Bet you didn’t know that Chapel Hill Road used to be West Boulevard South. Which now makes sense of the fact that the rest of West Boulevard often has addresses such as 121 West Boulevard North.

This street name tidbit came out at the April 1, 2014 event honoring the 2014 Most Notable Properties named by the Columbia Historic Preservation Commission. Gaining one of these honors for a historic building 50 years or older was the Fairview Methodist Church. What? Can’t find the church? That’s because it’s now Countryside Nursery School. Which one of the presenters honored as Columbia’s longest operating day care. Except it isn’t a day care.

Have you come across other such “used to be” names in Columbia, Missouri? How did you find your way or uncover the reason behind the name? It’s this kind of thing that can make Columbia, Missouri so confusing.

At the event, Carol Notbohm, the former owner of Countryside Nursery School, talked about how when she moved here in the 1970s after retiring from teaching, the little church on the hill called to her. By then, it was vacant, after the congregation outgrew it and moved to a new church at 3200 Chapel Hill Road — with a website that calls it the Front Lawn Church. But the first church did give the new church’s location its name. Chapel Hill used to be the southern portion of West Boulevard until around the time the first Fairview Methodist Church was built. With the church in the location, it was renamed Chapel Hill for the church on the hill. And Fairview Methodist Church was named because an early church member commented that it looked so pretty on the top of the hill, according to a report by Deb Sheals, a historic preservation consultant cited in an article about the new Most Notable Properties.

It’s this kind of making sense of things that the Columbia Historic Homes website and history itself does. Have you might stumbled on a fact or information that helps make sense of Columbia? Let me hear from you about what you’ve discovered that keeps you from getting lost or confused.

What to read the entire article about the event on Tuesday, marking the five new Most Notable Properties? Here’s a summary and link to the article by Andrew Denney.

• April 2, 2014 — Historic properties celebrated at 15th annual Most Notable event — Outlines a few facts for each of the five properties named to the Most Notable properties list by Columbia’s Historic Preservation Commission. The properties are: Fairview United Methodist Church at 1320 S. Fairview Road., Fairview Cemetery at Chapel Hill and Fairview Road, Francis Pike House at 1502 Anthony St., Bess and Dr. J.E. Thornton House at 905 S. Providence Road. Columbia Tribune.