john riley robinson

First Installment of a series about the man who built Oak Hill Cottage

John Riley Robinson’s name shows up most prominently in Mansfield’s history as the superintendent of the first railroad into the city. The Sandusky City and Mansfield Railway laid track into Mansfield in the spring of 1846, greatly improving transportation to and from the port city of Sandusky, the principal transshipment center for Mansfield.

Robinson was more than just an employee of the railroad, he was one of the principal investors. The source of his wealth isn’t clear, but he had been in Richland County a number of years. The name Danford N. Barney of New York shows up alongside Robinson’s as a principle investor in the SC&MRR. If that indicates an early association with Barney, the future chairman of the board of Wells Fargo, his wealth may have been tied to higher financial circles far from Mansfield. By the mid-1850s Robinson was associated with Wells Fargo, and he knew the Barneys at least by 1860 if not much earlier.

Robinson married Jane Wilkinson at her parents’ farm at Lexington, Ohio in 1836. In the 1840 census the family lived in Mansfield and had two sons. The 1850 tax map shows Robinson owning lot 91 which is on W. Third Street and part of the library property today.

Census data from 1850 showed Robinson’s estate valued at $25,000. Oak Hill Cottage, which he had built in 1847, was valued at $3200 on the 1850 tax records.

The balance of Robinson’s Mansfield property included the “Robinson & Riley” flour mill that formed part of the railroad terminus complex along Walnut Street. According to Graham’s 1880 Richland County History, the flour mill was built some time after 1820 by Henry Lehman, was the first grist mill in the city, and was water powered. Robinson purchased the property and improved it, according to Graham, and for many years “did the custom work for Mansfield and vicinity. “

The mill pond, fed by Touby’s Run, stretched along near what is now Sixth Street, from about Bowman Street to one block west of Mulberry where a sawmill was located. The mill race exiting the pond then turned northeast about three blocks to Robinson’s mill, then due east to the Rocky Fork where Orange Street crosses.

gothic revival chair

Though Oak Hill Cottage is a Gothic Revival masterpiece of a house, its furniture is mid-Victorian. The original owner, John R. Robinson, sold his furniture for $445 in 1861 and left Oak Hill, according to his journal that begins his Mexican silver mining venture. The Gothic style was on its way out of fashion in the 1860s when Dr. Jones bought the house in 1864 and began to fill it with the latest furniture from New York shops. That fact fairly precludes there being any Gothic Revival furniture in the Jones family collection that furnishes the house today.
But just a couple of weeks ago I was stunned to notice a chair in the library that had to have come from the earlier period. I had never noticed it before, but assumed it was just part of getting to know the house better on my periodic rounds. When I was drafted to fill in with the tour this Sunday, I made mention of the chair to each group, pointing out that it must have come out of the attic from the Robinson era, because it was the only piece of furniture in the house today appropriate to the Gothic Revival architecture.
After the tours I mentioned it to Guild member Marge Graham, and she surprised me by saying the chair had been donated to Oak Hill from the descendants of John R. Robinson out of his estate in Maryland. Not realizing its significance the chair had been stored in the maid's quarters until Marge, who likes it, had set it out while decorating the library for Christmas. I promised Marge I would write the chair into the tour guide script so it has to remain on display from now on.
Its likely that either the chair was original to Oak Hill and kept by Robinson, or that it came from his later home at the Batopolis silver mine in Mexico. Either way, it fits the most comfortably into Oak Hill's architecture of any of the pieces in the house.

fritillaria

This old photograph from the Oak Hill Cottage archives showed such an amazing-looking (to me...not a gardener) lily-type flower that I sent it along to Chuck Gleaves (Kingwood Center Director...his blog is Lifestyle Garden )to identify. He said it is fritillaria or Crown Imperial. Blooms early in the spring. I did some further searching and found it smells like skunk, especially the blooms when disturbed or handled, so made me wonder why these two lovebirds seem so oblivious to its scent.

