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The Canfield Township Hall was erected in 1884. It served as the first public building in which the Canfield citizens could conduct town business, elections, and public meetings. An example of Renaissance Revival or “Italianate” architecture, the building is typical of late Victorian commercial buildings, but constructed of wood rather than of the customary brick. Drafted by Colonel S. Kinney, it was originally constructed for the sum of $2,389 by G.W. Strock at the corner of South Broad and East Main streets, on a lot purchased for $500. In 1936, R.J. Neff moved the hall several hundred feet south to its present location. In addition to official township meetings, the second floor has been used for a variety of activities, including social meetings, lectures, contests, dances, and roller-skating. The building served as an early home of the Canfield Historical Society and operated continuously for over one hundred and twenty-five years.
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In 1942, Charity Adams Earley (1918-2002) became the first African American woman to receive a commission in what became the Women’s Army Corps (WACs). She rose through the ranks to command the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in Europe, the only unit of African American women to serve overseas in World War II. Upon leaving the service in 1946, she was the WAC’s highest-ranking African American officer, a lieutenant colonel. Raised in Columbia, South Carolina, Earley moved to Ohio to attend Wilberforce University and later The Ohio State University. She married Stanley Earley, Jr., M.D. in 1949 and they later moved to Dayton. She became active in civic affairs, including serving on the Sinclair Community College Board of Trustees.
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The intersection of Main and College streets has been the center of Oberlin since the town and college were founded in 1833. The first downtown buildings were made of wood and were destroyed by a series of spectacular fires. The first college building, Oberlin Hall, stood on the southwest corner of College and Main and included recitation rooms, a dining hall, chapel, offices, and lodging. In 1887, Akron architect Frank Weary designed the large brick building at numbers 5 to 13 West College. Number 23 West College (Gibson Block) once housed a silent movie theater on the second floor. East College Street’s historic buildings include the Apollo Theater, which showed Oberlin’s first talking movie on May 11, 1928. From 1897 to 1929, an interurban streetcar line connected Oberlin’s downtown to Cleveland. Oberlin’s downtown historic district was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
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The decision to build the P&O Canal resulted from several canal conventions at Warren’s first courthouse in 1833. Canal advocates from Warren included Simon Perkins, Leicester King, David Tod, and Calvin Pease. Finished in 1840, this 82 mile canal linked two north-south canals, the Beaver Canal and the Ohio and Erie Canal, via an east-west route for passengers and commerce. By 1856, the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal was replaced by the railroad and the entire route was abandoned by 1872. (Continued on other side)
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This single lane Pleasant Valley Road Bridge was constructed in 1881 by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio, and is a 163 foot-long Whipple Truss (double intersection Pratt through truss). It replaced a wooden bridge that portaged the west branch of the Chagrin River a few hundred yards downstream. The structure, one of less than ten of its kind remaining in the state of Ohio, and possibly the longest in Lake County, was built to sustain the Euclid-Chardon Road traffic on U.S. Route 6. Known as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, G.A.R., this major thoroughfare served this purpose until 1952 when a new high level bridge bypass was constructed to the south. The Truss bridge, pleasing to the eye with the artwork and name plates atop the overhead portals, was designed to enhance the bridge’s appearance within the valley. (Continued on other side)
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Camp Chase was a Civil War camp established in May 1861, on land leased by the U.S. Government. Four miles west of Columbus, the main entrance was on the National Road. Boundaries of the camp were present-day Broad Street (north), Hague Avenue (east), Sullivant Avenue (south), and near Westgate Avenue (west). Named for former Ohio Governor and Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, it was a training camp for Ohio soldiers, a parole camp, a muster-out post, and a prisoner-of-war camp. As many as 150,000 Union soldiers and 25,000 Confederate prisoners passed through its gates from 1861-1865. By February 1865, over 9,400 men were held at the prison. More than 2,000 Confederates are buried in the Camp Chase Cemetery.
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Lester Allan Pelton, “the Father of Hydroelectric Power,” was born on September 5, 1829, a quarter of a mile northwest of this site. He spent his childhood on a farm a mile south of this site and received his early education in a one-room schoolhouse that once sat north of this site. In the spring of 1850, he and about twenty local boys, left for California during the great gold rush west. Pelton did not find gold, but instead invented what was commonly known as “the Pelton Water-Wheel,” which produced the first hydroelectric power in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California in 1887. The Water-Wheel was patented on August 27, 1889. Currently variations of it are still commonly used to generate electric power throughout the world. Pelton died in California on March 14, 1908. He is buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Vermilion.
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St. Mary Church was dedicated in 1868 in response to the spiritual needs of the growing German-Catholic population of Columbus’ South Side. The original schoolhouse, which stands behind the church, was erected in 1865 under the direction of Rev. Francis X. Specht, St. Mary’s first pastor. It served as a temporary house of worship until the Gothic-style church was completed. St. Mary’s distinctive spire – soaring 197 feet into the Columbus sky – was added in 1893. By 1865, Columbus’ population was one-third German, and the South Side had become a thriving working-class community. The new immigrants built homes and churches and established schools. Local German businesses, organizations, and newspapers prospered. German Village is one of the premier historic restorations in the world, and is the largest privately funded historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. More than 1,600 buildings have been restored since 1960.