The Wilson - Baldauf House – Part 2

Courtesy of the book Avon by Nora O. Howard

Here’s Part 2 of the article written by Journal Staff Writer Hermaine Speigle about the historic Wilson - Baldauf House on State Route 83 at Kinzel. The article continues with comments by John Bernard, who along with his wife Susan were the owners at the time the story appeared in the Journal back on Sunday, January 24, 1971. 

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The House That Ebenezer Built – Part 2

By HERMAINE SPEIGLE

All the original random plank floors have been covered with parquet-fitted oak flooring.

“There isn’t a squeak or a sag anywhere,” says Bernard. “If you drove a tractor through, nothing would budge – not even the plaster, which was mixed with horsehair, and is hard as iron!”

The kitchen, behind the parlor, has another chimney, where a coal-burning Franklin stove once served for cooking and heating. The same chimney gave warmth to the birthing room, generally unused except for confinements.

There’s a steep, twisting staircase which “hired hands” once climbed to get to their attic lofts. Behind the stairway, there’s a walk-in pantry.

The buttery is now a modern bathroom.

The summer kitchen and porch, enclosed and remodeled, is the new kitchen. The old one, with the coal burner, removed, is used as a family room.

Four upstairs rooms are spacious. “Probably used only for sleeping,” says Bernard, pointing out the original, one coat of wallpaper still in good condition, though it has discolored with age.

In addition to his newel post discovery, Bernard found other architectural surprises. The entire upstairs, a smaller rectangle than the main floor, is supported on the south by a 24 inch square walnut beam. The front chimneys, he says, take an unusual jog in the attic, join, and come out of the roof at one central point.

Ebenezer Wilson didn’t build a pretty house, but he did build a comfortable one, for his day as well as ours.

Bernard, who is advertising manager with American Greetings, Cleveland, plans to refurbish the house in Victorian style. His wife made her contribution to the old tradition “when their third child, Melissa, was born at home a little over a year ago.

“We didn’t plan it that way, but we’re glad it happened. She’s the 14th child born here, and we like to think that the old house just wouldn’t let us go. But the ghosts of Ebenezer and his wife, Ann, must have laughed at our bungled pioneering. We didn’t make it to the birthing room.”

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The Library of Congress website included three photos of the Wilson-Baldauf House. They are identified as being taken on June 25, 1936. 

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Here are a few more photos of the house.

Courtesy Lorain County Auditor website

Courtesy Google Maps

The view on Saturday, January 29, 2022

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The Wilson - Baldauf House – Part 1

The view this past weekend

Like me, you’ve probably driven by the stone house on State Route 83 at Kinzel Road and wondered: How long has it been there and who built it?

Fortunately, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Journal Staff Writer Hermaine Speigle wrote a series of wonderful articles about historic, landmark homes in Lorain County – including this one, the Wilson-Baldauf House. 

And here’s the story of the house, as it appeared in the Journal back on Sunday, January 24, 1971. I’ll present it in two parts. 

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The House That Ebenezer Built – Part 1

By HERMAINE SPEIGLE

ACCORDING TO the present owners of “The Baldauf House,” at the corner of Kinzel and Center Roads, Avon, the ghost of Ebenezer Wilson, who built the house in 1859-61, doesn’t live there any more.

But his spirit is there just the same. It’s built right into the solid, made-to-last-forever, no frills construction of the dour, grey box-on-box structure.

The 34-year-old immigrant from Northhampshire, England, who married in New York before coming to Black River Township, was a practical man. He came with a deed to 180 acres from the Connecticut Land Company, and promptly put up a log cabin for his wife, Ann, and their three children.

Then he started his permanent home directly across the dirt road from the cabin. Walnut and oak trees were felled, and native stone dug. Amherst sandstone blocks and sand from the ridge were hauled in. Purchased materials and labor cost $600, $100 of which Wilson paid in cash. The balance was bartered with leather, whiskey and grain.

Two years later, the permanent home was ready for the family, now with another son, to move in.

Permanent is right. It outlasted Wilson and his children, including three more who were born in the downstairs ‘birthing room’ of the house.

It outlasted his cousin, Robert Faulkner, who bought the house from Wilson’s heirs, and John Baldauf, who purchased it for his bride, Emma, in 1907. Only six of the ten Baldauf children who were born in the birthing room are left.