ghosts at oak hill

I administer the Oak Hill website so I get all the email inquiries; most are requests to spend the night in the cottage hunting for ghosts. I'm not much of a believer, if at all, in the spirit world, and maybe that's why I'm a preservationist, bookman, and sometimes historian. Our connections to the past exist through tangible things. If these tangible things trigger spiritual experiences, so much the better...maybe a feeling of history is a spiritual experience.
Anyway, I've been researching the historical landscape of Oak Hill through old photographs, and I've been finding some that I think of as the real ghosts of Oak Hill. I've found them tucked here and there in boxes. Generally these are photos that were so dirty and faded from years in an attic or basement that the original researchers disregarded them amongst the wealth of better preserved material. But many are gems. These three turned up yesterday.

ghosts around mansfield

Mansfielder's know that this is a crow town. Like some other special towns and cities around the country, Mansfield hosts large flocks of crows about this time of year and into the winter. It seems each fallen leaf is replaced with a crow some mornings where the flock (flocks?) congregate. In the last 20 years or so I've experienced this out Park Avenue West in the 300 block, downtown on the Square, and now living at Oak Hill.
Some say crows are the ghosts of dead Indians. That's a little too weird for me, but I can't help but wonder how ancient these roosting areas are...or sense they are strong connections to the past.
Here's video of the crows this morning and another taken in 2006 downtown on the Square.

maple tree

The old maple tree at the east side of Oak Hill Cottage lost a major branch in the windstorm three weeks ago. It was taken down entirely today. Ironically the Board had recently debated taking the tree down because of an old fissure in the main trunk that made it appear dangerous. The windstorm settled that debate.

oak tree

A 1974 interview with a granddaughter of Dr. Johannes Jones confirmed that Oak Hill was named, as you might suspect, for a giant oak tree that stood close to the west side of the house; too close, resulting in damage to the foundation and wall. The house in fact was built beside the tree which was already a giant, judging from the earliest pictures of Oak Hill Cottage. The above photo from about 1898 shows it as a dead snag, and in a later photo taken 10 to 20 years after, it is a stump, and the west side yard which was dark in earlier photos has become sunny.

zinc countertop

I guess I have a thing for unusual counter-tops. I loved the concrete sink-top at my apartment over the bookshop, but didn't want to go through that casting and polishing process again. I also wanted something appropriate to this 1925 house. While looking into stainless steel I stumbled across the zinc option. Zinc is softer and takes on a natural dark patina. The cost of a 10 foot sheet that would do my two counter sections was about $300, about $1200 less than having stainless counters made, and the material is do-it-yourself friendly. The photo shows the first of the two new counters in place.

first english lutheran

Scaffolding was up and work well under way on the roof of First English Lutheran when it became obvious that the large stone chimneys were being removed and some yet-to-be determined work is ongoing on the stone parapets. The photo above is after the removal of the prominent chimney on the west side of the main roof between the gables. The photo below shows the stonework at the top of the tower, now gleaming white... painted white?...hard to tell from the ground with all the scaffolding.

big move

A few things sidetracked the SquareLog in the past 3 months. In the middle of planning for the Bicentennial Exhibit Trailer, I sold my building and began the big move to 334 Oak Hill Place. The trailer was a success with over 1000 visitors through the entire month of June. Once the dust settled from that, I moved out of the apartment over the bookshop and settled in at Oak Hill.
Now I'm in the middle of moving books, but only my best stuff. I'll continue with internet book sales and occassional appointments, but no more open shop hours. Meanwhile at Oak Hill I've begun watching over Oak Hill Cottage across the street. The house I've moved into is the Anka Vaneff house, a 1925 Sears Roebuck catalog house.
I'll be keeping the SquareLog name even though I'm not living on the Square any more.

