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Norwalk West Main Street Historic District. Oldest Standing House 1826. Entered in the National Register of Historic Places 1974.
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Oldest Standing House 1826. Entered in the National Register of Historical Places 1974.
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Located one mile north of Fitchville, the Golden Age Nursing Home caught fire and burned to the ground at 4:45 a.m., November 23, 1963, killing 63 of 84 patients. Fire departments from New London, Greenwich, North Fairfield, and Plymouth responded. Ignited by the arcing of overloaded wiring, the incident called for action to require sprinklers, automatic fire detection systems, and electrical wiring compliance to building codes in all nursing homes. The worst tragedy of its kind in the nation, the incident was overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and was not widely reported. Twenty-one unclaimed bodies were interred in a 60-foot grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in Norwalk. Those killed in the fire are listed on the reverse.
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The Wakeman Red Caps, perhaps one of the area’s best semi-pro baseball teams during the 1930s and 40s, first played night baseball under lights installed at Wakeman Field on July 24, 1935. The Field, no longer extant, was bounded by Hyde, Clark, Pleasant, and Townsend (Ohio Route 303) streets. The game was played only two months after Franklin D. Roosevelt switched on lights at Crosley Field for the Cincinnati Reds. The Red Caps were part of the Wakeman Baseball Club, an organization which was founded in 1889 and was sponsored by Charles S. Clark, Sr., and others. For aspiring local baseball players, playing night baseball for the Red Caps was a great honor. Wakeman Field was annually graced with Abe Saperstein’s Ethipian Clowns, an African-American traveling baseball team, and also saw appearances by Tom Manning, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Al Schacht, Jesse Owens, and other sports greats.
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The Society of the Precious Blood, established in Italy in 1815, began its American ministry here in Peru in January 1844, led by Swiss missionary Father Francis de Sales Brunner. Continuing the work begun by the Redemptorists at St. Alphonse in 1833, the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, or “Sanguinists,” brought spiritual support and education to German immigrants in northern Ohio. In July 1844 the Sisters of the Precious Blood, established in Switzerland in 1834, began their ministry of prayer and education here. The priests, brothers, and sisters attended to the needs of parishes across northern Ohio, and between 1844 and 1856 established nine major foundations throughout Seneca, Mercer, Putnam and Auglaize Counties in Ohio.
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A founder of the Standard Oil Company, Henry Morrison Flagler spent his formative years in Bellevue and began his business career here in 1844, building his home near this site in 1858. He first became associated with John D. Rockefeller as a fellow grain merchant. The two later formed the Standard Oil Company in 1870 with capital partially furnished by members of the local Harkness family. Standard Oil became America’s largest and most powerful corporation in the late 1800s, and Flagler used his wealth to develop the state of Florida. His Florida East Coast Railroad, known as “the railroad over the sea,” extended from Jacksonville to Key West, Florida. The cities of Miami, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and St. Augustine grew with Flagler’s intensive development efforts.
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Built in 1846, the Tremont House was opened by Loel and Samuel B. Chandler to serve stagecoach traffic on the Maumee Pike (U.S. Route 20). Briefly a hotel, this Bellevue landmark has housed grocery and hardware stores, a pharmacy, and even a cigar factory. The third floor ballroom hosted community events and fraternal organizations such as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF). The building’s west side is on the western boundary of the Firelands region of the Connecticut Western Reserve. An example of Greek Revival architecture, the Tremont House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
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New Haven, Ohio, was the mercantile center of southwest Huron County during the first half of the 19th century. Residents described immense wagons, or “land schooners,” lined up for miles on the New Haven-Worthington Road traveling from Columbus to the Lake Erie ports. Organized in 1815, New Haven was one of the early townships formed in Huron County and the Firelands. The village was platted, with streets at right angles around a diamond-shaped town green, after the plan of New Haven, Connecticut. When, in the 1840s, New Haven rejected the railroad’s direct route through the village, the Sandusky & Newark was routed to the west and through Plymouth taking with it the shipping business. Subsequently, New Haven began a steady economic decline into a small crossroads village.
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