Minglewood - A Rapidly Fading Memory of Wooster's Past

Minglewood - A Rapidly Fading Memory of Wooster's Past

I recently made a trip to East South Street to visit a dilapidated old structure that seems well beyond repair and probably become just another of Wooster's vanished landmarks. Minglewood was built in 1921 and served Wooster for over 40 years, first as a source of ice and coal, then in later years as sort of a convenience store. I remember buying beer from here back when I was a teen (3.2, mind you). That would have been in 1971, so it closed some time after that.

I've included excerpts from an article about Minglewood, written by Elinor Taylor, for the Wooster Daily Record, January 6, 1988.

What Memories The Minglewood Had!

by Elinor Taylor

All you "natives" who lived south of Liberty Street in Wooster back in the 1920s surely had a lot of memories flash before your eyes when you read the recent auction sale ad in The Daily Record.

The old Minglewood Coal and Ice Co. building on East South Street is being sold this week because present owners "have no need for the building." Oh, what interesting recollections come to mind — things I haven't thought about in years. But you have to have been a "south-ender" to remember how important Minglewood, built in 1921, was to our lives.

A Minglewood ad from the 1936 Wooster telephone book

Minglewood now is in ruins beside the tracks at the East South Street crossing

 

Elinor goes on to describe the large chunks of ice Minglewood sold in those days and how they were used in icebox refrigerators. The refrigerators had a compartment for the ice and a compartment for the food. As the ice would melt the resulting water would be captured by a pan that needed to be empties. Evidently, this was her father's job and more than once he 'forgot' to empty it, resulting in a flood that needed to be cleaned up. After receiving some motivation from his wife, he solved the problem by drilling a hole in the floor and running a drain hose to the outside. Elinor said, "We had the greenest grass on West Henry Street."

Ice boxes were common in the 19th and early 20th century and required lots of ice and maintenance

In the winter, Minglewood trucks pulled into our driveway a couple of times each fall and winter, loaded to the top with chunks of coal. I remember how specific my parents were in ordering this coal. It had to be a certain kind of coal and a definite size lump.

Elinor describes the home she lived in as a child as have a coal room. The coal room was near the driveway of the home and had a window. The coal truck would pull up close and insert a metal chute in the open window. The operator would then shovel the purchased coal into the coal room through the window. As it turns out, it was Elinor's job to pick up all of the pieces of dropped coal. Perhaps foretelling the future genius that she became, she had a solution to make the job easier, "It was my job to pick up the small chunks of coal which he had dropped and toss them through the window after he left. I pulled a Tom Sawyer on that one. I called all the neighborhood kids in to help and told them it was a game!"

Here is how Elinor describes a trip to Minglewood:

We never went to Minglewood to get our coal, but we often went there to get ice when the original cake had melted and it was still several days until the ice truck hit our neighborhood again. It was a real treat to hop in the old Model A Ford and go to the ice plant over there by the railroad tracks. The man in charge would open a big door to the refrigerated storage rooms and then, ice pick in hand, he would chop off an estimated 50 pounds from a huge "glacier." With his iron tongs he'd set it on the back bumper of the car and we'd race back home before it all melted (Racing in those days probably meant 25 miles an hour, three blocks west and one block south.)

Fringe benefits of those trips were picking up slivers of ice off the dock and chewing them. It's a wonder we didn't all die of the bubonic plague or some equally terminal disease. We snitched ice from the bed of the truck, sometimes even from the street, while the ice-man was going around to the back of the house (It wasn't stealing because the little pieces of ice would have melted in moments anyhow!)

I spoke with my uncle, Joe Beck, and asked if he remembered Minglewood. He got a big smile on his face as he began to reel off some stories. He remembers as a child going to Minglewood and getting shards of ice to suck on as treats on hot summer days. He also validated Elinor Taylor's story about the water bucket over flowing onto the floor. It appears that it was his brother Vin's job to empty it daily, but often failed to do so, making a mess on the floor.

I asked Joe if he remembers heating with coal. He told me that it was a full time job to keep the furnace going and that you needed to know how to 'bank' the coal in the furnace so that it would burn all night, but not burn out. The banking technique was how you stacked the coal in the furnace, and how you set the dampers.

He told me that the house would get very sooty, and every month or so the walls had to be cleaned. To do this they used a product that felt like clay, or Play-Doh, to wipe the walls down.

Coal heat produced soot that got into and onto everything. One way of cleaning the papered walls of the time was to use a cleaner like this which had the consistency of clay or Play-Doh

The wintertime air around Wooster must have been heavy with smoke from thousands of homes, all heating with coal. In 1939, according to Wooster City Directory of that time, there were six other coal dealers, in addition to Minglewood. Gray & Son, Julius Grosjean, George Klinger, Mike Silver & Company, Warren Snyder and Charles Stelzer.

Elinor Taylor continues her article by describing other food items that were delivered to homes in those days, such as fish, meat and bread. I too remember from my very early childhood bread and milk deliveries. We even had a periodic visit from the Jewell Tea man, who had all sorts of wonderful surprises in his little panel truck.

In closing, Elinor writes:

The old Minglewood on summer evenings was a little like Moore's Coffee Shop is today. Everybody was there. Some people drove, some pulled little wagons to get their ice.

