One of the things I love about walking and driving around places is discovering gems of architectural history. Even a drive through Northeast Ohio will reveal an electic mixture of architectural styles from various time periods. Although there aren't as many of them standing as there once were, there are some lovely old Federal style buildings from the early 19th century still standing, with their distinctive fanlights that mark them as being of that period. There are the stately Greek Revivals and what we used to call "Western Reserve Style" homes with their narrow frieze band windows on the second floor. Later on, one sees styles such as Gothic Revival, Victorian Italiante, Second Empire, Beaux Arts, Art Deco and others and then into more modern styles. Churches, homes and business buildings reflect changing tastes of the periods as you walk and drive around towns and cities. On one recent drive, I happened to notice that, unlike other places where Greek Revival homes are built of sturdy wood clapboard, in Medina and Lorain Counties here in the old Connecticut Western Reserve there seem to be a propensity of brick and stone Greek Revival structures. It begged the question why. Perhaps either there was a lack of wood, that area being relatively flat compared to the hillier areas in the eastern portion of the Western Reserve, or there was a great deal of good clay soil and stone to be had in order to build in those materials. Maybe there was more money to build sturdier and more expensive structures in those areas. Either way, it was an observation I made while traveling through that part of the state not long ago.
It's nice to have a knowledge of architectural history while walking or driving around. It gives me a greater sense of who might have come before and what their circumstances might have been. Some cities have historic districts where homes are well kept and preserved. I have long advocated for my hometown to declare a particular part of our city a "historic district" because of the number of well kept and historic homes along a stretch of Main Street on our west side. That was the part of town settled first and that stretch of Main Street seems to be where the more well heeled and prominent citizens built their fine homes that still stand today. Walking down that stretch of street, you can see everything from Greek Revival to Eastlake to Carpenter Gothic to Victorian Italianate and more. It speaks a great deal of the development of our town through the 19th century. I just wish that more people would take the time to learn their architectural history and appreciate the gems in their midst. Perhaps it would spur a greater sense of the importance of historic preservation, which can still be an uphill battle against the legions of environmentalists who seem to fight any efforts at preservation of historic buildings and homes. Their lobby in our town seems to have become more vocal and more powerful over the years and as a result,. we have lost too many architectural treasures despite the fact that we basically seem to have the same aims but coming from different angles.
One building that was razed, ironically, in the Bicentennial year of 1976, was the old John Brown Tannery that sat on the banks of the Cuyahoga River and was constructed in 1836. Yes, it had fallen into a state of sad disrepair and had become something of a dumping ground around it, but there was no reason not to try to save it. However, the environmentalists cried foul and demanded its removal, so down it went, and we lost a historic treasure that might have been saved had preservationists been able to fight to see it restored and made into a museum devoted to one of Kent's most famous citizens, the abolitionist John Brown. Fortunately there is a park where this old structure once stood called "John Brown Tannery Park", but I wonder how many people, particularly younger people who lack a knowledge of or who are utterly disinterested in history know what used to be there in that park. Many people today still rue the day that this structure was razed and it did manage to spur greater efforts toward historic preservation, at least in the short term.
For the past year or so, a small band of us devoted preservationists have been waging an epic battle, now stuck in the court system via a lengthy and controversial lawsuit, over an 1858 house that I discovered last year that had been built for a member of Kent's founding family on land that once belonged to them as well and was slated to be demolished for a construction project. It is one of only five structures still standing that is connected to the Kent family, but we are locked in battle with a group of very tenacious environmentalists who are determined to see the structure razed because we want to move it to a vacant lot that we bought that they claim is used as a "community garden". The actual vegetable garden that they maintain there is the size of a small firepit that could be replaced in anyone's back or front yard, regardless of how big or small it is. The rest of the lot is full of invasive species, weeds and junk plants with a few trees here and there. The claims are that it is also a "playground" and the only remaining "green space" in the city when there is a series of parks along the river banks nearby with more than ample green space for recreational use and a nearby playground on a city park less than a block away. Needless to say, at the stage at which this now finds itself, locked in epic battle between lawyers who refuse to back down, it looks like nothing will be done about the house anytime in the near future. Its status at this point is uncertain. It currently sits up on cribbing on land belonging to the university where we were able to successfully move it last summer to save it from demolition. Unfortunately, the university is losing patience with us and wants it off of their land as soon as humanly possible. The tactics being employed by the other side are to delay things so long that the university will ultimately lose patience and raze the house, thereby securing their so-called "garden" and "playground". We'll see how this all plays out, but environmentalists and preservationists have been at odds in this city for decades, so this is nothing new. It's just sad that these kinds of battles have to be waged in order to save our vanishing architectural treasures, year in, year out, over and over again. We're tired of losing those battles to the powerful environmental lobby. What they fail to understand is that we both want the same thing, but coming at it from very different angles. If only they would take the time to educate themselves about the importance of saving our local history from ending up in landfills and vanishing altogether. History once gone is forever vanished. That seems to be a lesson yet to be learned by far too many people who don't seem to understand why it is important to save our local architectural treasures from disappearing from our midst forever. They tell us who we were and where we came from. After all, you cannot know where you are going unless you know where you came from, the single most important lesson that history has to teach us.
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