of Chillicothe, Ross County & South-Central Ohio
of Chillicothe, Ross County & South-Central Ohio new 6/7/05
The log house down along Paint Creek, in the Alum Cliffs Gorge below the actual buzzards roost, was hit by a tree during the Christmas ice storm and its roof was split apart. It dated to possibly 1820, and was in my opinion still usable and restorable.
I was told secondhand on Monday June 6 that vandals burned it over the weekend. The building is one of several within the Ross County Park District's wonderful Earl H. Barnhart Buzzards' Roost Preserve.
This testifies to the rapacious attitude that too many residents feel toward nature and history, an attitude that is at best a century out-of-date and out-of-touch and on its way out, and at worst deeply inbred into the consumerist attitude of modern western culture. This attitude is undermining the parks effort underway in our county, and destroying its resources piecemeal. It is up to residents who truly value the resources that our predecessors and our homeland have handed to us to champion thier conservation. Now. Loudly.
(Do not confuse this house with the "Cliff House" log cabin at the edge of the buzzards roost. So far, that is intact - except for "grapevine" furniture stolen from the porch a few years ago.)
new 6/7/05With discussion about the fate of the Chillicothe Armory, I felt it would be important to see what the 1993 City of Chillicothe Parks Improvement Master Plan said about it. The city department of Parks and Recreation did not have any more to hand out to the public, so director Brad Cosenza had a small batch reprinted. They are avaialable in the parks office at the city pool in Chillicothe's Yoctangee Park.
(A copy is also available for review at the Chillicothe and Ross County Public Library, and probably in other city offices...or it should be.)
I'll let you know what I find in it about the armory. But I can quote right now from page 44 in the "Park System Framework:"
Pursue the use of the armory in Yoctangee Park as a community building. This will preserve a historic structure, and get a needed facility in the middle of the community without lessening the green space within Yoctangee Park.
Note that it says "historic structure" before it says "green space." Note that it does not say to destroy the former to gain the latter - instead, mentioning the dreaded "P" word in an official city report!
new 6/2/05I just heard a new term for the effect that an exploding suburbia has on the non-urban landscape like farmland and wilderness.
Paul Harvey's June 2d noon report had him mentioning a battle to prevent development somewhere, maybe California - I was focusing on the evolution of Grain Elevators at the time - and he described it as a fight against "peopl-ution." (Perhaps it's spelled otherwise, but you get the idea.)
I had to write that one down. Though we have huge areas of undeveloped land - for example, statistics show that Ross County isn't even one percent "urban" - modern development trends tend to place new housing between where we travel and what we want to look at, so instead of open landscapes along us, we see a veneer of development all around us.
new 6/2/05
Perhaps this was the by-product ofthe residents moving out, but this pile of trash on display a block away from the Feast of the Flowering Moon in Chillicothe appears to be part of the 'spring cleaning' curbside bulk pick-up that the city provides every year.
But why must these piles greet residents and visitors for extended periods of time, especially during an event such as the Feast? (I recall some public complaints in previous years about this public display of trash.)
I can understand if people aren't able to wait to process their waste until until the day before pickup. But, I'll bet part of the problem is that residents don't know when to expect city crews to pick up, and so set their trash out as much as a week - or more - ahead. While working my shift at the radio stations May 8th, when I read the news story on the start of the 'spring cleaning,' one listener called and asked exactly when their area would be serviced. The information I had from the city gave no such information, and I could not even give a general answer.
And why must this process happen in front yards, along the front curb? Alleys are part of the efficient, intelligent, traditional design of the old urbanity that has been tossed out with the rise of sub-urbanity. Having a serviceway that is not a public thoroughfare allows the less pleasant aspects of life - such as trash disposal - to stay out of the way and out of sight. Where alleys exist, they should be used properly!
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Like a movie backdrop, only two sides of the charred house still stand more than a story tall. |
new 6/9/05The historical house at 928 Western Avenue literally went up in flames three months ago on March 18th, under what I would call suspicious circumstances - being neglected, full of stored furniture, surrounded by junk, and catching fire twice in one day. This house was one of the several that still keep that part of Western Avenue a tree-lined residential drive, instead of the baked commercial corridor at Plyleys Lane and Woodbridge Avenue.
A call on June 9th to the Chillicothe Fire Department informed me that the investigation into the fire is still ongoing, and that they can't say anything more.
The best I can tell, from my 1960 city directory, this was the home of Martin Elberfeld, 630 Western Avenue (the addresses on that road appear to have been renumbered at some time betwen now and then).
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A rear view shows the remaining one-story brick walls and yard full of junk and trash that hindered firefighters. |
However, I have long thought that the brick first-floor walls may be of an ealier cottage that was remodelled into the current hous...er, ruin. The brick traces out a familliar one-story, two-room-plus-center-hallway cottage that was a popular simple but gracious cottage for this area through the late nineteenth century.
Now residents of the western end of Governor's Place get to gaze at this ruin across their pond. Perhaps this fire can be a more drastic way to allow development on this tract, without worrying about neighbors complaining about ugliness. Now that the house is mostly out of the way, there's no problem with trying to preserve it, is there?
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Useful only as a small parking lot on the edge of a residential neighborhood feeling pressure from a busy commercial zone, this little mid-twentieth century shop is ruinous behind its blank bland facade. |
new 6/9/05While looking at the Delp House, I noticed a condemnation notice at this little modern commerical building at 990 Western Avenue.
I've heard that it dates maybe to the 1950s, and was a little market and/or gas station. It has no historical or architectural value, and looking in the window, I see that the rotting flat roof is collapsing (it's not flat anymore).
With the way things thed to go in Chillicothe, perhaps the best way to get this building gone is to declare it to be a landmark and cry for its preservation!
new 6/7/05Five reasons to stop topping trees:
Get the whole story by picking up the brochure at the Chillicothe City Parks and Recreation office by the city pool in Yoctangee Park - or by visiting the "Plant Amnesty" site.
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