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    Ashtabula: People and Places
    Ashtabula: People and Places
    Ashtabula: People and Places
    Ebook207 pages1 hour

    Ashtabula: People and Places

    By Evelyn Schaeffer and Richard E. Stoner

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    About this ebook

    A collection of local photographer Richard E. Stoner's work which captured Ashtabula's transformations over time.


    Post-World War II Ashtabula was a major Great Lakes port with a thriving downtown. Local photographer Richard E. Stoner began taking photographs of the growing city in 1938, and for the next 58 years, his lens captured Ashtabula's businesses, industries, and citizens. His commercial accounts ranged from the harbor's Pinney Dock and Transport Company, to Main Avenue's locally-owned Carlisle-Allen Company department store, to Ashtabula's major war industries. Dick Stoner's earlier photographs capture the Ashtabula that once was, including the week-long Sesquicentennial Celebration of 1953. His later photos record the beginnings of fundamental change in our way of life. Also included in this volume are some pre-1930s photographs by Vinton N. Herron, whose work Stoner purchased when Herron retired. For Ashtabulans, this is a family album. For others, it is a look at a bygone time in Midwest America.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 19, 2005
    ISBN9781439615447
    Ashtabula: People and Places
    Author

    Evelyn Schaeffer

    Evelyn Schaeffer, former Peace Corps volunteer and high school English teacher, has lived in Ashtabula County since 1978. Evelyn and her husband have raised their family in one of the earliest homes in Austinburg Township. Local history has always been one of her interests, and researching and restoring her own home inspired her interest in the history of Ashtabula County as a whole.

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      Book preview

      Ashtabula - Evelyn Schaeffer

      photograph.)

      INTRODUCTION

      The history of Ashtabula, Ohio, is the story of a port and a village, the harbor and uptown. The city we know today actually developed from two distinctly different settlements that have been more divided than united by the river of many fishes that flows through them.

      The Ashtabula River’s outlet into Lake Erie was blocked by a large sandbar when George Beckwith settled on the flats in 1803. In 1819, the harbor on the east side of the river became the northern terminus of the Ashtabula–Trumbull County Turnpike, which stayed on the east side of the river until it crossed the gulf by a bridge in the river flats below Harmon Hill and climbed up Tannery Hill on the west side. Private efforts kept the sandbar clear. It was not until 1826, with the beginning of the canal era, that the government began making improvements in the harbor; the original river mouth was dammed up, a new channel was dug, and piers were constructed. The harbor’s shipping activity remained on the east side of the river, and the docks were located upstream in what later became known as the inner harbor. A pontoon bridge was constructed across the river at what is now Fifth (Bridge) Street in 1850, for the first time allowing direct access to the west side at the harbor, where Matthew Hubbard had first settled in 1804. It was not until the railroads finally reached all the way to the harbor in 1873 that the outer harbor as we know it today began to develop and a business district and shipping activity began to grow on the west side of the river.

      Uptown, about three miles from the harbor, the first settlers established farms and mercantile establishments on opposite sides of the large gulf created by the Ashtabula River. A bridge between Harmon and Tannery Hills allowed travelers to cross the gulf between the east village and the west village. Another bridge was located farther south along the Erie to Cleveland mail route road, which followed East 51st down into the gulf, then made the long climb up the west side along Spring Street, which joined Main Street at the location of West 46th Street. The pontoon bridges at the harbor and the early uptown bridges across the gulf were often impassable in bad weather. It was not until 1889 that the swing bridge replaced the pontoons at the harbor, and not until 1895 that the first high-level bridge was built uptown at Spring Street. The old river valley crossing at Tannery Hill remains, and a high-level viaduct, which realigned Route 20, was constructed in 1928.

      The village of Ashtabula and the harbor joined together in 1877, but there was little practical connection between them until the trolleys became well established in the early 20th century. Even then, it was a true commuter situation to live uptown and work in the harbor. It was the physical distance between the two communities that led to the establishment of the Harbor Special School District c. 1885. The November 1902 Industrial Edition of the Ashtabula Beacon-Record explains that the community formed the district to give her youth the best educational advantages.

      The distance between uptown and the harbor also allowed for the development of distinct ethnic communities. The railroad, which reached uptown in 1852, drew Irish immigrant workers to the area; other immigrant groups, such as Germans and Greeks, developed communities in the business district. Swedes, Finns, and, later, Italians, worked and lived in the harbor. The city of Ashtabula incorporated in 1892, but the Harbor Special School District persisted for another century, as did some of the ethnic divisions within this small city.

      This book concentrates on Ashtabula in the post–World War II period, a time when the great railroad era was drawing to a close at the harbor, while the manufacturing plants, particularly those to the immediate east, were expanding. Uptown’s business district was still thriving. A majority of the photographs featured here were taken by local photographer Richard E. Stoner during this period.

      The harbor is now dominated by the once small private dock company that was just beginning in 1952. All of the railroad infrastructure that defined the harbor’s skyline for half a century is gone. Uptown retains many of the business blocks that were built between the Civil War and the Great Depression, when local entrepreneurs put their own names on large buildings that could house several businesses as well as halls and ballrooms for public use. But the business district has definitely shrunk; a number of the massive blocks and arcades have been replaced by the smaller one-story business buildings of the 1970s urban renewal era or by vacant lots.

      The mid-20th century was also a time when America had essentially no competition in the world marketplace; the economies of postwar Europe and Japan were in shambles. The inexorable march of technology has taken Ashtabula to a future very different than citizens imagined when they were celebrating the sesquicentennial with a Parade of Progress in 1953. Private automobiles have replaced mass transit, personal entertainment systems have replaced community theaters and events, and multinational conglomerates have replaced the locally owned stores, restaurants, and factories that once drove our economy and participated in our community life. The 2002 census found that Ashtabula has a population of 20,482, a decrease of at least 20 percent since the 1950s.

      Our history is in many ways unique to this particular spot on the south shore of Lake Erie, and in many ways it is also the history of many other small American cities. It is worth remembering and preserving.

      MAIN AVENUE, 1955. The Ashtabula High School Marching Band has a police escort for this event. Community parades were a far more frequent occurrence before electronic entertainment became commonplace. (Superior Camera Shop photograph, courtesy Frederick S. Rounds.)

      One

      MAIN STREET TO MAIN AVENUE

      WHAT WAS IT LIKE UPTOWN?

      What was it really like in the days that the postwar generation remembers from childhood, the days when Ike was president and words like progress conjured up nothing but images of a bright future? Was Ashtabula really the big, bustling, prosperous city we remember, or did it just seem big because we were small and seem prosperous because we were children? We all know that the lens of nostalgia can be unreliable. But the lens of a camera, particularly a camera wielded by a professional photographer with an eye for both detail and context, can provide a truer picture of our past. This chapter is organized around Richard Stoner’s photographs of Ashtabula’s main business district. The photographs were taken in the 1950s, when Stoner himself was a Main Avenue businessman.

      Main Street became Main Avenue in 1930, and its cross streets, which until then had been named, were given numbers instead. Only Center Street officially retains its name, although West 46th Street is still commonly referred to as Spring

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