Dairymens New Plant on Abbe Road Opens – Sept. 29, 1956

Here's an ad for an Open House at the brand new Dairymens facility that was located on Abbe Road near the railroad tracks between E. Lake Road and Colorado Avenue. The ad appeared in the Lorain Journal on September 29, 1956 – 58 years ago today.

I wonder what the refreshments were at that 1956 Open House? I have a hunch that it wasn't punch – and that chilled glasses of delicious, farm-fresh milk were served instead.

I've written about Dairymens on this blog before, including here.

What I didn't know until recently was that Dairymens had bought out Mackert's Dairy on Abbe Road in Sheffield Village in 1954. Dairymens operated it as a substation, and eventually constructed the new, modern plant (mentioned in the grand opening ad) just north of the Mackert's Dairy cow barn.

You can download a terrific 2009 article from The Village Pioneer that provides the entire history of Sheffield's Dairy Industry by clicking here.  (Actually it's the whole issue.) As with all of his research topics, Sheffield Village Historical Society Director Charles "Eddie" Herdendorf has done the incredible work of digging up the complete story, and then compiling a fascinating narrative, complete with vintage photos and interviews with the people involved.

Whatever happened to the Dairymens plant? According to the Village Pioneer article, Dairymens closed their Sheffield operations in 1969. And Sandy (my source for Sheffield Lake local history) reminded me that the abandoned dairy complex at 1181 Abbe Road later became the home of Patrick Electric and the storefront for Village Lighting.

You can see the Dairymens plant's "footprint" on this current Bing Maps aerial below. The facility was located just south of the railroad tracks on the east side of Abbe Road. Some of the former Mackert Dairy buildings can be seen immediately south of it.

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UPDATE (Oct. 13, 2024)

Recently, I received an email from Dave Hobson who shared some additional information about the building. He wrote, "Dan, I read your article about Dairymans on Abbe Road. Just a note about its later use. 

"From about 1972 until about 1975, the building was used by the Stern Swimming Pool Corp. as a sales and warehousing/distribution center. They were headquartered in North Olmsted and later moved the distribution center to Berea Road, near W. 117th in Cleveland.

"I worked for them during this period as did one of the Mackert children."

Thanks for sharing, Dave! It's nice to be able to have a more complete picture of what businesses called that location home when the dairy days were over with.

The "New" Manhattan Market Opens – Sept. 21, 1963

Courtesy Lorain Historical Society

From an Avon Lake grocery store (yesterday's post) to one in Lorain…

Here's a nice article about the well-remembered Manhattan Market in Lorain. The piece appeared in the Lorain Journal on September 21, 1963 (at the time that the grocery had just opened in its new location) and provides a nice history of the business.

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Manhattan Market Opens
By BILL CONLEY

Manhattan Market has opened for business in its new location.

For the past 23 years the store that specializes in 50 shapes of bulk spaghetti and macaroni and cheeses from Italy and Greece, has moved seven blocks from downtown to Central Lorain.

"Although we are open for business, our grand opening has been postponed until Oct. 15," Pat Grego, manager, stated.

"We aren't completely settled and there are several things that have to be ironed out before the grand opening," he added.

The store has moved from 1152 Broadway to the old Fisher Store at 1820 Broadway.

"In 1940, I bought the Pat Monaco Grocery and Meats store at 11th and Broadway and changed the name to Manhattan Market," Grego said.

The name came from a store Grego worked at in Morgantown, W. Va., from 1933 to 1940. The new store has been incorporated with Grego secretary and treasurer, Charles Malik, president and Larry Ashebaugh, attorney, vice president.

In moving to the location, the self-serve market has expanded all departments and has added a self-serve meat department.

"Two years after we opened the store in the old location, we went to self-serve, with the exception of our bulk spaghetti and macaroni," Grego explained.

The spaghetti and macaroni is weighed and packaged for customers. Also available are spices and oils from here and other countries.

The store has about tripled in size from 24 feet in width by 80 feet in length at the old location to 50 feet by 138 feet in the new store. There are new modern fixtures and lighting.

Imported cheeses include Provolone and Romano from Italy and Feta from Greece. The Italian cheeses are basic for lasagna and pizza pies.

Besides Grego as store manager, the organization includes his brother, John, as meat department manager and August D'Orazio as produce and grocery departments manager.

