The Old Town canoe with serial number 73894 is a 17 foot long, AA (or top) grade, Otca model with red Western cedar planking, open mahogany gunwales, thirty inch mahogany decks, mahogany thwarts, mahogany seats, a keel, and a bank plate along the full length of the keel. It was built between December, 1922 and June, 1923. The original exterior paint color design was similar to the one shown at
http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/designs/design13.gif which was know as the design number 13. The stripes were blue, white, red, white, green, white, and yellow. It shipped on July 5th, 1923 to Croton Falls, New York. A scan showing this build record can be found below.
This scan and several hundred thousand more were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others as you probably know well. A description of the project to preserve these records is available at
http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/records/ if you want more details. I hope that you will donate, join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See
http://www.wcha.org/about-wcha to learn more about the WCHA and
http://www.wcha.org/store/membership to renew.
It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match your canoe. Please provide a picture if the original design is still showing. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions. Thanks,
Benson