I hate to see these parts of Wooster's past go the way of the horse and buggy, but no thanks — I don't want to eat ice from the street; I don't want to have to empty the drain pan and I don't want to shovel coal.

But I do like to remember, don't you?

The Courthouses of Wayne County, Ohio

Wayne County was formed August 15, 1796, before Ohio became a state and was part of the Northwest Territory. The area originally covered all of Michigan's lower peninsula, northwestern Ohio, northern Indiana and included some of Lake Michigan's shoreline. Detroit was the county seat and included, what is now, Chicago.

Before Ohio became a state, Wayne County was huge. It's county seat was Detroit.

Wayne County, in its current form, began March 1, 1812. Wooster, which was laid out during the fall of 1808 had already been declared the seat of justice on May 30, 1811. The Court of Common Pleas was held for the first time on August 6, 1812, being conducted in a log cabin built by John Bever.

This log cabin was built around 1820 in Wayne County and rebuilt on the public square in Wooster for the centennial celebration in 1896. The first location of Common Pleas Court may have looked something like it.

Through 1819 court was held at the newly built Baptist church, the county renting the space from the church for the sum of $50 per year.

In 1819, on the site of the current courthouse, the first purpose-built courthouse was constructed by Wooster founding fathers, John Bever, William Henry and John Larwill. It was a three story brick structure, built in the federal style, popular at that time. It had a central bell tower which housed a bell donated by John Bever in 1823.  It housed county offices as well as the local Free Masons. Inside was a gallery, probably for the public to observe court proceedings.

It had a short life as it was destroyed by fire in 1828, before any organized fire fighting organization existed. This happened during a session of court so many records of the time were destroyed with it.

The first Wayne County courthouse, built in 1819,  burned after only nine years of service.

The second courthouse was designed by an architect by the name of 'Mr. McCurdy'. This was most certainly John McCurdy, builder of courthouses in Hancock and Harrison Counties in Ohio, and other counties in Pennsylvania, as well.  The 2nd Wayne County courthouse was completed the spring of 1832 at a cost of $7,200. Atop the bell tower was a spire and two hand-crafted balls, both gilded and bronzed. The largest of the balls was approximately 22 inches in diameter. The smaller of the two was approximately 7 inches in diameter. Both were made by John Babb and gilded by David Barr. Mr. McCurdy paid sixteen dollars (about $240 in 2013 money).

The second Wayne County courthouse can be seen as the dark square building in the center of the photograph, shortly after it was built.

 It became evident that more room was needed for the rapidly expanding government of Wayne County. In 1868, the North Courthouse Annex was completed, giving breathing room to county employees.

The second Wayne County courthouse after the North Courthouse Annex was built in 1868.

This courthouse served the people of Wayne county until 1877, when the deterioration of its timbers and walls forced the county commissioners to condemn it. Court proceedings were moved to the France building on Liberty Street and the process of building a new courthouse was started.

What structure in Wooster better defines the city more than the current courthouse. This building eludes both grace and strength in it's presentation. The design type is known as 'Second Empire'. This type of architecture was popular in the mid to late 1800s because it lent itself well to large masonry projects, typical of a growing government. The architect was the esteemed Thomas Boyd, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mr. Boyd served as architect for other similar structures in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, as well as the courthouse in our neighbor to the south, New Philadelphia.

Planning began in February 1878. The sum of $75,000 was allocated for the project, and in October of that year the cornerstone was laid. Since much of the construction was of sandstone, expert itinerant Italian stone craftsmen were summoned to Wooster to aid in the construction. 

Boyd's original design was much larger than the building that was constructed. He had planned a symmetrical building with the clock tower in the center. But local planners bulked at that idea because the Annex was only 10 years old and was still in outstanding condition. So Boyd's design was truncated at the Annex, giving the offset appearance of today structure.

Thomas Boyd's original plan was for a symmetrical structure. That didn't happen because the Annex was still functional, and replacement of it was not financially feasible.

A victim of the budget axe, the Wayne County Courthouse is only half as large as Thomas Boyd intended. But that asymmetry is what makes it uniquely Wayne County, uniquely Wooster. The Annex, as it turns out, is a connection to the past.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the Wayne County Courthouse are the four statues of Atlas (or, telamones, an interesting side note is that Wikipedia uses Wooster's telamones as a photo in their article), which appear to bear the weight of the building on their shoulders. If you search for Wooster on the internet, you will undoubtedly see images of them in your initial search results. Traditional knowledge is that the Italian stone carvers made these magnificent statues. But more recent research has challenged this assumption. It is now argued that the telemones were actually carved by two sculptors, one from Germany and one from Prussia.

The four Atlas statues, known as telamones in architecture, were carved by itinerant artists, and are arguably one of the most symbolic landmarks in Wayne County and Wooster.

 The next time you are downtown, take a moment to appreciate the enduring wonder of the courthouse. Someday, it will meet the fate of it's three predecessors, but let's hope it is not in our time. The Wayne County Courthouse, along with its older sibling, the Annex, is a powerful symbol of Wooster's not-so-distant past. It anchors all of us in the values and ideas of the people that have brought us to this point.

.