Posts Tagged fire

     Prior to 2010, only FOUR coaches in Ellwood City football history have posted career winning records. The best percentage is held by Denny Schill 8-1-1 in the single season he coached during 1935. Howard Gills is next in winning percentage after coaching two seasons during the war (1944 and 1945). Not many people would argue that the two most successful coaches in Ellwood City football history were Peck Lee and Dutch Croft. Lee coached ten seasons from 1919 to 1930 (missing the 1922 and 1923 seasons) and had a winning percentage of .667. Coach Croft coached from 1938 to 1953 missing 1944 and 1945 years for World War II while posting a .640 winning percentage with the most wins (88) and most losses (48).

Coach Ganzy Benedict still holds the school record of most tie games with eight in just three years of coaching. Other notable head coaches that coached here at Ellwood City include NFL Head Coach Chuck Knox, Kansas University Head Coach Mark Mangino, and Butler Head Coach Jim Rankin.

    For the first half of the decade, the Ellwood City coach was not measured by wins or losses, but whether or not they beat New Castle. However bad we beat Evans City, usually worked out to how bad New Castle beat us; until 1925 when Ellwood City beat New Castle for the first time. New Castle cried foul that the Head Coach had water-downed the field to make a muddy mess to slow down the smaller, faster New Castle team. I do not know if there is any truth to this but as you can see in the pictures, it was a “little” muddy.

This would not be the last time that New Castle would use this excuse to try to justify a loss to the “Big Blue”. Sue Campbell recalls hearing back in the 1930′s folks from New Castle complaining that Ellwood City went to New Castle and watered the field until it was nothing but mud and Ellwood said that New Castle did it themselves. The day after this “sprinkling” the Wolverines pulled off the upset and won the game and the controversy began again. She recalled still hearing the charge of “watering” in 1961 when she graduated from Lincoln High School.

Due to the size of the schools, Ellwood City and New Castle did not play each other in regular season games for a number of years until New Castle dropped down to Triple A in the late 1990′s. The two schools would occasionally meet in pre-season scrimmage games and the rivalry was surprisingly still there. I recall in a pre-season game 1993 or 1994 the banter back and forth between the two teams along with the pushing and shoving and etc., caused the referees to walk off the field. The teams decided to continue the game with coaches officiating and coincidently New Castle and Ellwood did not play each other in pre-season games again for a number of years.

     We may never know if the “watering” was true or not or even if it affected the outcome much as both teams still had to play in the mud but someone always knows someone who knows. One rumor we heard was that the owner of the Ellwood City Ice Company who hired football players during the summers to keep them in shape and ready for the upcoming season, took one of his delivery trucks full of suspects to New Castle the night before the game in the 30′s and the dastardly deed WAS done. Of course we also hear rumors that someone’s grandfather told them that they were in New Castle the evening before the game and SAW with his own eyes a fire truck at the field and knows that it was New Castle that watered the field.

If you would like to leave a memory you might have about the coaches or the rivalry with New Castle, please leave a comment below or email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com

Originally Posted July 23, 2010

I had a friend email me this picture that looks like a Bud Dimeo photograph for the Ellwood City Ledger but I am not sure where it came from nor who it belongs to. It is not my intention to “steal” anything so please let me know and I will take it down right away – but it is a great photograph.
  What looks like a picture of a parking lot to some is something so much more to me. Of course you see the brick P & LE Freight Station that is still standing today and to the left of it across the railroad tracks is the Baltimore & Ohio Freight Station along Sixth Street that was demolished in 1982. In 1966, the P & LE freight station was converted into a warehouse and offices by Fotia Brothers Sales & Service owners, Sam & Joseph Fotia. Today it is being remodeled again for unknown purposes.
Between the two buildings you can see the tops of two churches in the background. On the left is the former Saint Agatha Roman Catholic Church that served Ellwood City until September of 2007 when it consolidated with its own mission church the Blessed Virgin Mary Church and was renamed Holy Redeemer Church. The second church is the Presbyterian Church which is older than our town itself, having originally organized in the “old brick school house” back on July 14, 1891. The Presbyterian Church continues to serve Ellwood City today despite a fire in 1950.
Speaking of fire, on the far right you can barely make out the old livery on Fourth Street. Architect Byron McCandless who designed portions of Lincoln High School, the Ellwood City Municipal Building, and many others used this building and the brick buildings behind it as his offices. His son Joseph continued to use these buildings for storage until an arson fire destroyed the buildings a number of years ago. His father’s original drawings were lost as was Joseph’s picture taken of the Marines on D-day only a few yards from the beach at Normandy. Byron’s father was Joseph McCandless who built the very first brick house in Ellwood City that just recently burned down.
There are many interesting things you can make out in the background of a picture of “a parking lot”. If you would like to share your memories of any of these, please share below or email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com

