Hi everybody --

 

I ordinarily just lurk on this forum.  That's because I don't live in Ohio, so I have little of relevance to contribute.  However, I do very much enjoy all the great photography posted here.  Also, I occasionally pass through Ohio on my travels from the East Coast to Indiana, and I always enjoy checking out all the beautiful small towns dotted around the state.

 

One place I frequently visit is Zanesville.  For one thing, it's a convenient stopping point for me when I travel.  But just as important: it's a place with an interesting history and a lot of beautiful architecture. 

 

Just south of downtown Zanesville is the Putnam historic district, which has a collection of some of the oldest buildings in Ohio, including the "Stone Academy", which as constructed in 1809 to serve as the capital building for Ohio -- although it apparently didn't serve in this role since the state capital was located across the river in another building from 1810 -- 1812.

 

Since nobody has posted photos of the Putnam district on urbanohio.com, I decided to do it myself.  Last weekend I took the time to take a quick walk around the area and photograph some of the more appealing structures.  There are plenty of more photo-worthy buildings, I just didn't get enough time to photograph them.

 

Please enjoy this little photo tour!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stuart

 

 

 

This is a fantastic collection and welcome!  And trust me, half this forum doesn't live in Ohio so please contribute! :D

Please make some more stops and post your pictures. These are nice shots of an under-appreciated area.

Nice shots!  I didn't know about this district at all, and I'm a big fan of pre-Victorian stuff, so thanks for posting!

 

I love the old name "Increase" (as in the "Increase Mathews House"), by the way,  Not sure I see that one coming back in the immediate future.

Beautiful; thanks for the photos.

Yet another round of excellent pix from a ninja poster.

My brother lives there and is heavily involved in preservation efforts.  Zanesville has a lot of ornate architecture for a town of its size. 

Thank you for sharing these, and for reminding me of Zanesville. Years ago, I used to go through Zanesville en route to the Sistersville, WV area but that was before I took an interest in urban photography. I rememember the historic charm of the place, and should make a return visit the next time I have a good excuse.

 

... I love the old name "Increase" (as in the "Increase Mathews House"), by the way,  Not sure I see that one coming back in the immediate future.

 

A random unrelated fragment from the mental archives; J. I. Case, who in 1852 in Wisconsin founded one of the pioneer industries in mechanizing grain harvests across the globe, was Jerome Increase Case.

Written in retrospect: I finally got the pix to load!  🙄

No idea why some are flipped sideways. The actual pix are not.

 

~

 

I purchased one of the historic homes shown in the pictures above.

I'd like to show some current updated pix and maybe post a bit of

info about how the restoration is going, if there's any interest.

 

I should probably do this as a separate post or thread but the

picture of the home is in this post/thread.

 

For now I'll just post a coupled updated pix. If an interest develops

I can go over more details about the restoration and post a bunch

more pix. Below is only a teeny bit of info about how the restoration

is going.

 

We purchased the home in 2013. Spent a lot of time and money

getting it livable, and comfortable. Moved in, and continued working

on the restoration. It is a massive project! Our goal is not to 100%

restore the home to "as new" condition. But we want to help keep the

home stable and in good constructed condition for many more years.

 

Here are a few "before and after" pix. The outside is FAR from finished.

We need to completely re-point the house. Windows are being redone.

As the pix will show, we took down the 11 sets of window shutters and

restored them. Lightly sanded down the back of one shutter until we

got down to the original paint color. Computer matched the color. Then

repaired, and built some hew hinges, And re-hung them.

 

Restoration is incredibly expensive as you might imagine.  It's SO much

cheaper to just "replace with new". EX: The shutters cost about $3000

to restore, slat for slat, hinge for hinge. I could have easily replaced them

with new for under half of that. 

 

So we have a long ways to go. I'm retired. 72. And getting it done as time

permits.

 

We just spent a couple weeks on the front.  It's coming along nicely.

Replaced all the super-crap hedges! LOL They were actually 5 plants

all grown together into a massive tangled mess. Buried under the ground,

covered with grass we found the old original brick sidewalk!  Uncovered

it, carefully pulled up all of the over 400 bricks. Scrubbed every one. 

Filled in, re-leveled the ground, and replaced the bricks in as close to

the original pattern as we could. (Using pix we took before pulling the

pricks out of the ground.)

 

The previously posted picture is from a distance. Hard to tell, but the

porch was crumbling, unstable and dangerous to walk on. It's now

stable and safe. But we still need to build the stone facade using

original stone.

 

But you can see the slats in the shutters are badly warped. You can't

see the broken hinges. And some shutters were nailed onto the bricks so

they didn't fall down.  All shutters now open and close as they did when

first installed. And they are the original color.

 

The plan wasn't to make a pretty, new looking brick sidewalk. The

plan was to end up with the original 186 year old sidewalk. It looks

186 years old! Trust me!!  LOL But it looks great! (IMHO of course!)

 

Much more to do. But plan to keep on keeping on!  If you'd like to see

more pix of the front project, and/or would like info about the rest of

the house project, let me know. I'll post it.

 

Wayne (Reed) Knazek

 

PS: If you're a music lover, drop over to my site.

www.thewaynereedconnection.com  Drop me a line and say "Hi!"!

Edited August 29, 20213 yr by WayneKnazek
UPDATED

We sadly have to prohibit the ability to upload pictures until after you've made at least one post.  Spammers ruin it for everyone.

Thanks for sharing though!!

Beautiful house! Thanks for taking such good care of it! 

Until we purchased the house, it was owned by . . . for almost 180 years . . . by only 2 families! The latter let if go badly. The owner lived there into his 90's. Mainly lived in a couple rooms. The closet shelves and kitchen cabinet shelves were lined with newspaper. Common at one time. When we started cleaning the shelves, we pulled up the newspapers . . . . they were the Zanesville Times local paper. Dated July 1975! So obviously no one did any major cleaning, etc. for over 38 years! The basement was a shallow swimming pool. Two feet of water! Sump hole, with no pump.  Many sources of water dumping into the basement. (Which was loaded with decades of stored junk. Furniture, freezer, tools.) Horrendous!  We had a 7 man crew working full time on the house for months. Plus a 4 man crew worked outside for a few months.  So we're actually the 3rd family to own the house in 186 years.

That's amazing and welcome!