Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Avon Lake House Move – July 1971

Yesterday's post was about a house that used to be in Avon Lake, but is long gone. The Avon Lake house that's the subject of today's blog is still very much around – just not in its original location.

Longtime readers of this blog know that moving houses has been a recurring topic for some time. There's just something fascinating about jacking up a house and trucking it to a new location. The local newspapers must have thought so too, because there have been a lot of front page photographs of them over the years.

The article below, which appeared on the front page of the Journal on July 29. 1971 shows a house belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Schilling on its way to a new, er, home. 

The caption reads, "Heading east on Lake Road in Avon Lake with The Illuminating Co.'s smokestacks in the background, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Schilling this morning became the first house to be moved from Avondale Avenue. 

"CEI has begun construction of an oil tank farm on Avondale Avenue, which will store a low-sulfur oil to be used in the "B" plant when it converts from coal to oil, in an attempt to reduce air pollution. The company has bought about 35 homes on the street and will demolish those that are not moved."

Wow, that's one way to wipe a neighborhood off the map.

"At least one other home will be moved – that of Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Chandler," the article noted. "The Schillings will live in the house at its new location on Redwood Boulevard."

Anyway, using the resources available on the internet, it looks like the Schilling home ended up at 33165 Redwood Boulevard. (Yup, there are the two windows on the side of the house, just as in the 1971 photo.)


2 comments:

Buster said...

Nice detective work!

I would never want to move a house. Too many things could go wrong.

Dennis Thompson said...

Looking at the period aerial photos on www.historicaerials.com/viewer the two large tanks were short lived themselves. They were gone by 2000.