For those that complain that the football field and track are too far away from the school, there was a time the field was right beside the school. I have been asking for awhile for any pictures anybody might have that show the old field at the school and am grateful for the ones I have received. If you have a picture you would like to share please email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com. So far I have three pictures that I received permission to use and would appreciate any input you may have about them.
    In the first picture you can barely see the field at the bottom of the picture but it gives us a real good idea of the location. Some of the more interesting things about this picture are not so much the field but the layout of Lincoln High School at the time. At the time of this picture, there was a whole additional three story wing of the school where the current cafeteria, maintenance garages, and the “bridge” to the large gym are today. I have to ask those that remember, what was the layout of this wing? Was it all classrooms? I know the school did not have a cafeteria but did this wing have anything comparable to the size of the current cafeteria? Was the ground floor a locker-room for Lincoln Field for both home and away teams? Finally, was there a “band” room and a room dedicated for the choir before the addition?
    Okay, back to the picture, it’s nice to see the old Hartman Elementary School building and you may notice that Holy Redeemer is not there. Where the church parking lot is today, is the former BVM Church and previous to that it was the Methodist Church.
    Now back to Lincoln Field and the second picture. This is an action shot of the 1925 Ellwood City - New Castle game. In the background of the picture you can see the steel work for Lincoln High School that was under construction. You can also see how tight the stands were as an estimated 10,000 people watched the game from the bleachers, on top of parts of the school, and on top of neighboring houses. You can also clearly see how muddy the field was for the game and why New Castle cried for many years that the Ellwood City Fire Department flooded the field to slow down New Castle. The ball carrier in the picture is New Castle’s great Scooter Day, who despite a valiant effort, was not was not able to get into the end zone against the incredible Ellwood City defense.
    In the third picture here, you get a better layout of the field. As you can see, not only did the fans of Ellwood pack the bleachers but it looks to be two to three deep along the fence. Notice the people on top of the First Christian Church watching the game too.  This was not only a football field, but it was the school’s baseball field at the time. Home plate was beyond the field goal posts in the corner of what today would be Oak Avenue and Fourth Street. You can get a little bit of a better idea of the layout of the baseball field in the first picture. In addition to baseball and football Ellwood City also added four public tennis courts to Lincoln Field in 1930.
If you remember the field and would like to share your memories, please leave a comment below or email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com

Originally Published Sept 25, 2009

    The National Plumbing fire on top of the hill was a very memorable fire. The building itself was on the main road in and out of Ellwood City as the four lane highway wasn’t even a thought yet. These pictures were taken the next day and as you can see there are still pockets of smoke smoldering from a very hot fire. You can see how hot the fire was by what the heat did to the steel beams that held the building up. If you remember this fire or National Plumbing itself, please share your memories by leaving a comment below or email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com     The fire was not the end of the business nor of the building itself. When the local 2688 United Steelworkers of America (CIO) went on strike in September of 1954, the National Plumbing Fixture Corp. employed 185 men. The firm ceased operations January 31 1967. Company officials reported that the firm could no longer compete with the larger manufacturers of plumbing fixtures.

    It was reported in September of 1969, that a newly formed corporation, Guards Inc., leased the former machine shop building to manufacture safety guards for industrial machinery.

Post originally published 29 April, 2009

    The Koppel Bridge was built and owned by the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler, and New Castle Railway (more commonly known as the Harmony Line). The original Koppel Bridge (known as Magnificent Seven) was constructed mostly of wood and the sparks from the trains passing underneath often set the bridge on fire. Chuck Hall recalled that this was a tricky fire to combat as the firemen had to hang under the bridge to extinguish the flames. The reason the bridge was known as the Magnificent Seven was due to the fact that the bridge had seven piers. Though it was made of wood, the Swanson Brothers of Youngstown built a solid bridge that stood fifty seven feet above the water from 1890-1913 and was the longest bridge on the ”Harmony Line” .

