Letter from NY architect re: YTownHistoricHomes

[AllanY2525]

In a message dated 3/11/2005 12:17:50 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, markwoodley@verizon.net writes:

I've been meaning to write you after  seeing your posts of pics of houses on the Mahoning Valley website ,to find out if you had any more of them.  Tonight I stumbled on to your Yahoo site & joined.  It's fabulous.

I've looked at & downloaded a number of the pics featured there.  One problem: after about 45 min. I started getting a message saying that I wasn't authorized to view the pictures.  Any ideas as to how to avoid this?

I'm an architect living in New York & Florida.  I stumbled onto Youngstown about 18 months ago. I've done a lot of research to date with the idea of Youngstown as a possible place to spend summers when I leave NYC.  I doubt that I'll want to spend them in Florida.

To date, most of my housing research has been done on the Assessor's web site, and on Realtor.com.  Your Yahoo site is a tremendous boost in terms of making images and information availabale to the public.

My friends think that I'm an odd bird for spending part of my time in Florida.  They have absolutely no understanding of my interest in Youngstown. Your photos convince me that there is truly a wealth of buildings there waiting to be restored.

When the weather warms up I will make a trip there.

----------------------

Mark,

You have my sincere thanks for the compliments on the Yahoo group.  If you have any friends or associates that are interested in historic homes, please tell them about
the group - they would be welcome as members.

I grew up in Youngstown and left in the late 1980's to take a job with a small start-up company in northern Virginia that later became a major online internet service under
another name.

Most of the photos I've posted (ie: the current-day ones that are in color) are on the North Side, in the Wick Park
neighborhood.  This is because I grew up on the North Side
and lived in several different locations there - several of
these no longer exist.  

My mother was the manager at the Parkway Tower apartments
(see FILES section for photos and info on this building) and the Renner Mansion is just next door, facing the park.
The photo for 922 Ottowa Drive (also in files section) was owned by my brother and a friend of his about 20 years ago,
it's very beautiful inside and has mahogany woodwork
throughout, several fireplaces, maid's quarters over the
attached garage, etc and sits on a street that runs right
into Mill Creek Park.

Sadly, many of the old homes are being demolished because Youngstown has about twice as much housing stock as what
is currently needed - the population there is about
one half of what it was at Youngstown's peak.  

I decided to start the Yahoo group because I love old
houses like these and I felt it would be a good idea to document them both for future generations of Youngstown
and to show people outside the area some of Youngstown's historical assets.

It surprised me how little information there is on the Internet regarding architecture in Youngstown, given the
number of beautiful old homes there.  I will be making
another trip "back home" to Youngstown later this spring
and plan on taking many more photos of these old homes.  
I also plan to write to some of the owners to see if I can
get their permission to enter and photograph the interiors
of some of these homes.

If you are seriously looking for an old home to restore in
Youngstown, I would recommend checking out some of the
homes on Broadway Ave across from Wick Park, Fifth Ave,
Park Ave, Indiana Ave, Illinois Ave - there are some
fantastic old homes in this area that could probably be
purchased for a song.

Youngstown would also make an ideal location for
professional people like yourself who are looking for a
place to retire to some day, because the real estate stock
is cheap and abundant and the cost of living is very low
compared to other cities of comparable size.  It amazes me
when I see the most recent sale prices for some of the
properties I've researched on the auditor's website.  Many
of these beautiful old homes have sold for as little as $10,000 in recent years because the owners did not have the
financial means to keep the properties up.  

If you have other questions or comments about historic homes in Youngstown,  I encourage you to post them publicly
on the group.  We have a member named "WolfGirl800" who is
a real history buff and can tell you many things about
Youngstown's history - she keeps rather extensive files and
sends me lots of old photos, articles, etc that are very
interesting.

As far as the error messages on Yahoo, try signing out of
Yahoo and back in again to see if it fixes the problem.
I've seen some strange error messages pop up while using
Yahoo at times and I don't know what causes them, but I
suspect that some of them might be due to routine
maintenance taking place on their site.

Thanks again for writing with your complements and thanks for your interest in Youngstown.  I hope you find and
purchase one of these old homes - it would be a great
investment for you and the city would be glad to have you.



Best Regards,

Allan