West Fourth Street Neighborhood Slowly Being Eroded DRAFT June 2005

Imagine living in this neighborhood in a National Register District, in a very historic small city:

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Beside your two-story historic brick house, you have a huge 1888 two-and-a-half story wood frame house sitting vacant, windows boarded up, vandals stealing in through the rear cellar door and smashing woodwork.

Beside that house is another two-story brick 1879 house that is left vacant and is being slowly smothered in English Ivy.

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On the other side of you, only two lots away, is an abandoned grayish-blue small warehouse. It has been vacant for years. A hole torn in its flimsy cladding allows pedestrians to look almost all the way through it, and see where anyone could climb inside. Gravel and concrete around its setback allows neighbors and visitors to park in front of it.

Oh, it's also sitting in plain view right at a street corner with a traffic light, so traffic headed in two direcions can gaze at its unrequited beauty while they wait at a red light.

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Diaginally across the street from you is a homey little wooden one-and-a-half story Bungalow, which will be demolished or moved soon - either way, removed from your neighborhood - and a paved parking lot will go in its place, probably with a curb cut from your street. (The street runs one-way past your house.)

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Behind that and the 1817 house left standing on that corner is a large parking lot...well, it will be, after the tail end of a mostly-demolished two-and-a-half story brick warehouse is removed.

This open space there has been added to the open space behind it across the alley, creating a gap of almost the entire block, so that back yards are wide open to views from the street. A brick wall is planned to line the sidewalk, but it may not be an effective screen since it may be only four feet tall.

Oh, and most of the 60 foot-tall trees lining the side of that almost-parking-lot will be cut down.

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And a little farther up your street is an 1890s mansion designed by a renowned architect in a style rare outside of big cities, neglected by the county as offices, untouched by the church that bought it, and awaiting permission from the city for demolition.

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Now you would think that your city would be concerned about enforcing the laws on the books, right?

The city administration would enforce the minimum building maintenance codes. The architectural review board would perform their duty to say "no" to demolishing parts of the historic neighborhood without the guarantee of a plan for something better in its place.

But the city doesn't appear to do that. That large hole on the edge of your neighborhood, in lieu of a historic warehouse, is proof of that.

Hard to believe this is in historic Chillicothe, one block from Main Street and one block from Paint Street, half a block from the historical society, right on the southwest corner of the downtown.

Or is it?