Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Green Lantern Camp – Part 2

As I mentioned before, none of the regular city directories before or after 1939 had a listing for Green Lantern Camp – making it virtually impossible to research.

However, the 1954 Lorain County Farm & Rural Directory did include a listing (below) for W. F. Brenner, the man associated with Green Lantern Camp fourteen years earlier. The camp was no longer listed.

The 1962 Dickman Criss-Cross Directory for Lorain County also included a listing for W. F. Brenner. In this directory, he finally had an address: 5004 West Erie Avenue.

The Lorain County Auditor website parcel result for 5004 West Erie includes both a duplex as well as a small cottage. (Both structures have a "year built" date of 1900 – meaning that they were built before 1900.)

Here's my shot from last weekend (below). The yellow cottage on the left (referred to on the Auditor website as a "rebuilt cottage") has its own address: 5014. The other buildings are all part of 5004.

I have no idea if any of the buildings in the "now" photo match up with those in the vintage photo of Green Lantern Camp. I think the location is correct due to the fact that the Brenners lived there. I also think that the location of the telephone poles and the railroad tracks support this theory. But it's impossible to know for sure.
Here's a few aerial views of the property (below).

I'm guessing that the very small shack behind the cottages – seen as a brown building with tan roof – may be one of the original cabins. 
But I could be wrong.

UPDATE
And I was wrong! Click here for an update showing how wrong I was.