Lakewood Lore

Cohassett is named after a town in New England

Cohassett Avenue in Lakewood took its name from Cohasset, Mass., with a second "t" added in the process.

Nelson Cotabish, a Lakewood mayor, was responsible for the naming. While traveling for the National Carbon Co., he had visited the small New England town and was impressed by a certain quaintness achieved in no small measure by its cobblestone houses.

Actually, it was the mayor's wife Nellie who first proposed the appellation, and then he carried through on her suggestion.

Later Cotabish built a home at the corner of Detroit and Cohassett avenues that was made in part from cobblestones. It was a modified Dutch colonial with a wavy roof and a turret. It had 23 rooms plus a ballroom on the third floor.

About 1943, after the death of Nelson and his wife, daughter Vida Cotabish Logan offered the home to the city as a youth center. However, it was never accepted. Vida and her husband, Walter Logan, who was program and music director of radio station WTAM, had used the third-floor ballroom as a dancing school.

The frontage of the Cotabish residence on the north side of Detroit Avenue stretched the entire block from Cohassett to Grace Avenue, according to niece Grace Cotabish of Lakewood.

Grace also remembers her uncle's bounteous garden on the Grace corner. It produced, among other things, enormous Ponderosa tomatoes, which, even at that time, on that frontage, must have cost $5 a pound to raise, she said.

Nelson Cotabish was described as "a brisk, practical man with boundless energy." He came to Lakewood as National Carbon's general sales manager in 1892. While mayor here, Lakewood was incorporated as a city. Incorporation date was Feb. 17, 1911.

He approved acquisition of the first motor-driven fire equipment in this section of Ohio in 1910. Also, he arranged for buying the Tegardine home at Warren and Detroit for $15,500 to serve as City Hall. Several years later, the city realized a profit of $40,500 by selling 100 feet of this site for $56,000.

A version of this article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post December 15, 1988. Reprinted with permission.

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