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.