is already there and re-utilizing them for today.”