90th Anniversary of 1924 Lorain Tornado

Courtesy Ebay

As most of you probably know, tomorrow – Saturday, June 28th – is the 90th anniversary of the 1924 Lorain Tornado. It's good to see that it's getting a lot of publicity.

Anyone who grew up in Lorain is well acquainted with the tragic events of that terrible day. I remember hearing about it when I was very young. As a result, as a kid I probably worried more about tornados than anything else (with the exception of flying saucers landing).

My father was born in 1921, but was lucky enough to be living at the other end of town on Livingston Avenue at the time of the tornado. My mother hadn't been born yet, but the family lore is that the house that she would grow up in on W. Sixth Street, west of Oberlin Avenue, had been lifted off its foundation. The house is located close enough to some of the severely damaged ones seen in various photos that I believe it.

****

Last year on this blog I posted some front pages of a few of the local papers in the days following the tornado.

For a different perspective, here's how the 15th anniversary of the event was covered in the pages of the Lorain Journal on June 26, 1939.

The front page article about the 15th anniversary of the tornado is shown below. It has a nice capsule summary of the damage. (Click on it for a readable view.) As noted, at that time the city was about to replace the old swing bridge with the new bascule bridge.

Here's the continuation of the article (below).

Here's the larger article about the tornado found inside the same edition of the Journal. It's an interesting vantage point because only a little time had passed since the disaster. It was still fresh in people's minds as something they lived through, not just a historical event like it is now.

****

In honor of the anniversary of the tornado, here's some more postcards depicting the damage – all courtesy of Ebay. The first five are part of a series published by Harry H. Hamm of Toledo (below).

By the way, the house shown in the postcard above – owned by H. Hageman – is at 1134 W. Fifth Street. You can see it below. It's a few doors west of Schwartz, Spence, Boyer and Cool Home for Funerals.

Here's a few more postcards. There's four by Photographer A. B. Reinhart, and two more that I believe were also published by Harry H. Hamm.