Mr. Hall had many other memories of the bridge including when he was young and didn’t have the money for the toll. He along with his friends, would walk down a short distance and walk across the very narrow train bridge which was extremely dangerous. The important thing was to not let your folks know you did that.

    As most of you may recall, the Koppel Bridge was a toll bridge and many of you recall the name of the man who took the toll. Chuck Hall remembers the very nice man of Russian decent (he thinks), Walter Matetich, that collected the tolls for almost the entire life of the bridge. Sheri Ferrell shared that her Great Grandfather, Willard E. Shaner (1853-1935) was also a toll collector on the bridge in the late 1920′s. One evening a man pointed a gun at Willard in an attempt to rob him. Willard had a pencil in his hand and tried to push the gun away with it but was shot. He started walking across the bridge to get to a hospital when her grandfather, Fred Shaner (who was a policeman) found him and took him to the hospital.

I have been told that a popular thing young people would do was to turn off your car lights and run the toll booth to avoid the five cent toll. May 15, 1957 marks a special day as the last tool was collected to cross the bridge. As Bob Mallary pointed out that the alternative was a long drive. He remembers commuting to Geneva and going across the old bridge daily between ’57 and ’59. It seems to Bob the bridge closed down for a time for repair and he had to go down River Road to 588 and into Beaver Falls and then back up the hill to Geneva.

    Chuck Hall shared one more story of the bridge that includes the famous Danny Kaye. As you can see, it bows down in the middle like the old road bridges making it appear unsafe. Some time ago Danny Kaye’s famous orchestra was to play at one of Ellwood’s clubs. Upon approaching the bridge Danny looked out the window and what he saw made him “chicken out” and he refused to cross it. They took the long way through Wampum to get to their destination. Which is funny as the old trolley cars weighed forty four tons each; but this does raise a question. Back in the late fifties when the bridge closed as Mr. Mallary shared, how did the Koppel kids get to school as they would have been part of the Ellwood City School District at that time?

As I have mentioned, many have shared their memories of the Koppel Bridge but we would still like to hear your memories. Please share your memories below or email them to info@ellwoodcitymemories.com

Originally published December 16, 2008

On January 27, 1982 the 7-L building on the corner of Seventh Street and Lawrence Avenue was destroyed by fire. The fire was one of four major fires to hit Lawrence Avenue in a span of two years. The other fires included Keller’s Department Store at 613 Lawrence Avenue, Vinny’s Pizza and Sub Palace at 705 Lawrence Avenue, and the Majestic Theater on the 500 block of Lawrence Avenue.

The 7-L building was the location of the District Magistrates office (Battaglia) and it also housed optometrist Dr. Michael Carcaine’s office, Rayco Enterprises, and the Ellwood City AFL-CIO headquarters. There were also four businesses in the rear of the building – Latiano Insurance Company, Old Ellwood City Restaurant, a beauty shop, & a dressmaker.

After the 7-L building burned down the city was worried about having another empty lot downtown and decided to try to make the area more attractive. The City Centre Mini-Park was built in 1988 complete with playground equipment for children and a number of benches.

     The original First Baptist Church was opened it’s doors August 13, 1891 behind it’s current location on the corner of Fountain Ave and Third Street. The current building was completed August 15, 1912. On March 7, 1933 a fire gutted all but the old walls but the church was rebuilt and still continues strong today. This church is where I got to know the Hazen family that owned the old dairy farm beside what is now Trader Horn. Mrs Hazen was one of the nicest and most caring people I have been lucky enough to have had the oppurtunity to meet.

 I can list the history of the church in Ellwood City, list the date the locations were built like I did above, list the pastors, so on and so on. However that is not really what this site was started for. I am looking for MEMORIES. Funny stories, touching stories, you know, the good stuff. Stories like the time the shepard had toilet paper stuck to his foot in the Christmas play, the memories of the children that grew up in the church, or the entire church coming together as one to help another. If you have a story you would like to share about First Baptist Church, please email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com or share you memories in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

Post Originally Published  Feb 18, 2009

      On December 4th 1989, for the first time in Ellwood City’s history, the town mourned the loss of two firefighters lost in the line of duty. Thirty-five year old David Martino and thirty-nine year old Paul Frederick lost their lives battling a structure fire at the former sixteen room Elton Hotel on Lawrence Avenue.

