Remarkable Ohio

Results for: real-estate-development
County Road 13
Huron

, OH

The schooner Idaho was built in Milan during prosperous times, which started with the opening of the Milan Canal in 1839. The canal connected the village with Lake Erie by way of the Huron River and facilitated the development of the area’s shipbuilding industry and port, as Milan became one of the busiest grain ports during the 1840s. Completed at the A. J. Mowry shipyard in 1863, the Idaho sailed the Great Lakes until the economic panic of 1873. The Idaho was headed to the Milan dry dock for repair, but due to depressed economic conditions, the crew abandoned her here at the lower lock of the Milan Canal. Eventually, only “bones”, or iron pins, from the Idaho’s hull could be seen protruding through the mud of the abandoned lock. The last remnants of the schooner have since disappeared from the lock and now reside in Milan museums and in personal collections.

301 Grant St
Dennison

, OH

From its founding in 1865, Dennison was a railroad town and became the second largest rail center for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rail presence was so strong that the industry dictated social and economic development throughout the community. For example, the Railway Chapel, the historic name for the First Presbyterian Church of Dennison was built because W.W. Card, Pennsylvania Railroad Superintendent, saw a spiritual need in the community. As the first church built in Dennison, Card contacted the Presbytery of Steubenville to start the church, arranged for donation of land, provided for financing from railway officials, and arranged for labor and material from the railroad. Railroad workers constructed the furnishing for the church with walnut pews built by the Dennison Car Shops. The pews have reversible backs, designed after ones in passenger cars. The church was dedicated in April 1871 and listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 2009.

250 South Main Street
Granville

, OH

Granville, Ohio, was settled in 1805 by the Licking Company, a group formed in Granville, Massachusetts, and Granby, Connecticut, for the purpose of emigrating west. The Old Colony Burying Ground was defined on the first town plat of Granville in 1805. Many of Granville’s pioneers are interred within this ground, and the cemetery retains its original form and most of its westward facing rows of sandstone and marble gravestones. The early settlers buried here helped to lay out this town and determined the appearance and development of the village as it is today. The first burial, the infant son of Ethan Bancroft, was in April 1806. The oldest extant gravestone is dated 1808. Eighteen veterans of the Revolutionary War, thirty-nine from the War of 1812, and sixteen Civil War veterans rest here along with ministers, farmers, industrialists, physicians, young mothers, children, and other citizens of Granville.

73 S. Professor Street
Oberlin

, OH

Aluminum pioneer Charles Martin Hall was born in 1863 in Thompson, Ohio (Geauga County), and moved with his family to Oberlin in 1873. Hall graduated from Oberlin College in 1885, studying chemistry under Professor Frank Fanning Jewett (1844-1926). Jewett, who lived in this house from 1884 to 1923, encouraged Hall’s interest in chemistry and aluminum, then a semi-precious metal. Hall discovered an electrochemical reduction process for producing metallic aluminum from aluminum oxide dissolved in molten cryolite in his woodshed laboratory at his family’s home at 64 East College Street on February 23, 1886. This process, the culmination of research with Jewett, became the basis for the aluminum industry in America. In 1888 Hall co-founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, later the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Upon his death in 1914, Hall left one-third of his estate to Oberlin College.

114 E Main Street
Lakeside Marblehead

, OH

Established in 1898 as the Russian Orthodox Church of the Dormition, Holy Assumption was founded by Carpatho-Russian immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Constructed in 1905-1906, it is considered to be the oldest Orthodox church building in Ohio. Archbishop Tikhon, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America, consecrated the church and celebrated the first Liturgy. Tsar Nicholas II of Russian personally donated the four icons on the iconostas, or icon screen, as well as liturgical items. Both the Tsar and, by then Patriarch, Tikhon were murdered by the Bolsheviks during the 1917 Russian Revolution and were glorified as Saints of the Orthodox Church. Holy Assumption Orthodox Church continues to be a beacon of the Orthodox Faith on the Marblehead peninsula.

6975 Ridge Road
Parma

, OH

This 48-acre farm is the last remnant of an agricultural way of life that characterized Parma Township well into the 20th century. The farmhouse, built circa 1855 by Western Reserve settler Lyman Stearns, is representative of the Greek Revival style of architecture popular in this region prior to the Civil War. The “Yankee” style barn predates the house. Suburban development following World War II engulfed virtually all of this area by the 1950s. The Stearns Homestead was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. (continued on other side)

Across from 1201 E Market Street
Akron

, OH

Industrialist and entrepreneur Franklin Augustus Seiberling (1859-1955) named his fledgling rubber goods manufacturing company “Goodyear” to honor Charles Goodyear, the man who invented the vulcanization process for curing rubber. Seiberling founded the company with his brother, Charles Willard, because of their desire to participate in an enterprise that afforded an “opportunity for invention.” Incorporated in 1898, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company rapidly grew with the young automotive industry and helped establish Akron as the “Rubber Capital of the World.” Among Seiberling’s many significant inventions were the tire-making machine and the detachable wheel rim. He resigned from Goodyear in 1921 and went on to found the Seiberling Rubber Company. Stan Hywet Hall, F.A. Seiberling’s estate in west Akron, is a National Historic Landmark.

325 E Main Street
Tipp City

, OH

This section of the Miami and Erie Canal, constructed from 1833-1837, was vital to this region’s commerce and development. It allowed for farmers and businesses to get their goods to larger markets at a lower cost and faster speed than by hauling overland. Passengers could also travel across the area by canal boat. John Clark saw the location of the Lock 15, situated in Monroe Township at the junction of the Milton-Carlisle Pike (Main Street), as an opportunity and in 1840, platted the new town of Tippecanoe City (now Tipp City). Many types of commerce and trade grew up around the canal including boarding houses, saloons, a tannery, and a mill. Some of the original buildings still stand, such as a mill to the west of Lock 15, John Clark’s home at the southeast corner of Main and First streets, and the hotel at the northeast corner of Main and Second streets.