Jeremy Reynolds' job requires him to travel around Lorain County, and he is always emailing me photos "from the road" that are great subjects for blog posts, as well as alerting me to things I might be interested in.
He recently made me aware that the "Unfinished Furniture" sign for
The Board Room on the building at 1705 Oberlin Avenue (former longtime home of
Oberlin Avenue Carpet and Drapery Shop) had been removed, and the building's original name – Marks Cleaning Works – was now exposed. He recommended skedaddling over there to grab a photo before the inscription was covered over again, and I did just that on Saturday. (The sign was actually lying in the snow, a possible casualty of last week's mini-blizzard.)
Marks Cleaning Works first showed up at this address in the 1924 city directory, but the business itself was much older as revealed in this 1933 city directory ad.
"Founded 1909" means that it was one of Lorain's oldest businesses.
Marks Cleaning Works finally disappeared from the city directories around 1947. That's when the ad below appeared in the telephone directory, heralding the new Oberlin Avenue Carpet Shop business that so many of us passed on the way to Lorain Creamery.
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| 1947 Phone book ad |
It's interesting that virtually all of the companies that called that building home from the early 1920s until recently were in the same or a related business.
Special thanks once again to Jeremy for his excellent blog post suggestion.
2 comments:
Nice looking building.
Makes since that 1705 Oberlin Ave first showed up in the 1924 city directory since it was built in 1923 according to the inscription between the 2nd floor windows. (I assume the city directories are printed in December of the year prior so that they're ready for publication by New Year's)
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