“Civic Beauty” Home – Then & Now

I saw the above postcard recently on Ebay, identified as one in a series of 20 promotional postcards produced by the Lorain Times Herald.

The back of the postcard had the instructions as to how to acquire the whole set of 20 cards. It read, “A Post Card Coupon cut from the Times-Herald gets you one card; 18 coupons get you the entire series. No charge.”

The typeset caption of the postcard – “South View, a “Civic Beauty” Home – made me think that the house was somewhere out in South Lorain, and I groaned at the thought of driving around looking for it. But then I peered closely at the handwritten caption in the photo and recognized part of a name, “Wick.”

Then I knew exactly whose house it was and where it’s located (below).

Former Lorain Mayor and Councilman George Wickens lived there. It’s appropriate that his house was featured on a postcard, as he was one of the city’s champions when it came to promoting civic beauty.

You can find a sampler of my posts about George Wickens by clicking here.

But it’s kind of sad, and a little ironic, that this “civic beauty home” (now the home of Walter A. Frey Funeral Home) now sits on a four lane federal highway, wedged uncomfortably between Lorain’s monstrous City Hall and Muzik’s Auto Care.