My visit to the Fair each year plays out pretty much the same: an Oh-Boy for dinner, accompanied by a cup of French Fries smothered with salt and vinegar. And for dessert? A Rutana’s apple dumpling swimming in sauce (hold the ice cream) – that great, once -a-year treat.
The fairgrounds never seems to change very much from year to year, and there’s something comforting about that. But at one time, things were new, and this post deals with one of them: a new arts building. Read all about it in the article below, which appeared in the Lorain Journal on August 9, 1963.
Note that the fair was a little shorter back then.
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Aug. 19 Red-Letter Day For County Fair Goers
By BOB THOMAS
WELLINGTON – Aug. 19 will be a red-letter day of the Lorain County Agricultural Society (Fair Board) for it is the opening of the 108th annual Lorain County Fair at the fairgrounds.
As thousands of persons visit the spacious grounds during the five-day extravaganza, they will enjoy the fruits of labors of the 21-member board.
Every event and exhibit in the fair has been carefully planned through the months during the interim between the close of the 1962 fair and the forthcoming gala program.
Each year, for the past several years, a new addition has been made to the physical plant of the fairgrounds, and this year it is a 6,000 square-foot building for exhibits on the southern side of the grounds.
In yesteryear, the county fair was primarily an occasion for farm families, but today it is a community institution and as attractive to the urban and suburban dwellers as to their rural relatives and friends.
The Junior Fair has become a most important part of the county fair. There are some observers who feel that without the youth activities, this traditional annual event might well have succumbed to other competition in the field of entertainment and recreation.
Fair directors are busy grooming the fairgrounds for their “one big week.” (They must do most of the work themselves on the grounds for their budget is very limited.)
During the five-day program all of them will spend most of their time attending to various assignments on the grounds.
They can be spotted by the big button they will be wearing, which says “Director.”
These are the men who have made the Lorain County Fair one of the most outstanding in the state. As public officials they perhaps are the most unheralded of all county officers, yet their contributions to the community are great.
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Today, I’m pretty sure that the building mentioned in the article is still being used for either art or photography as it resembles the two buildings near the cluster of trees. I’ll give it a gander when I visit the Fair this week.
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UPDATE (March 19, 2019)
Here's a nice map of the fairgrounds from an article in the Journal on August 17, 1968. It identifies the then-new Fine Arts building. Note how the road used to pass much closer to the track back then.
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