Martino was employed at the former Calgon at the time as a lead chemical operator. He had wanted to be a firefighter since he was a small child, and as a member of the four man interior team, David was on the front line, doing what he always wanted to do – fighting fires and saving people.

Frederick, who was married with two daughters, was the head teacher at the former Walnut Ridge Elementary school when the accident occurred. Paul was a decorated Vietnam War Veteran and had also received a heroism commendation for an incidence outside Walnut Ridge Elementary School. A motorcyclist fleeing police was traveling straight toward pupils standing outside the school when Frederick ran and pushed the pupils out of the way to safety.

It is believed that the fire started around 4am in the kitchen area at the rear of the first floor of the hotel. The fire destroyed the two story brick building and a video store next door. Two residents, John P. Zikeli 90 & John Nicholas believed to be in his 70′s also lost their lives in the tragic fire. Both were tenants of the hotel which housed several apartments that were rented on a monthly or yearly basis.

When I was shown this picture of the building being torn down, I was not aware of what I was looking at. Written on the back of the picture was a note saying that the building was being torn down as part of a beautification project that would demolish ten buildings that were regarded as eyesores. It also claimed that this building stood on the northwest corner of Todd Avenue and North Street. I didn’t know those two roads actually came together but it hit me. Beatle wigs.

Yes Beatle wigs.

As many of you probably already know, this is the home of the toy store on the North Side. Russell Latimer shared with everyone earlier that he remembers Ray’s Toy Town as the place he bought his Beatle wig. The toy shop was above the laundromat “Suds and Duds”. Before the laundromat, in the 1950′s,  Dom’s Foodmarket was located inside this building. The building was being demolished after sitting vacant after a devastating fire that began on the first floor in the Suds & Duds and spread to the second floor consuming the toy store.

Patricia Matthews Pace shared on an earlier post about the business section of Hazel Dell that her Mom knew Mrs. Fontana who owned the toy shop. She remembers going to the fire to watch the firemen put out the fire and recalls that the store owner fainted at the sight of the building on fire. I am sure there are many other that remember Toy Town and we would like to hear from you. Please share your comments below or email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com

I have been searching for a picture of the “shack” at the railroad crossing at Sixth Street. I guess I should have been clearer on my request. I am looking for a picture of the crossing guard’s shack along the tracks where the crossing guard was stationed.

    However, I am grateful for the picture I did get of the Seidel Coal on Sixth Street behind the gas station on the corner of Sixth Street and Spring Avenue. Considered the original Lowes of the area, Seidel had all the building supplies you needed for new construction. I was told that this is how the building looked the last couple of years it was in business so it is difficult to tell if this picture was taken while the business was still operating or twenty five years after they closed the door. I guess the old saying holds true here – the window washer’s house has the dirtiest windows.

Does anyone remember if this old converted barn structure was torn down or if a fire was the cause of its disappearance?

