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Alarmists are labeled “Cassandras of doom.” But Cassandra was right. The problem is she was ignored.
Time traveling back to 1940, and taking a few guesses, it would seem that if you drove out of the city limits onto what was then called the Wooster Rd. you would hit three large pieces of acreage on the south side of the road after you passed Osborn School, the Lewis Market, and Spreng's Motel. The first was a mansion and carriage house that belonged to Minnie Scott, her property ran back to about Cherry Street and abutted the Dilgard Greenhouse property and some land owned by an oil company. In 1956 Ada Dilgard lived next to us on Edgehill, her maiden name was Scott so most likely all the land between Cherry and Main was once part of the same Scott parcel. Below is an email exchange I had with Phillip Fair in 2019 (Phillip's statements are underlined).
I don't see any errors that I would be able to remember on the Steele Ave. area. As I recall Mrs. Dilgard that lived on the northwest corner of Charlotte and Cherry in the house you said was the same as yours on Duff was a daughter to Minnie Scott. And the next house before my grandparents house was where Waldo Dilgard who I think was Minnie Scotts grandson. So, It makes you think that Scott's originally owned those properties too.
I had totally forgotten that the Darie Dolly was originally where the
shopping center got built until I started comparing house numbers.
I think you are right about her being Mrs. Scott's daughter.
When we lived on Edgehill in 1953-56 our next door neighbor to the
south (517 Edgehill) was Ada Dilgard, who was the widow of Montis
Dilgard. When I looked up the property records for that house it
indicated that she inherited it in 1917 from H.S. Scott who was
probably Minnie's husband or father, she probably got that whole
chunk of land at that time. Ada may have been Minnie's sister as she
was pretty old when we lived there. Marguerite Dilgard also lived
there and may have been Ada's daughter. And as you recalled Waldo
and Rheba lived next to your grandparents. It looks like Dilgard's
in one form or another owned almost all the property in that square
except for the house on the corner and your grandparent's house,
stretching back into the field. Even the lot on the NE corner of
Charlotte and Cherry.
Ada moved over to the new house on the NW corner (528 Cherry) by 1959
as did Marguerite.
Yes, Margeurite was Ada's daughter. Margeurite and Waldo were siblings. They were both older than my dad who would be 99 this year. I think I only ever saw Ada a couple of times. She was very old.
I know that my parents and Alden Paine who lived across the street from me bought more land on the north side of our properties from Minnie Scott. The property my house is on my grandparents owned. It is where my grandfather kept his horses for the mail route. So, I imagine that it was Scott property originally.
Those were full size city lots that my father and Alden Paine bought off of M. Scott, probably in the late 40's or early 50's. Paine's got 2 lots and we had 1 of those lots. Paine's lived in the next house up on Cherry. Ohio Edison didn't buy that land until the early 70's. I am not real sure M. Scott was even still alive at that time. I remember my mother and the Warnes who lived across the street then ceding to Ohio Edison the land for their driveway into the substation.
Just before you reach Cherry street there is a venting pipe that once burned off natural gas, there used to be another of these on the other side of Cherry St. - near Charlotte Ave.. This was probably the old Mathews Talmage Oil Company partly owned by N.E. Matthews. The Matthews owned a lot land in that area of town, hence Matthews Ave.
The above photo is a house on Cherry Street in Ashland, Ohio (the street runs perpendicular to Edgehill) which I find notable for a number of reasons. For one thing it is an almost exact duplicate of our house on Duff Drive which was built in 1956, the Cherry Street house was built by the same builder (Keen) from the same plans in 1957. And although built after we moved from Edgehill the site was part of the panorama from my old bedroom window.
The above photo is looking north on Hale Ave. toward Cherry Street in the 1940's
The lower part of Edgehill was the southeastern border of Ashland until almost WWII. Edgehill was brick and ended near the top of the hill just past Bank Street. In the late 1930's they began to develop Cherry and the lower part of Hale. All those houses were built about the same time. I don't think much happened during the 40's but the SE of town really exploded in the 1950's.
My grandmother's street in Jeromesville was also brick and we lived there in 1956, which gave me the impression that brick streets were the norm, having lived on them for most of my life up the that point.
The interesting thing to me is that these interior shots look more like out Duff Drive house in the 60's & 70's
than that house today.
The Cherry Street house was built on the site of the old Dilgard Greenhouse office, they had a large greenhouse in back (just to the north of the present deck), Waldo Dilgard was one of the owners - he was a generation older than my parents and the Cherry Street house may have been built for him. Our house until June 1956 was the one on the far right of this picture - you can just see one side of it - my bedroom window. That is 525 Edgehill and the house on this side (527 Edgehill) was Waldo Dilgard's residence per the 1911 city directory.
The next house up ( 531 Edgehill) belonged to the Workmans (the center house in the background) - they had a caged raccoon in back of their house. That house was the residence of several other Dilgard's, one of whom was a carpenter per the 1911 city directory.
The nursery may have still been in operation for a portion of the time we lived on Edgehill, I vaguely recall activity going on during that time. But the greenhouse itself was essentially abandoned. It was full of old radiators, rusty pipes, and wooden platforms with boxes of dirt. But because small children of the 1950's tended to respect property (or perhaps because the office was still being used as a retail outlet) the windows were largely intact. Five-year-old Jeff found it an inviting building to explore and was always amazed at how hot it was inside relative to the outside temperature. This was even true in the winter although less so early in the morning or on cloudy days.
Dilgard Frank E [Maude] Carl, Roy carpenter res 531 Edgehill
Dilgard M L [ Altha] Weldo, Marguerite prop greenhouse res 527 Edgehill
(from the 1911 city directory)
The point of all this being that an aware and observant five-year-old boy intuitively grasped the concept that sunlight produced heat, a portion of which was reflected back from the ground to the sky. And that in turn the sky, especially when in the form of glass or clouds, again reflected some of this back to the ground. It was not until later that through formal elementary school education I learned that layers of the atmosphere varied in density. And it was not hard to make the leap in logic that the greater the density and the closer a layer was to the ground, the greater the greenhouse effect. And a few walks through cow pastures had demonstrated that the more cows the more cow pies. One is left to wonder how different my world view would have been minus this early exposure to greenhouses and pastures. Perhaps an early demonstration of these self-evident realities with easily understood cause-and-effect relationships cemented certain fundamental tenets in my reasoning process; apparently this development is not something universal to the human condition.
Feb 3, 2014
Comment:
RC on 31 Jan 2014 writes: Mrs. Workman was my first grade teacher. I remember going to her funeral, the first I ever attended. Her husband Bill worked for the city water department for years and collected wild animals for pets. I remember going to their house one time and he showed me around his zoo. I recall an owl then. They had two sons that were quite a bit older than we were that used to come into the store from time to time. Beverly Zimmerman ( father's secretary ) bought a house on cherry street, probably the one with the greenhouse. She use to mention it from time to time.
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