The manager pointed out that although the store has added a self-service meat department, it still handles the customers' special custom cutting of meats.

A free lot for the store has been provided at the corner of 18th and Broadway.

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I had first mentioned the Manhattan Market on this blog back here. Reading that post, I can see that a lot of my dates connected with the store are approximate, since I was using only city directories as a guide. That's why it's nice to have the article above on this post to set the record straight.

Here's the former Manhattan Market building location today.

Own a Piece of Avon Lake History

Now's your chance to own a historic piece of commercial property in Avon Lake. The Avon Lake Wine Shop is currently for sale by owner, along with the buildings behind it.

The Arcadia Images of America book on Avon Lake includes some great photos of the building as it appeared in earlier incarnations. Its principal use through the years has been as a grocery store, and the book dates the building back to at least 1915.

One of the photos from the Images of America book shows the store as an IGA in the 1950s (below).

Courtesy the City of Avon Lake and the book Images of America Avon Lake

From that same time period, here's the store's listing (complete with typo) in the 1952 Avon & Avon Lake Directory. (I've included the listing of the Avon Lake Garage as well, since it was located behind the grocery store.)

1952 Directory listing

The grocery store's official Lake Shore Electric Railway stop was Stop 52, and for many years that was its address.

It's fairly difficult researching the Avon Lake Wine Shop building, as the Avon Lake Library has a very sparse collection of vintage directories from over the years. All I could really determine during two trips to the library is that during a brief time in the late 1950s, there was no business listed at that address.  I also found that the Avon Lake Wine Shop was already located there in 1969.

It will be interesting to see if a new owner finds another use for the building.

Admiral King Vs. Lorain High – for the First Time

Louis Trotta and Carole Wasco pose
with "Harvey," the goat which is the
mascot for Admiral King High School.

Here's the milestone ad for the first ever football matchup between Lorain High School and the then brand-new Admiral King High School. The double-spread ad appeared in the Journal on September 21, 1961 – 53 years ago this past weekend.

The ad has a few interesting features. I had forgotten all about St. Mary High School predating Lorain Catholic High School. And there's plenty of well-remembered sponsor companies listed.

I miss the old Buckeye Conference, which dates back to the mid-1950s. It was a mighty conference, that's for sure, with both Lorain public high schools, Elyria, Findlay, Fremont Ross, Marion Harding, Mansfield and Sandusky.

Anyway, according to the Journal, a crowd of 8,000 watched the first matchup of Admiral King and Lorain High. Admiral King prevailed, winning 28-8.

I had also forgotten about Admiral King's mascot: a goat. A photo and caption (at left) that appeared on the front page of the Journal on the day after the game identified him as "Harvey."

I'm assuming that the high school named for Admiral Ernest J. King adopted the goat mascot as a tribute to the U.S. Naval Academy's football team, which has had a goat named "Bill" as their mascot for decades. (You can read about it here.)

The Vanishing Sheffield Lake Cottages

Sometimes change happens right under your nose – very slowly – and you almost miss it.

For example, back in October 2011 (in this post), I wrote about a pair of adjacent lakefront properties in Sheffield Lake that were both for sale. Located immediately west of the 103rd O.V.I. grounds, both properties had vintage cottages or otherwise very old buildings on them.

Here's an aerial view from 2011 of what I'm talking about. 5475 E. Lake Road is shown in outline.

At the time I wondered if the old structures would survive the sale of the properties. Three years later, I have my answer – apparently not.

While driving to work recently, I noticed that two of the buildings at 5475 E. Lake Road are already gone, and the land is being cleared. The house dated from 1911.

A sign for Colabianchi Builders is posted near the road, signaling that a beautiful new home is in the works.

So these two structures are now history (below).

I wouldn't be surprised if the cottages to the west are the next to go.

There's still plenty of traces of Sheffield Lake's heritage as a cottage community to be found along Lake Road. But they're fading fast and will be gone before we know it – or notice it.

The Dairy Queen on Route 20

I exchange a lot of emails with the person behind the great Oberlin In The Past Facebook page. As we both feel it's our duty to perpetuate local history online, we have a lot in common. And The Oberlin In The Past Facebook page is a gem, always full of wonderful, rarely seen vintage photos.

A week or two ago we were discussing soft serve ice cream stands in the Oberlin area, including the gone but not forgotten Dari Land on Route 58, as well as the Dairy Twist on Route 20 east of town, which is still in business and very popular.

