Elyria, Ohio

 

population:55,953. seat of lorain county. (lorain the city is bigger though)

 

the place where the sewing machine got a patent, the term hamburger was coined, the padded bicycle seat and the colored golf ball, the single headlighted car, and the rubber heel were invented. at least that's what they say.

founded by Heman Ely in 1817. the courthouse had it's head chopped off!

original courthouse(not my pic, obviously):

 

would've definately been one of my favorites if it still looked like that.

but here it is today. still not bad

well, i just now found out about the old lorain county courthouse, so i'm too upset to do any commentary, so here is more elyria

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not bad. Reminds me somewhat of Hamilton.

^Agreed.

i had no idea elyria had a downtown

 

i'm just used to thinking of it as the town where 80/90 split

Elyria really looks nice in this tour.

That bank highrise on the square has an interesting design. There are classical details (like the quoins on the tower), but its a really "stripped" design, with no cornice or decorative feature on the top, which is pretty unusual.

 

The town square looks pretty extensive and wooded, too.

 

Thanks for those pix of Elyria...i wondered what it looked like. Looks like it is a small city, like Mansfield or (like others noted) Hamilton.

^ Yeah, that is strange. I guess that building would be considered Chicago School.

That Square looks pretty nice. And I'd guess the bank to be a "Renaissance Revival" style. Like an overblown Italian palazzo. If it was Chicago style I'd expect windows in groups of three. Not to say it could be some weird variation . . .

There are plenty of Chicago style buildings where windows are grouped in two! Not that I'm an expert.

 

Usually when I think of Ren Revival, I think of brick with ornamental cornice work. Hell, I might even go with Early Modern if it weren't for the quoins.

What happened to the dome?

Very cool pics Summit. I had seen some old post card pics of the city, but nothing recent. Looks like a lot of the buildings from the 30's still remain. Thanks for the tour.

Elyria always reminded me more of Warren, or possibly Mansfield.  It's a pleasant, if somewhat blue-collar place.  That strip of bars behind the main street is still there, and offers a bit of urban-nightlife for the rough-and-tumble set.  The neighborhood to the north of town is also quite pleasant with tree lined brick streets and nice old mansions and houses.

Elyria also has Cascade Park.  Here's a picture from cascade park of the waterfalls of the Black River:

 

(courtesy of http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/image/vbig/343.jpg)

 

And didn't the Midway Mall in Elyria have a mini-zoo at one time???

^hey thatswhatimtalkingabout. nice find. you can see the view platform on the right.

 

i dk about the midway mall zoo, you might be right.

 

missing: the cool renovated old amtrak station, a large community college, some gorgeous house streets, a few big factories like bendix and best of all a really groovy wacky park in the valley (cascade) where they have a nice waterfall, you can drive across the river right on water level and they have or had bears in cages stuck into cliffside caves. i shite you not! also, behind the downtown square and goofy camera shop is a strip of clubs and bars that were a big place for west cleve-burbers to go out in the days before the flats were gentrified.

 

Woah...now this place is starting to sound pretty interesting.  Maybe worth a sidetrip from Cleveland next time Im up there.

 

 

yeah elyria does seem fairly unchanged over time. except the community college keeps growing. it is impressive and the biggest outside of the three c's, owens and sinclair at 10k enrollement. i attended for awhile and thought it was pretty great.

I'm a Lorain County Community College (aka LoCo CoCo, Last Chance Community College, Grades 13 and 14, etc.) alum, myself.  I jest about the name, but it I was actually please by the facilities and faculty.  I did my transfer credits there before going to CSU.  I was there in 95-98.  When were you there?

The neat thing about old postcards is that they though factories worthwhile enough to actually put on a postcard.

 

You dont see that much nowadays.

jeff exactly. those were also the days when a high school was built to be the mostg impressive structure possible. we've lost that pride somewhere.

 

x, i was at lccc in the early 80's, then briefly csu & off to bgsu, wku, osu, columbia and new school. i like college hehe.

Is it just me, or are these buildings very similar in architecture?

 

(the Elyria building)

 

(Unizan Bank in Zanesville...not my pictures)

I bet that swimming pool was fowl back then.

you think the pool was a chicken? braaawk!!

 

Elyria, urbanistically, is much better than Lorain, though Lorain is more "diverse" I'm sure.

true, even tho they are thought of as twin cities, elyria has the more typical intact "main square" style downtown, where as lorain's is a sprawling long "main street" style wasteland (broadway/28th st) with acres of teardowns all along it. however, a positive is that lorain has the more interesting & modern creative urban renewal stuff, ie., amship conversion into waterfront housing, some renovated apts/lofts downtown.

 

overall, absolutely no question elyria is a lot healthier overall having not lost untold thousands of jobs in a short time. elyria is smart/lucky as people will always need a county government seat, wheelchairs (bendix), tools (bendix) and lccc. not to mention they never had to deal with wacky factory oriented immigration nor the renching poverty lorain has to face today.