Hearth tax significant proportion of householders were not liable to pay at all. The hearth tax was much resented because it often entailed inspection of the interior of dwellings by the sub-collectors and petty constables, who had legal authority to enter every property to check on the number of hearths. Some people stopped up their chimneys so that the tax was not due on them, but where this was discovered by the assessors the tax was doubled. On 31 July 1684, a fire in Churchill, Oxfordshire, destroyed 20 houses and many other buildings, and killed four people. It was apparently caused by
Century Building (17th Street, Manhattan) Century Building (17th Street, Manhattan) The Century Building at 33 East 17th Street between Park Avenue South and Broadway on Union Square in Manhattan, New York City, was designed by William Schickel in the Queen Anne style and built in 1880–1881 as the headquarters of the Century Publishing Company, which published the popular "The Century Magazine" for adults and "St. Nicholas Magazine" for children. The building, which is unusual in being a commercial building in the Queen Anne style, was vacant in recent years before having its facade restored in 1994–1995 by Li/Saltzman Architects to be a Barnes & Noble