Emma Baldauf lived in the house for 58 years before she sold it to John and Susan Bernard five years ago and built a smaller house next door for herself. “My boys each had pieces of farmland and homes of their own,” says Emma. “It was better to sell to a stranger.”

Bernard says he is still discovering the structural beauties of the landmark house which was designated a “Historical American Building” in a 1935 survey by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Putting his 'best foot' forward, Wilson had the facade built of blocks of sandstone, and doors and window sills and lintels are sandstone. The other walls are fieldstone, carefully laid in level course, now covered with ivy. The original 24-pane windows were set with reveals one-third of the wall depth.

The fieldstone foundation, five feet thick, tapers into the three foot walls. The basement is split by huge bearing walls into a main room and coal and storage rooms. The kitchen is over a cistern which supplies water for every purpose other than cooking. Piped-in gas from a well on the premises provides fuel for steam heat.

A music room and parlor front the house, with hallway and staircase between. Each room had a chimney fitted with cast-iron, enameled coal burning fireplaces and mantels. In the music room, the original set-up still provides heat, but the parlor fireplace was removed by the Baldaufs and replaced with a brick one.

The hallway is spacious and airy, with east light coming through the panes flanking the door. The wide stairway is rock-hard oak, with turned walnut rails and spindles.

Bernard says his happiest surprise was learning that the gracefully turned walnut newel post, anchored in to the floor, continues on down to the basement! It is really a huge walnut tree, squared off, with only the top showing on the first floor.

Next: The ‘tour’ of the house continues.

A Super Way to Promote a Town – January 1972

Did you know that fifty years ago – way ahead of the current super hero craze gripping the country’s entertainment industry – a city in Illinois decided to promote itself as the hometown of Superman?

I didn’t either until I read about it in one of my favorite books, The New Roadside America (1986) by Mike Wilkins, Ken Smith and Doug Kirby.

As noted in the book, the city of Metropolis, Illinois “tried to fight civic anonymity by claiming to be the home” of Superman.

“In the early 1970s, faced with a decline in local industry, the town cautiously began its first association with the Man of Steel. Fanned by early success and irresponsible prodding by the media, the town was quickly deluded into starting a huge “Amazing World of Superman” theme park, to be complete with a 200-foot statue of the man of steel, legs open for cars to drive through.

“When the novelty wore off and the media quit reporting, visitors stopped dropping by, and Amazing World was scrapped halfway done. Metropolis still blames the gas crisis of 1973-1974.”

Here’s the AP news account of Metropolis beginning its association with Superman that appeared in the Journal on January 16, 1972.

The story in The New Roadside America noted that the Metropolis chamber of commerce (back in 1986, anyway) “gives away packets of multicolored Kryptonite, akin to handing out bullets in Dealey Plaza, to children.”

During a visit to the chamber of commerce, the book’s authors had a good question. They noted, “When we asked if Superman’s real hometown wasn’t Smallville, a nice chamber of commerce lady said, “Nobody’s ever questioned that.” She seemed nervous, as if the town had realized it years ago, in the hungover aftermath of civic folly, and was keeping quiet about the whole thing.”

Courtesy EnjoyIllinois.com

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Click here to visit the Metropolis tourism website, and follow this link to a great article about Metropolis and its Superman connection.

Click here to visit the Roadside American website.

Lastly, I wrote about my 2018 visit to a great Superman exhibit at the Cleveland Public Library back here.

Emerald Valley Ad – January 17, 1972

There’s been plenty of new development in the last year or two at Tower Boulevard and Leavitt Road (the Shell station and convenience store, the car wash, the urgent care) as well as the new stores by Meijer to the south (Chick-fil-A, Biggby Coffee and Five Guys), making that stretch of Leavitt a very high traffic area. So it’s only a matter of time until the old Emerald Valley Golf Course property nearby finally looks very attractive to some developer. The big ‘For Sale’ sign has been up for a while.

But fifty years ago, Emerald Valley was still thriving, and the golf shop was advertising in the winter months. Below is an ad that ran in the Journal back on January 17, 1972.

Emerald Valley has been a favorite topic on this blog. We learned about the history of it back on this post that featured an interview with Emil and Emily Kucirek, the couple who built and owned  it.

It’s interesting that they originally bought the farmland to build houses on it. But, as they noted in that 1969 interview, Lorain wouldn’t give them water or sewer lines, so the couple built a golf course instead, opening it around 1960.

