Did They Stay or Did They Go?

Remember the Bell family?

They were featured in the July 1956 article (back here) in which Brownhelm Township residents were interviewed by the Chronicle-Telegram about the Ford Assembly Plant that was going to be built.

Mrs. Bell noted, “We moved away from 21st Street in Lorain to get the children out in the country away from traffic and factories. Then they go and start building a plant right across the street… We’ve got this big picture window and now we’ll be looking right at a factory. But I guess it depends on where they put it and what it looks like…”

I felt bad for the Bells, as over the years I came very close to bidding on several homes "in the country" myself. All of these old houses were in Avon, and I shudder to think what was eventually built next to or near each of them. (One house was eventually lost to development.)

Anyway, being a nosy type, I wondered if the Bells hung in there on Baumhart Road, or if they vamoosed back to Lorain. So I hit the city directories to find out.

Surprisingly, they stayed for quite a while. Perhaps they decided that even with the Ford plant, Brownhelm Township was a great place to live and raise their kids.

They continued to live on Baumhart until the end of the 1970s. By 1980, their brick house was home to the Lorain Auto Employees Federal Credit Union.

Today, 5730 Baumhart Road is a branch of GenFed Financial Credit Union.