New Lorain Plaza Shopping Center Map – May 10, 1956

Most of us that grew up on the west side of Lorain in the 1960s and 70s spent a lot of time at the Lorain Plaza Shopping Center. 

It was where our mothers bought the weekly groceries at A&P or Kroger; where she picked up the dry cleaning; where some of us banked (at the Lorain National Branch); where we first encountered a large drug store chain (Revco); where we looked at the pet turtles for sale at W. T. Grant; and even where some of us first went to the Lorain Public Library (at its branch there). 

I'm sure you have your own pleasant memories of shopping there through the years.

Anyway, back in May of 1956, the shopping center was not yet under construction. But its location was featured on a map included down at the bottom of the front page of the Lorain Journal of May 10th.

The map (created with type from a typewriter) is pretty interesting. It shows how the shopping center was perfectly located for the numbered streets off Oberlin Avenue that were there at that time, as well as the many more to come in the next few years as farmland turned into developments.

Note that the football stadium (not yet renamed George Daniel Field) was still called Recreation Field. 

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Above the map is a story of the continuation of the Beaver Creek legal fracas.