bicentennial letters

A lot of credit goes to Paul Lintern for the Bicentennial letters series published daily in the News Journal. This project and several others including the dinner theater at the Bissman Bldg. must be keeping him very busy. The letters are hypothetical communications from people, institutions, or objects in Mansfield's past. Since they are basically fiction in the first place, I don't want to complain about their inaccuracies, but simply warn readers to take the details with a grain of salt. Yesterday's letter dealt with the Indian village of "Greeneville"...make that Greentown. The letter concerning the Dowie riots seriously glossed over the mean-spirited mob actions of the summer of 1900 when Mansfield's intolerance toward a religious group was a disgrace in the national press.
But fortunately the need to gloss things over is not quite as compelling here in Mansfield as it must be in some other communities especially as it relates to slavery and post-Civil War race relations. Mansfield conducted one hanging (Edward Webb in 1878) when executions were conducted locally around the state. That hanging did become a public spectacle when a mob broke down the enclosure, and Mansfield suffered some bad press as a result. It's undeniably a blot on our past, but pales by comparison to the mob lynchings and riots that occurred in communities around the country through the latter half of the 19th and into the 20th Century. I've often wondered how some communities celebrate their past when horrific stories cast a pall over their local history.

blockhouse progress

I stopped by the blockhouse site this morning and work is progressing on the new foundation. The dismantled pieces are laid out inside the pavilion like a big Lincoln Log set. I expected to see signs of work on the new timbers, but evidently that is being done at another site, because there was no sign of any new work here at South Park.

kalamazoo promise

The News Journal has a front page story this morning about the Kalamazoo Promise I reported on last October. The NJ website still has Sunday stories, but not today's yet, but here's a link back to my October entry. http://squarelog.blogspot.com/2007/10/kalamazoo.html

appleseed schedule

I've updated the www.seejohnnyappleseed.com website with the 2008 schedule. There's a lot more going on this year plus a few more things in the works.

jacob barr portrait

Jacob Barr's portrait hangs in the library at Oak Hill Cottage. Tim McKee made this excellent photo of the oil painting. See later posts about Jacob.

ravine

At our Wednesday meeting of the Preservation Commission Dan Seckel reported that test borings for the enlargement of the Renaissance Theater revealed 15 feet of infill. That information rang a bell with me because of a detail I remembered from a letter from 1847 by Robert Bowland. Bowland had built a new home in the "addition" he had developed on West Third Street between Mulberry and where Bowman Street is today. I've circled his house on the map above. (West Market Street is Park Avenue West today.) Here is what he wrote:
"We have now had a number of days of wet weather. Yesterday it rained most of the day and unusually hard most if not all night, and now 2 pm still raining hard, and the waters excessively high. If it continues to rain much longer, there must be great damage done by the floods."Later in the letter "Saturday morning. The rain ceased after dark last night, all the low grounds near this place under water. I understand all the mill dams near this place, and bridges are gone and an immense quantity of fencing. I expect in a few days we will hear of a vast amount of damage done by the freshet. The culvert was not sufficient to vent the water as fast as it came down, and it was dammed up to near the top of the embankment in the ravine between my house and the town, but no damage done to the embankment."
So apparently there was a ravine between his house and "town". Looking at the 1853 map above and noting the land that wasn't built upon, it's clear that a ravine probably ran through the area I've marked with the dark line. That would account for the fill under the theater. The "embankment" would likely have bridged the ravine along Third street with a culvert (of stone in that day) to drain it.

stats from mbor

STATS FOR FEBRUARY 2008
Following are stats for Feb. 2008 compared to 2007 & 2006. Remember that these numbers do not include commercial or vacant land.