Driving by the aging Emerald Valley clubhouse today brings back a lot of memories of Lorain in the 1960s to anyone who grew up in the area.

Here are some shots from last spring.

Mid-America Boat Show Advertising – 1961, 1971 & 1972

Although the 2022 Progressive Cleveland Boat Show isn’t until March, many Northeastern Ohioans remember that traditionally the show (previously known as the Mid-America Boat Show) used to be held in January.

It was a nice distraction during the cold winter months to think about boating, even if you’re not a boater (like me). 

I did a post back here, in which I compared the different approaches to advertising the event, promoting it with special appearances by the Osmond Brothers and Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats (1965); featuring a Miss Boat Show in the ad (1969); and enlisting Popeye, the world’s best-known spinach-eating sailor as a mascot (1970).

Well, here are two more examples of Boat Show advertising with different approaches.

Back in 1961, this family-oriented ad appeared in the Lorain Journal on January 14th. 

As you can see, the gimmick that year was “fabulous magic waters that actually dance to the excitement of music under a rainbow of colored lights. A huge 60 foot entertainment marvel that will make a lifetime impression.”

I like the cartoon of the kids in the bathtub playing with the toy sailboat, as Fido looks on.

Anyway, by the time of the 1971 Mid-America Boat Show, the ad men decided to go with the tried-and-true angle of using pretty girls in swimsuits to promote the event.

This ad appeared in the Journal on January 15, 1971.

A year later, in time for the 1972 edition of the Boat Show, the Journal featured these promotional photos of swimsuit-clad lovelies in the sports pages (for fathers to peruse, I guess). On the day each photo appeared, it was positioned right next to the popular “Rambling With Rudy” column, and directly above the bowling scores. The actual 1972 Boat Show ad ran on January 14, 1972 elsewhere in the sports pages.

From the December 17, 1971 Journal

From the January 14, 1971 Journal

From the January 14, 1971 Journal

It’s interesting that the photo caption of the two women at first refers to them as “two youthful boating experts,” and later as “two housewives who know their boating.”

I worked in the advertising field for many years, and had to hire models (male and female) for photo shoots. With that in mind, I'm guessing that the Boat Show models were all happy to get the work, that they were paid fairly well, and that they enjoyed the publicity, as well as the photos which would become part of their portfolio. 

Make Way for the New Vermilion Comfort Station

Earlier this month, the house at 479 Main Street in Vermilion – the small white one right next to the beach – was razed to make way for a new comfort station and parking lot, part of the ongoing revitalization of Main Street Beach.

Mayor Jim Forthofer noted that the owners of the house, Linda and Bill Stuchal, had contacted him a few years ago and gave the city of Vermilion ‘first shot at acquiring this property for future park development.'

Although I have made many visits to the beach there in the past three years since I moved to Vermilion, I had already forgotten what the Stuchal house looked like! And since the house was located in Erie County (which listed it as being built in 1955), I couldn’t poach a photo from the Lorain County Auditor website like I usually do. 

Fortunately, Google Maps is there to provide a fairly recent view of the cute, tidy little cottage.

Here’s another view. (Thanks to Doug for the Google Maps shot).

Lake Breeze Estates Ad – January 28, 1961

Lake Breeze Road in Sheffield Lake, as well as its various housing developments through the years, have been a favorite topic on this blog. 

A four-part post featured the reminisces of Dr. B. W. Donaldson, whose father worked for the Johnson Steel Company and vacationed at the Lake Breeze resort area along with the other steel executives and their families in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

I’ve done posts on the summer cottages that were promoted there in the 1920s (here and here) as well as the modern housing developments of the late 1950s/early 1960s (here and here).

Well, here’s another ad for Lake Breeze Estates. It ran in the Lorain Journal back on January 28, 1961. It features the same illustration that was in the 1960 ad, but it reproduced a little lighter so you can get a better look at the house style.

Note the inclusion of the Dorothy Malone lookalike, also seen in the 1960 Rock Creek Run ads.

As noted by someone who kindly left on comment on my last post about Lake Breeze Estates, the house seen in the ad is actually the style of the homes on Knickerbocker Road, just off Lake Breeze. It’s a nice, simple style home, as well as being affordable, which is always a good thing. A drive through the area today reveals that each house is a little bit different, but with similar well-maintained yards.