Cask Villa – Part 2

Back in July, I did a post on Cask Villa, the unique tourist camp constructed of wine casks that was located a little west of Vermilion on Route 6 from the 1920s to the 1960s.

While that blog post included many postcards and old newspaper clippings, it lacked a good concrete history of the place.

Well, I now have a newspaper article that may be the best historical account of how Cask Villa got started. The article (shown above), which ran in the Des Moines Register on Sunday, October 18, 1925, was written when Cask Villa was still being prepared to open for its first season.

The article includes many direct quotes by W. J. O’Neill, the man who had the crazy but brilliant idea that vacationers might want to summer on the shore of Lake Erie in a converted wine cask.

Here’s the text of the article (below) for easy reading. It clears up many misconceptions as to what kind of casks they were, how big they were, who constructed them, where O’Neill bought them, and for how much.

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– and Lived Happily Ever 
After in a Wine Keg
W. J. O’Neill Bought Giant Casks Built
For Cleveland Liquor Dealers --Converted 
Them Into Model Cottages--Now He 
Owns Unique Colony.

IF A TUB was commodious enough for Diogenes a preprohibition cask
ought to house a couple of tourists comfortably.
This is the philosophy of one W. J. O’Neill, enterprising resident of 
the village of Vermilion, on the shore of Lake Erie in northern Ohio, 
about midway between Cleveland and Toledo.
Wine casks retired by the so-called drys along with the saloon, the 
free lunch and morning after headaches, are being converted into 
summer homes by O’Neill.

LITTLE did the coopers in the employ of the Michel Cooperage company of Sandusky, a city near Vermilion, imagine when they coopered these containers of 6,000 gallons capacity each, something like a quarter of a century ago, and shipped them to the Schuster Wine company of Cleveland, that they would some day return, but not as casks; instead as “efficiency cottages” – for “efficiency cottage” is the name that appeals to O’Neill who figures that they are not only going to make the Vermilion locality famous but make him rich.

Bought 36 Casks.
O’Neill purchased thirty-six of these casks – all there were in the Schuster plant at Cleveland. Twenty-two of them he has – or soon will have – converted. The others are to submit to conversion from time to time as occasion demands. One is to be a bathhouse for men; another, a bathhouse for women. Each is to be equipped with shower bath apparatus.

Here it may be proper to remark that each cask is eleven feet long and about twelve and one-half feet in diameter.

With the help of a small crew of men assembled in Vermilion, O’Neill placed each of the twenty-two casks selected for conversion into “efficiency cottages,” on concrete foundations on a camping ground on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie about a mile west of Vermilion on the Cleveland-Sandusky highway which is a link of the Yellowstone trail connecting east and west and is accordingly much traveled.

The casks stand in rows as do cottages in the average summering place, each one independent of the other. They are of sold white oak, the staves being between two and three inches thick. With hoops and other essentials they weigh in the neighborhood of 5,850 pounds each.

Completely Furnished.
O’Neill has had two windows cut in the back of each, and a window and a door in front. A screened in porch in on a level with the floor, laid twenty-four inches from the lowest point of the interior of the cask, which of course, rests on its side.

Each cask is being fitted with a folding bed at the right of the entrance, a folding table opposite and a kitchenette and ice box in the rear. It is to have running water and toilet accommodations and is to be electrically illuminated.

Bunks built in on either side of the porch in such a way that they may be used as settees when not wanted for sleeping purposes, provide all the room that is needed for the accommodation of a small family or an outing party.

In the middle of the floor of each “cottage” there is a trap door through which one finds plenty of room for storing grips and other paraphernalia carried by tourists, vacationists or others seeking life in the open.

One naturally thinks that an ordinary wine cask would not be large enough to accommodate even a single person, but the thought is all wrong. There is plenty of room within each cask not for one alone, but for several persons; in fact, the investigators will find that the casks as O’Neill has set them up, are every bit as roomy as the average summer bungalow.

Largest Casks in Country.
The casks are said to be among the largest not only in Ohio but the entire country. When they left the Sandusky cooperage plant in which they were manufactured, they were sold for about $800 apiece. Today reproduction would cost at the very least $1,500 each according to coopers who are competent when it comes to making conservative estimates. O’Neill bought them for $25 apiece.

Once conversion has been fully realized in accordance with the plans of O’Neill, the casks will afford a sight that thousands no doubt will want to see, even if they must travel many miles to gratify this curiosity.

Since prohibition became effective seven years ago the casks had been without content or, as they said in the Cleveland winery whence they came, “out of business.”

Within each cask there is still a faint aroma of wine which O’Neill will tell you will not be there when the “for rent” sign goes up, although there is some question in his mind as to whether “it wouldn’t be an asset instead of a liability.”

To Cost $10,000.
Moving the casks from Cleveland to the O’Neill premises was quite a job as each one had to be “knocked down,” transported by truck and then “set up” again. In the “knocking down” each piece of timber was numbered to facilitate reconstruction.

O’Neill moved to Vermilion about seven years ago from Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland, after purchasing a part of the old Phelps farm which he proceeded to develop for the purpose to which he is now putting it, namely, for a summering place.

“You see,” he remarked, “I had ideas but it was not until a few months ago when wine casks conversion suggested itself, that I was financially able to go ahead. Houses – even small houses – cost a lot of money these days, you know.”

O’Neill figures that his cask cottage village is going to cost him complete, around $10,000.

“I expect,” he said, “to rent each cottage for an average of $20 per week. I am sure I won’t have any trouble; in fact, I am pretty well booked up at $20 per week per cottage, for all the 1926 season.

The season in O’Neill’s locality begins in about the middle of April and ends in the middle of October; accordingly it may be seen that if he rents all of his cottages – as he expects to rent them – O’Neill will have received in rentals at the end of the 1926 season, $440 per week or $11,000 for the twenty-five week period through which the season will run.

And then–

“And then,” said O’Neill, “I’ll be thinking myself entitled to a little change of scenery and will hie myself to Florida or California or some other place where it’s warm when it’s cold ‘up north,’ and – maybe – build another cask cottage village.

To Build Whole Town.
O’Neill has other ideas of gaining revenue in addition to that which his “efficiency cottages” are expected to bring. The community will need a store and if O’Neill does not start and run one himself the party who does will have to pay and pay well – for the privilege.

And there are other things besides a store that will be essential – things that will add materially to O’Neill’s income.

The present time finds O’Neill pestered by concerns and individuals wanting advertising rights on his premises.

"One fellow wants to fence the place in and charge so much for having signs painted on the fence,” said O’Neill. “He’s all out o’ luck right now. I expect a lot of people out this way just to look at my cottages and I want them to see them for their seeing is going to mean their wanting to occupy for a time I’m sure.”

Fencing in the village and charging an admission fee is another scheme on which O’Neill frowns.

The site selected by O’Neill for his cask cottage village is one of the most attractive on the Lake Erie shore.

O’Neill is sure that he “has something” in his settlement – and those who have seen the place quite agree with him.

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Another article (below) about Cask Villa from the Detroit Free Press of February 28, 1926 seems to have used the Des Moines Register article for reference, and paraphrases much of the content with a few errors and embellishments. Although it lacks direct quotes from W. J. O’Neill, the article does include some information and details not found in the Register article.

I do like the clever headline of James Clyde Gilbert’s Free Press article, though.

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Here’s more evidence that W. J. O’Neill was right when he felt that Cask Villa would capture the imagination of the public. Just a few months after it opened in May 1926, Cask Villa was featured in the September issue of Popular Science magazine.

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W. J. O’Neill passed away in early December 1940.

Clipping from the Evening Independent of Dec. 3, 1940