Park Avenue Home

[AllanY2525]

Jaime...

Did you get any photos while you were inside the house, by any chance?

I'm trying diligently to get all the photos I can, so that I can put them in
the [rather small so far] gallery on the web site... for everyone to see.

[JHughes330]

I loved this house so much. In August of 2007 I was inside of this house and it was absolutely beautiful!

[AllanY2525]

Thanks Steve!

If there are no digital copies to be found, would it be possible to scan the
paper prints and upload them to the web site?  (I have an FTP login for
visitors who want to contribute stuff to the site...)

[AllanY2525]

Steve,


Can you get ahold of copies of the photos that were taken when the city
building inspectors were last inside the property?  Phil Kidd had mentioned that
they took lots of them when they inspected the property and that he had
seen some of them downtown (maybe city hall ?? )

Thanks for anything you can dig up....it just kills me that I never got a
chance to see the inside of the house before it was burned.  I'll bet it was
very beautiful in its time, and that it had a very interesting floor plan.

[AllanY2525]

Pamela L. Speis of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society gave me a
little historical information on No. 259 Park Avenue via email this morning,
along with a (very small) scanned copy of an old black and white photo of
the house circa: 1920's.

There used to be a stone wall along the front of the property, which curved inward
at the entrance to the driveway.  Another curious thing is that it appeared as
though there were only TWO dormers in the attic roof that faced the street,
but the house had three - someone may have made some architectural changes(?)

Pamela stated that the house had been built in 1900, with the stone facace...but
I have heard others say that it was built in 1875, and had been a wooden house
that was changed later to include the stone facing.

Judging from the remains the morning after the fire (Tyler Clark gets credit
for those shocking photos in his blog) I would tend to think that it was always
a stone house - the walls that were still standing had notches in them where
structural beams were laid into the stonework.

Here is the historical info she gave me:

Historical Information for No. 259 Park Avenue Youngstown, OH
Courtesy of Pamela L. Speis, Mahoning Valley Historical Society.
All rights reserved.

(Article used by permission)


According to the National Register Form for the Wick Park Historic District, the
residence at 259 Park Avenue was built for Charles H. Krauter in the Georgian
Colonial Revival style, with a stone façade in 1900.

The Youngstown city directories agree that Charles Henry Krauter appears as
the first occupant and remains there until his death in 1929.  Charles H.
Krauter, druggist is listed in the city directories from 1900 to 1927-1928.


1929    Mrs. Mary McC Krauter (widow Charles H.)


Death Certificate for Charles Henry Krauter, Division of Vital Statistics,
Certificate of Death #23011.  Date of Birth March 15, 1861 .  Date of Death
March 29, 1929 , age at time of death 68 years 14 days. 

Wife Mary McCartney.  Address:  259 Park Avenue .  Occupation – druggist. 
Birthplace Bridgeton , NJ .  Father – Charles Krauter, Mother – Mary Cook. 
Burial:  Oak Hill Cemetery , funeral director John S. Orr & Son


The old photo is attached - I've sent Pamela another email asking here if
someone could scan the photo at a larger size/resoution.

[Towntalk]

All your other links work fine for me  no problems at all. Its just that one.  .

I use Internet Explorer. At my advanced age in life it's hard to change.

My web site host made some major changes and I'm having tizzy fits just working with it.

[AllanY2525]

Towntalk,

You've had some problems viewing pages on my site before - it has been a long time, though.

Are you using Mozilla Firefox? My site doesn't support Internet Exploder ....errr.. ....
make that "Internet Explorer"

Try following the long path, link by link from the home page... Click on Lost Treasures, then click
the link for 259 Park Ave in the resulting right pane in your browser... hope that works okay for you.

 

[Towntalk]

This is still all I get:

<a href="/259park/index.html>259 Park Avenue - Arsoned October 20, 2009

[northside lurker]

The link works for me.

[AllanY2525]

Just double checked the links...

Try clicking on Lost Treasures in the left pane of your browser, then in the following right hand pane, click the
link " 259 Park Avenue - Arsoned October 20, 2009"

This should bring up the small gallery where the photos, etc are...


Allan

[Towntalk]

The link to the Park Avenue house not operative as of the date and time of this post.

[AllanY2525]

I've put all the photos of 259 Park Avenue that I've been able to find on the local
Youngstown sites into a gallery on my website.

www.allthingsyoungstown.net

Just click on the "Lost treasures" link, then click on the link for No. 259 Park Avenue....

Anyone who might have more photos of the house - **especially the inside** please email
me.  I really want to have them for historical purposes....  I put a message up on
the index sheet about the reward for any info on who might have set the fire.


Thanks

Allan

[AllanY2525]

Everyone:

I sincerely apologize for the caps... even if the post was not typed in
"all caps"...I was attempting to emphasize certain key words and phrases,
and in no way intended to yell at Rick, or anyone else on the board for
that matter.  You're all a decent bunch of folks, and I have no quarrel
whatsoever with anyone here....

I will type entirely in lowercase from now on, with the normal grammatical
exceptions.

With regard to the costs of tooling up a line to make the panels, once
the dies are cast, the cost is reduced with every panel produced.  I also
suggested that a local fabricating plant make the panels not only for
the city, but sell them abroad as well.. which means that the cost of making
the dies, etc would come out of corporate profits - just as it would for any
product produced by such a plant.

With the shrinking cities problems throughout the country, one would certainly
think that the sales of such a product would be both ongoing, and increasing
over time.

As far as the "limited market" concept, I don't even have to do any research
to think of many, many major urban areas around the country where there is
indeed a viable market for such devices, ie: Detroit metro, Chicago metro,
DC Metro, Los Angeles Metro, New Orleans metro, the list just goes on and on...

The city and/or county could offer the plant(s) incentives, in return for
buying the panels "at cost", and the plant could sell them to everyone else,
at the normal, retail/wholesale prices.

In order to avoid re-iterating myself with regards to portions of my previous
posts in this thread, I will simply say: please re-read the portions of my
post that refrerenced "lightweight, composite materials".. and the cost of
producing plastics versus metals.

Please also review my comments regarding the long term cost savings of
re-usable panels, versus plywood and lumber... and re-boarding buildings
over and over and over and over..... etc, blah blah ad-nauseum

[Rick Rowlands]

On the subject of the cost of those stamped panels.  The closest mill that could produce the galvanized steel would be USS Mon Valley Works, specifically Irvin Works.  There is one job shop stamping plant in Youngstown that I know of, utilizing the old presses at Youngstown Steel Door.  The big up front cost is the creation of the dies, which could easily run $50,000 or more.  Thats per size.  The steel coil would have to be sheared into blanks somewhere, so lets say that the raw steel could be obtained for $1.00 per pound.  So a 30 lb. blank would cost $30.00.  Take that $50,000 investment and divide it by the number of panels that you would expect to sell in a year or two, then add the blank cost then add overhead, labor costs and profit plus any downstream final assembly, packaging, marketing, etc. and for a limited demand item such as this the price will be in the hundreds of dollars. 

OR  Outsource the entire job to China and you'll get them for under a hundred bucks each. 

On another issue, my earlier post was in reference mainly toward the vacant mill housing and worker neighborhoods in the city, and not the more stately homes on the north side. 

[Shar]

Allan...are you aware that on a forum when you type your message in ALL CAPS, you are YELLING at the readers???