So who was behind the older Putt-Putt course and when did it open?
Two of my regular contributors provided me with the answer.
Rick Kurish did some research and determined that it opened in 1962. Rick provided this article (from the February 19, 1963 Chronicle-Telegram) noting that after it was in operation for a year, it was sold to an Elyria man.
Rick also found an ad from the Chronicle-Telegram of April 1963.
Checking the Dickman city directories, I found the first listing for the course in the 1963 edition. Its address at that time was 3135 N. Ridge Road. It changed a few times as the numbering system for that part of the country seemed to evolve.
Dennis Thompson had provided me with a wealth of information about various Northeastern Ohio miniature golf courses last year. Although I had not been able to mold his research into a post yet, among the items was this great article about the Putt-Putt at 254 and 57. The article was from the June 18, 1962 Chronicle-Telegram. It reveals May 1962 as the month it opened.
The article also provides a nice profile of the businessmen behind the operation. It notes, “The local operation, along with three others in the greater Cleveland area and one in Buffalo, N. Y., is owned by a youthful Cleveland attorney and his partner.
“The one who got the Putt-Put ball rolling in northern Ohio is Ed Haddad, a 28-year-old lawyer, who became interested in the latest outdoor recreation craze when he was an administrative assistant in Washington to a congressman from California.
“Haddad, who earned his law degree from Georgetown, got into the venture with Phil Aboid, who at the time the partnership was formed, was struggling along with another business.
“Since the pair first built a Putt-Putt course at Great Northern Shopping Center in North Olmsted, they have added layouts at Cleveland’s Southland Center, Willow Plaza, the Elyria-Lorain location and Buffalo.”
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In the early days of the Putt-Putt phenomena, the parent company published a nice newsletter, The Putt-Putt World, that was distributed to the owners of its courses.
The April 1966 edition of The Putt-Putt World included this article outlining Ed Haddad’s success as a Putt-Putt pioneer.
An article from an earlier issue (April 1963) revealed that the Romp’s Putter Port Mini Golf facility in Vermilion, Ohio (still going strong in 2018) originally started out as an official Putt-Putt course.
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I was unable to form a definitive timeline for the Putt-Putt at 57 and 254 due to lack of access to phone books and city directories during the Lorain Public Library’s ongoing remodeling. However, using the lone available source (the Dickman Directory), I noticed that the Putt-Putt seemed to disappear from the listings beginning with the 1970 edition.
By the late 1960s, the directory just lumped many commercial listings on North Ridge Road together with no numerical addresses at all. The Putt-Putt was part of this jumble (along with businesses such as Topper Bar) until the 1970 book.
