The House at Cooper Foster and South Broadway

Looking south on South Broadway;
Cooper Foster Park is left to right in the foreground

The intersection of Cooper Foster Park Road and South Broadway will look a little different to you on your next visit, if you haven't been through there recently.

Oh, Broadway Assembly is still there; and so is Flowerama (in the former gas station) on the southwest corner. But the tiny white house on the northwest corner has been demolished, as the large property it sat on for decades is finally being redeveloped. That's it in the photo above.

Here's a closer look at what it looked like. If you were sitting at the traffic light, it was easy to overlook with the monstrous spruce (?) trees crowding it.

I've tried to find out about the house with no success. The Lorain County Auditor website – which used to be so user-friendly and useful to researchers  – is pretty worthless, at least to me. (I defy anyone to use its mapping feature with any success.) But my 1964 Lorain City Directory has the house's address as 5490 Broadway with John and Sara Galter retired and living there.  I'm guessing it didn't take long to mow the front lawn.

Here are a couple 'then and now' treatments.

Anyway, seeing that the house has finally succumbed to progress made me feel a little wistful. But least apparently something is going to be built on that corner, unlike countless other properties in Lorain where a building is torn down and replaced with: nothing.