Corner of Paint and Second streets, Chillicothe, Ohio, USA - 1 to 15 East Second Street. The Nipgen Block and its contemporaneous addition is/are one of the biggest historic buildings in downtown Chillicothe, built in 1874 in the grandiose Second Empire style by local businessmen. Surrounding the building and its addition were sidewalk basements of fascinating complexity.
An enlargement of part of the 1896 black-and-white photo shows visible several signs of sidewalk basements. Under the sign is a stairway; under the next bay is a grille of sidewalk lights; in a line near the curb are seven sidewalk basement vents or access covers.
This is a sketch of the facade and sidewalk basements. On the right side are the rooms under the features in the previous photo, which are roofed with stone slabs. On the left are arched brick rooms.
These are my floorplan sketches of the basements and sidewalk basements. These sidewalk basements were the most complex and intriguing I found in my explorations. They featured a hand-crank elevator, half-arch doorways, cast iron railroad rails supporting the ceiling, sidewalk lights, a mysterious round well-like feature, and a very uneven exterior footprint.
This view west down the sidewalk along the Nipgen Block and addition shows some of the remaining "manhole" covers, a pair of steel sidewalk doors, and in the left middle distance, doors to an elevator (which may have been added after the 1896 photo).
Unfortunately these were filled in without the least thought for historical value or potential use during the "Streetscape" construction in 1988.
A Look In the Sidewalk Basements
The finished sidewalk basements were in front (west) of the building, and continued around the corner a short way. Just past a door, the sidewalk basements reverted to the typical unkept, cluttered, cave-like spaces that I am more familliar with.
Click on the images to see a larger version. (Many of the images below are combined from two wide-angle photos, one looking up and the other down. Because of the distortion of the wide-angle lens, the two don't match up too well.)
3 East Second Street
A view west at the western end of the unfinished sidewalk basements. In the background, just past the door, is a finished sidewalk basement with the flourescent light and plywood panel-covered walls.
Steel I-beams brace up the sandstone slab cieling/sidewalk. A sewer line cuts across the space on an incline.
At the far left upper corner, in the shadow of the left wall beside the camera, is the morning sun shining through a vent in the cieling/sidewalk.
(Leaning against the right wall is stepladder, cut in two by the distortion of two wide-angle photos.)
5 East Second Street
The doorway I was standing in to get the previous image was half-boarded up (the upper half), which you can see in this image, where I am looking west from the next room. (I believe in this image, my back was to a wall.) The same stepladder can be see just beyond the far doorway.
The stone slab ceiling is unbraced by steel beams, probably because this room is narrow enough that the buildiers thought they were unneccessary. In the ceiling is a steel double door.
To the left is an arched doorway to a side chamber.
Directly above the camera (not visible) was the inside of a stoop for the stairway to the second floor.
5 East Second Street (Basement)
Like most late-nineteenth century sidewalk basements, there are windows from the basement to the sidewalk basements. This is a view in the basement looking south towards a window to the sidewalk basement (right).
Also in view is the doorway from the basement stairway (center) and doorway to the space under the stairway (left).
11 East Second Street (Stairway)
These are tall, tall Victorian buildings. The stairway to the basement was a tall, tall space. It and a mirror-image twin twin stairway is formed under the stairway to the second floor, with a brick wall separating the two. In this image, looking south about halfway down the stairs, you can see the half-arch which continues on the other side of the wall. The arched doorway on the left opens into the basement.
Unfortunately, my photos of the sidewalk basements of 11 East Second Street did not come out. Grrr! Stupid flash unit.
13 East Second Street (Basement)
At the right is the doorway from the basement of 11 East Second Street.
The center two dooways with gracious transoms are to the sidewalk basements.
13 East Second Street (1)
In front of the next storefront the sidewalk basements continued. This is a view east looking down the hall that ran between the foundation wall and the sidewalk basement rooms.
13 East Second Street (2)
Through the doorway to the right of the camera in the previous image is this antechamber. Badly rusted upside-down railroad rails brace up the sandstone slab ceiling/sidewalk, and a vent is clearly visible.
Gas meters line the outside wall, which is closest to the curb. At the top of the far wall, a hole has been punched through to the adjacent sidewalk basement.
Coal rubble is strewn on the floor, indicating what this space was originally used for.
15 East Second Street (Basement 1)
In this basement, double French doors opened to the sidewalk basements!
15 East Second Street (Basement 2)
Through the open double doors you can see the arched doorway that opens from the sidewalk basement hallway to a sidewalk basement room.
15 East Second Street (Sidewalk Basement 1)
In the southwest corner of the sidewalk basements to 15 East Second was an odd pit. It was the right shape and size for a well, but I cannot imagine why a well would be in the far corner of a sidewalk basement in a downtown. The pit was even in a five-foot tall shelf!
The sandstone slab ceiling/sidewalk was supported by railroad rails. Note the hole in the far wall, which is the same hole seen in 13 East Second Street (2).
15 East Second Street (Sidewalk Basement 1)
The pit looked like a brick-lined well. It was full of brick and rubble up to a depth of three feet, so I had no idea how deep it was originally.
(The bright streak at the lower left side is a problem from film processing, not something in the image.)
Destruction: 3 East Second Street, Outside
One of the workmen gives me the "evil eye" as I photograph them preparing to destroy the sidewalk basements I only yesterday had explored. They had jackhammered a hole into it and were in the process of cutting pipe for a new water line, I believe.
A closeup of the hole they made shows how close the outer wall of the sidewalk basement was to the curb. (In historical photos of the building, this space was a slope down to the gutter, with no curb.)
