Grand Opening – DeLeonardis Plumbing & Heating – June 1957

I post a lot of vintage Grand Opening ads, so it was inevitable that this one – for DeLeonardis Plumbing & Heating – would show up on the blog sooner or later. It ran in the Lorain Journal on June 1, 1957 – 60 years ago this month.

Dominic DeLeonardis was the man behind the business. The decorated World War II veteran had worked in the shipyards before embarking on his lifelong career as a master plumber.

His plumbing and heating business was previously located at 218 California Avenue before the move to the newer and larger building at 219 Colorado Avenue announced in the 1957 ad. (The building had previously been home throughout the 1950s to George Potato Chip.)

By 1959, DeLeonardis had moved his business to Florida, which explains why I was not familiar with it.

What really intrigued me about the Grand Opening ad was the small photo of the building and its address. I knew it would be somewhere along that stretch of Colorado Avenue that proceeds south of East Erie where there are a lot of “mystery buildings.” I hoped to identify one with this post.

What I didn’t know is that I had already featured the building on another post back in 2010. That post showed how the building was built in the old right-of-way of the Lake Shore Electric Railway after it folded.

Here’s my shot from this week.