TOTAL UNITS
Feb. 2006 - 95
Feb. 2007 - 96
Feb. 2008 - 117

DOLLAR VOLUME
Feb. 2006 - $9,524,513
Feb. 2007 - $8,696,943
Feb. 2008 - $9,282,072

AVERAGE PRICE
Feb. 2006 - $100,258
Feb. 2007 - $129,039
Feb. 2008 - $ 76,943

Figures taken from statistic files of MBOR's MLS.

snow

The scene outside my back door this morning; and the snow's still coming down. The city has never been quieter.

preservation in mansfield

I'm working on a scrapbook project for the bicentennial exhibit trailer on the Square [I'll be posting more about this later], and researching old newspaper articles. Tonight I was working on the Vasbinder fountain story. I was happy to see that my high school social studies teacher Dave Dalton, when he was a council member back in the 70s, helped bring the fountain back from Malabar Farm when the state no longer wanted it.
I was also surprised to come across a public letter from a local architect denigrating the fountain; "its history is not all that significant"..."in a sad state of repair"..."cost more than its worth"...etc. This same architect, who touts his internship at Colonial Williamsburg and consultation on the restoration of Oak Hill Cottage, was a major factor in scuttling the Woodland Historic District proposal two years ago, after initially encouraging us in the effort.
In 1976 he publicly opposed the nomination of the Ritter house at 181 S. Main because "Placed on the National Registry it will be reduced in value because of the restrictions placed on it and a present poorly maintained structure will be perpetuated."..."A city such as Mansfield can afford just so many "historic sites." Oak Hill is three-fourths finished, is out of money, in trouble, and no one locally can be found at this point who is excited about seeing Oak Hill finished. Oak Hill is a significant structure from several standpoints and has a national reputation. "..."We should see our national heritage preserved, make no mistake about that, but we cannot preserve examples of all American architecture here in Mansfield because much of what we preserve in such a scheme will be of mediocre quality. We have a fine example of Gothic Revival in Oak Hill so let's let someone else with a fine example of Queen Anne fulfill that part of preserving our heritage."
Basically his premise is, and I've read similar sentiments in Paul White's old columns, that Mansfield's architecture is generally a mish-mash (the same words this man used about Woodland) and mediocre, and not worthy of preservation except for singular cases like Oak Hill wherein preservation equates to meticulous restoration, and nothing less is relevant.
Thankfully over the years the less sophisticated general population have been the true preservationists in Mansfield...the people like Mike Volk, Dave Dalton, Robert Burns, and others who brought the fountain back. The people who voted down multiple library levies until they abandoned a plan to tear it down. The people who fought the cut-through of the park and displacement of the fountain in the first place.

bank repossessed property list

Just a reminder; I send out a list of Richland County bank repossessed properties every weekend. If you want to be on the list, send me your email address. There are currently about 150 homes on the list.

jacob barr composition book

Here's another extract from Jacob Barr's (Louis Bromfield's Great Grandfather) composition book. I'm not sure of the date, but pre-Civl War and by this poem and other clues, he was in school and in District 5.

[Composition Day]

Today again if it don’t rain

Is composition day

And I appear as usual here

With something too to say

In olden time the god of rhyme

Was wont to aid the poet

But I don’t claim a poets fame

I’m crazy and I know it

I’ve touched the lyre to please desire

But could not raise a --------

The old concern I mean to burn

And go it all alone

So one and all both great and small

I say prepare for rhyme

Im bound to write although my might

May not give aught sublime

Old Sheakspere once was but a dunce

And learned his abc

And others too but little knew

When they were brats like me

The cabbage plant though small and scant

When young if planted out

Will often grow enough you know

To make a tub of crout

Old number five is just alive

With cabbage plants like me

We’ll thrive I spose but no one know

How large we’ll get to be.

There’s Prude and Cele & Poll & Cal

Armand Liz and Dave

And John and Garn who cannot learn

They’ve tried alas in vain

But mark you I am aiming high

My name a stir creates

I’ll be tis meant next president

Of these united states.

byrd's snow cruiser

I've been working on a display of unusual historical events for our city's Bicentennial and stumbled across this today: Admiral Byrd's Snow Cruiser

The giant 55 foot long, 20 foot wide Snow Cruiser designed for Admiral Byrd’s third Antarctic expedition in 1939 was built in Chicago. It travelled through Fort Wayne, IN and eastward on Route 30, passing through Mansfield at 6 a.m. on the Morning of November 3, 1939 on its way to Boston to be loaded onto the expedition’s ship the North Star.

