Tax management

Once upon a time the colonial buildings here had many more doors, and fewer windows.

Then at some point government instituted a tax based on the number of doors in a property.  Kind of makes sense -- bigger properties would have more doors than smaller properties.  Right?

I've been told that local owners responded by leaving one door, and converting their other doors to windows.  Even better, they did the conversions in such a way that, should the tax ever be repealed, with a sledge hammer the windows could easily be converted back to doors.

Thanks to plaster and paint, in many buildings you can't detect the change.  But some buildings leave their tax history out in the open.