Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Gaylords is Destroyed – April 1974

(Journal photo by Michael Pugh)
I did a post about the former Giant Tiger/Gaylords building on Monday, and a few of the comments (including one by Alan Hopewell) mentioned the storm that "blew the roof in."

Well, here's a photo (above) of just that. It ran on April 15, 1974 (just as Alan remembered) on the front page of the Lorain Journal with headline, "Gaylords Store Destroyed As 'Hurricane' Wind Hits." No one was in the building when the roof caved in because the store was closed as it was Easter Sunday.

The article included a brief interview with the builder, Alex Fodor of Alex Fodor Realty Company, Cleveland. He stated that he had "absolutely no idea" why the roof toppled under the winds.

"The construction was 100 percent correct," said Fodor. He added, "It was architect supervised and built according to plans."

Strangely enough, at the time of the disaster the building was owned by the Journal.

The article also had a photo of the building as it looked prior to the disaster (below).



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5 comments:

  1. -Alan D HopewellAugust 29, 2012 at 2:24 PM

    IIRC, at the time we had to move, we were told that the Journal was buying up the property on Elyria Avenue.

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  2. Roofing QueensAugust 29, 2012 at 2:27 PM

    I remember this, don't even have a single cell in me that doesn't question why it happened.

    -Adam Ahmed

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  3. Marilyn BranzJuly 24, 2017 at 3:27 AM

    I remember Gaylord's having a sale of items that had damaged boxes. It was in a store front at Westgate Plaza.

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  4. Tom TuckerOctober 23, 2017 at 10:07 PM

    I was senior at Lorain High School and was hired by a temp agency to move the remaining merchandise. We were part of a crew that moved the merchandise for liquidation at an empty storefront at Westgate Plaza on 21st St. We worked for about two weeks to completely empty the store. Interesting times in Lorain.

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  5. AnonymousMay 27, 2024 at 1:03 PM

    Odd that this happened I believe about a week after the great tornado outbreak of April 1974. I was 9 years old and clearly remember tornado warnings and hiding with my siblings under a couch in our ranch house on the east side because we had no basement.

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