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

I remarked how the Dairy Twist sign is obviously a retrofitted Dairy Queen sign, and a question arose. Did Oberlin have an actual Dairy Queen – and when?

I had to admit I didn't really know. I remembered my father taking my brothers and I fishing at Oberlin Reservoir in the early 1970s, and getting soft serve ice cream afterwards somewhere out there in that neck of the woods (on Route 20 if I remember correctly). But I have no idea what the name of the place was.

So I had to look it up in the few vintage Oberlin phone books and old Lorain County directories available at the Lorain Public Library.

It turns out that the Oberlin area had not one, but two Dairy Queens.

The first one – as best as I can tell – showed up in the phone book for the first time in the 1957-58 phone book (below). It was on Route 20 West.

The listing promptly disappeared in subsequent editions.

It wasn't until the 1973 edition of the Dickman Criss-Criss Directory that Dairy Queen appeared again, this time on Route 20 East (below).

As you can see, Dairy Queen and many other listings have no address at all, and are arranged alphabetically (for maximum confusion for someone trying to figure it out 40 years later). 

The Dairy Queen on Route 20 West apparently didn't last very long either. It too seemed to disappear in subsequent books.

I did find a listing for something called Polar Freeze Bar on Route 20 West in the 1978 book, but I don't know if it was a dairy stand or a poorly insulated tavern.

Anyway, the Dairy Twist seemed to first appear in the 1981 directory, and an online website that features businesses and their incorporation dates states that it was established in 1984.

At any rate, the company made great use of the former DQ sign, and I'm glad they found the recipe for success in Oberlin.

Joseph Ule's Windmill & Storybook House

For the last two days, I'd been writing about the old house that overlooks the golf course, seen above in an aerial photo courtesy of Bing Maps. (By the way, since I posted that article, I'm thrilled to report that I'm getting a lot of help from some of the area's finest local history buffs in tracking down the history of the house and even – perhaps – the man who built it. I'll have much more to say in a future post.)

Anyway, if you look down in the lower right hand corner of the above photo, you can see the windmill and storybook house that Joseph Ule built on Kolbe Road.

You might remember that I wrote about the windmill before (back here). But what's this about a storybook house?

Well, below is a great article that tells the whole story of Joseph Ule and his creations. The article was sent to me by Rick Kurish and appeared in the Chronicle-Telegram on July 9, 1954.

This photo of the storybook house (below) accompanied the article.

Rick also generously shared his reminisces with me about his growing up in that area.

He wrote:

"I grew up on Kolbe Road, and my parents moved there when it was part of Amherst Township, and they were surrounded by farm fields. A riding stable grazed their horses in a pasture bordering my parents' property. The area is now all built up and a part of the city of Amherst. The pasture behind my parents place is now a woods that is part of Lorain County Beaver Creek Metroparks.

Anyway, I was familiar with the Joe Ule property, passing it several times a week. I believe Joe Ule moved to the area in the early to mid 1930s. 

You can see the township school house that Rick
mentioned in the 1896 map above near the Jaeger property

There was an abandoned brick Township Schoolhouse on the corner of Kolbe Road and Longbrook Road. The bricks from this building were used to build the rather fanciful house now on that corner. The house, is not nearly as old as it looks. Neither is the windmill, which from my almost daily observation was built between about 1954 and 1960. I think the house dates from about 1937.

The Ule property consisted of about 50 acres along Kolbe Road and Beaver Creek. Joe Ule was an amateur gentleman farmer, who preached organic gardening, before it was well known. In fact he planned to grind the grain from his own farm using the windmill. I can remember reading about him speaking before many agricultural groups.

Sometime in the early 1960s, he sold about 40 acres of his property to the city of Lorain. This became Kennedy Park. This still remains an undeveloped park along Beaver Creek, in the area of Jaeger road. Shortly after this he moved out of the area, to Florida, I believe. He died there in a boating accident in 1969 or 1970.

Hope I haven't bored you too much! Regards --- Rick"

Thanks, Rick! It's impossible to be bored when I receive such nice surprises in my email! Thanks for your research help. As always – I appreciate it!

Anyway, here's what the storybook house looks like today, courtesy of the Lorain County Auditor website (below).

I did shoot it myself this past weekend, but it was a cloudy day and my photo wasn't so hot (below).