The cruiser reached Boston in19 days with many mishaps and breakdowns along the way, and accompanied by massive traffic jams of onlookers, but most Mansfielder’s slept through it’s passage through town on Fourth Street, and out Rte. 42 to Ashland.

Once offloaded at the Bay of Whales in the Antarctic the mishaps continued, its lack of traction being its biggest failure. The farthest distance it travelled in the Antarctic was 95 miles, backwards (it was found it had better traction going in reverse).

It served as a winter station for the expedition, buried in the snow on the Ross Ice Shelf. With the war in Europe, funding for the expedition dried up. The snow cruiser was last seen when it was rediscovered in 1962. Today it is either buried beneath the ice or, more likely, at the bottom of the Southern Ocean.

blockhouse

The blockhouse was taken down for restoration in December. The Preservation Commission has design review authority but it has taken some gentle prodding by the Commission to be put into the loop on the project. Fortunately the Chair of the Blockhouse Committee, Lou Hart, and the contractor doing the work, Rudy Christian, are both in tune with appropriateness and preservation concerns. Some of the aspects of the restoration that have surfaced to date:

• The ugly colored stain used on the logs is not removable... will have to be covered with something more suitable.
  
• The current chinking is portland cement which has prevented proper drying of the logs after rains, resulting in rot. Lime mortar will be used in the restoration.
• The interior will no longer include the metal stairs, jail, and other Boy Scout stuff.
  
• The exterior stairs will be built in a more appropriate manner for the time period. That stairs was added along with a door and window when the original blockhouse was converted to a jail and court house use.
  
• A puncheon floor will be installed on the first floor and a board floor on the second. This is consistent with the historical record of the conversion.
• A structural alteration will add hewn floor joists under the upper crib to carry the weight along the length of the two cantilevered support beams. This will allow the restoration without the ugly braces that were added when the support beams broke and sagged years ago.
• A record of each log will be produced that identifies the source and time period. The interior of the lower level will have a display that chronicles the blockhouse history and the data on the logs and restoration.
• The blockhouse will be rebuilt across the park road and on a little higher ground, giving it a better location; more visible.
• Inappropriate memorials and artifacts such as the civil war cannon, bricklayers monument, etc. will not be moved to the new location.
• The Historic Preservation Commission will exert some authority to thwart future siting of monuments and memorials, or inappropriate landscaping elements in the vicinity of the blockhouse.
  

the greenest building is one that is already built

The latest issue of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust, is THE GREEN ISSUE, all about the myriad energy and waste factors associated with both new and old buildings. The recent green wave has tended to create a perception of a huge gulf between new green buildings and old, drafty, energy-wasters. The hype that accompanied the campaign to build Mansfield's new high school is a prime example of that perception. A more careful analysis of the energy it takes per square foot to maintain a new, LEED rated building, vs. a pre 1920s building is about the same. And the consideration of "embodied energy", the energy already bound up in preexisting buildings or used to construct a new green building, can overwhelm the energy-conservation advantages in new green construction. Wayne Curtis' article, A Cautionary Tale, quotes Mike Jackson, chief architect with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency: "if embodied energy is worked into the equation, even a new, energy-efficient office building doesn't actually start saving energy for about 40 years. And if it replaces an older building that was knocked down and hauled away, the break-even period stretches to some 65 years, since demolition and disposal consume significant amounts of energy. There's no paybacke here," Jackons said. "We're not going to build anything today that's going to last 65 years."
Architect Carl Elefante said it more simply in last summer's National Trust Forum Journal: "THE GREENEST BUILDING IS ONE THAT IS ALREADY BUILT".