Northview Allotment Open House Ad – July 15, 1955

Amherst doesn't get represented on this blog very often, although it purports to be about Lorain County. So it's always nice to post something about Lorain's New England-like neighbor to the south.

When I think of Amherst, I tend to think of it only in terms of its historic downtown area, forgetting that – like every other city in the area – it has modern subdivisions and various housing developments that sprouted during the past decades.

And below is a full-page Open House advertisement for a model home in the Northview Allotment, located on the corner of Sipple Avenue and North Main St. It appeared in the Lorain Journal back on July 15, 1955 – seventy years ago today.

It's interesting what an important role newspapers played back then in promoting a new housing development, with ads like this listing the various amenities. While today we can take an online tour of a house before we even go to see it, back then the homebuyer had to be enticed with all the features listed as bullets (or in this case, stars).

The model home in the ad still looks great, even stately, with it shade tree. Main Street is a pretty busy street, and I had to drive by it a few times to get my 'now' shot.

The view on Monday night

Many of the homes on Sipple Ave. follow the basic template of the model home, with just enough variations to keep the overall look of the area interesting. Like many other neighborhoods in the past few years, home values have exploded, with the few homes that I reviewed on the Auditor website increasing in value more than a hundred and fifty percent in the past few years.