The house was located on the southwest corner of Idaho and East Erie and originally known as the home of Ebenezer Gregg. According to his biography in The History of Lorain County, Ohio, Gregg was born in Dorchester, New Hampshire and emigrated to Ohio in 1835.
The house was believed to have been built in the 1870s, and was the first really grand house on the east side of Lorain.
By the 1960s, the house had been the longtime home of Myron Foote and his family. In 1966, Foote tried to get a zoning variance for the property, so that it could be sold to a prospective buyer and redeveloped. But a neighborhood group objected to the rezoning and a long battle followed.
The story of the house and the fight to save it were the subject of an early post on this blog (here).
The house and its imminent demolition were even the subject of The Passing Scene comic strip in May of 1969.
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| From the May 24, 1969 Journal |
And here’s a Journal photo from that same time frame of May 1969.
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| From the May 16, 1969 Journal |
In the end, however, the house came down. Here’s the photo from the September 30, 1969 Journal.
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And that’s the story. Two homes at opposite ends of town, both with a rich history of the early days of the area; both demolished, their stories buried forever and forgotten.
I owned a house in Amherst that was early 1900 and had the same ornamentation around the windows and the roof line. Its such a shame that society has gone away from those floor-up windows, and their bed-side balconies for the faked-facade manufactured homes that only pop up now in developments. I hope some day people get tired of the same 3 or 4 design choices and revert back to these beauties.
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