I decided to repost one of my favorite articles on the web site. The post features a priceless snapshot in time of Ellwood City taken from 196 feet above the town sometime between 1909 and 1915. It is amazing how much has changed from then to today. There is so much in the picture it is easy to miss some of the more interesting things. I have added yellow numbers to some of the points I would like to draw your attention to in this picture, of course there is more than the twelve things I mention here and would love to hear about something I missed.
    The first point of interest I see when I look at this picture is the grand Hotel Lawrence surrounded by the majestic Oliver Park. Though it is difficult to get your bearings with this picture, we are actually looking at the side of the Hotel. The front of the Hotel formally called Hotel Oliver is the side with the large white peaks and faces down Fifth Street.
Secondly, in almost the center of the page we see the Central School building built in 1902 on the corner of Lawrence Avenue and Sixth Street. Today the Ellwood City Municipal Building is located on that lot of land with a number of memorials displayed in the front lawn. The large World War II memorial in front of the Municipal building was purchased through multiple fundraisers including donations and with the extra money that was raised for Ellwood City’s anniversary.
Number three in the picture is the Park Hotel, built 1895 and located on the North side of the Ellwood City Short Line. Today, most people don’t remember the Park Hotel and I have had a difficult time uncovering the fate of the old Hotel. Did it catch on fire from the sparks of a passing train, or was it simply torn down due to dilapidation? The fact remains that the building is no longer there but if you look the next time you drive past, one of the walls from its foundation is still standing today.
Four and Five go together, almost. Point number four is the old train station that is no longer there today and number five points to something that is actually missing from the picture, the Fifth Street Subway. The railroad you see in the picture beside the train station was the Pennsylvania Railroad, who owned Rock Point Park. The railroad through Ellwood City was known more as the Ellwood Short Line and replaced the B&O railroad that was built along the Northern bank of the Connoquenessing Creek in 1876. After the Ellwood Tunnel was completed in 1892 the railroad connecting North Sewickley & Rock Point ran through the natural plain which Ellwood City was built upon and the hilly B&O railroad was abandoned.
Ellwood City owes its birth more to the Ellwood City railroad tunnel and Beaver Falls then the more common misconception of New Castle. Ellwood’s founder H.W. Hartman was dissatisfied with the conditions in Beaver Falls where he was the head of the Beaver Falls Water Company and Hartman Steel Company.  He heard the railroad was planning to build the tunnel to bypass the slower line through Hazel Dell and put his plan for an industrial resort town into action.
The passenger station in the picture, known as the Union Station, served Ellwood City until the mid 1950’s. One text says the station was torn down as late as 1957, while another says it was torn down as early as 1955. Today, a parking lot is all that remains beside what is now the Buffalo & Pittsburgh Rail line.
Just west of the Union Station is number Six, the freight yards of Ellwood City. The large structure on the Northern side of the tracks is the B.O. Freight Station. The station was located just West of Sixth Street which was a main road at the time of the picture as the bridge connecting Ellwood City to Hazel Dell was the Sixth Street Bridge, not the Fifth as it is today. The “Hazel Dell Bridge” as it was known then connected Sixth Street and College Street. The original Fifth Street Bridge was not erected until 1915.
The B.O. Freight Station was demolished in 1982 and the property was sold to the Ellwood City Forge Group.
Our number seven point of interest is one of the few things in the picture still standing today. Point seven is the Stiefel Building on the corner of Lawrence Avenue and Fifth Street. I have yet to discover if the building was named after one of Ellwood City’s most prominent citizens, Mr. R.C. Stiefel, if he actually had the building built, or maybe he even had his offices there.
Number eight is the old tube mill more commonly known to the folks of Ellwood as “Mill B”. Originally the mill was the home of the Ellwood Shafting & Tubing Company, the first manufacturing institution to establish itself in Ellwood City as early as 1891. “Mill B” was dismantled in 1923 and the property was sold to Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad for a freight station and yard. It is hard to see it today but from Sixth Street to Blanks Concrete and Supply was nothing but P&LE spurs. Five or six lines of empty railroad lines loading and unloading freight coming into and out of Ellwood City all day long. August 25th 1981 marked the last day P&LE took a loaded boxcar, cargo from Airway Industries out of Ellwood City.
Nine is less of a specific point as it is a general area. As you can see from the picture, the West End of town was the direction of the growth in the early days of the town. The mills and businesses were more congregated at that end and most Ellwoodians thought that the town would continue to grow in that direction. In fact the first school built in Ellwood City after its founding was the West End School and the first hospitals were all located in that direction of town. It wasn’t until Ralph C. Stiefel and J.H. Nicholson left the Shelby Seamless Tube Company in 1899 and erected the Standard Seamless Tube Company (later called “Mill A”) that the town began spreading east also.
Ten is the beautiful picnic grounds of Oliver Park and the site of Ellwood City’s first murder. According to “A History of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania” James Bell was found in the park next to a tree, murdered. The victim, who had carried the mail from Ellwood City to the Belton Post Office, was also robbed as his pockets were all turned inside out. The park was a popular picnic destination (if you got permission from the Hotel) and how Park Avenue got its name.
Eleven simply points out the large farms and spread out residences that still existed in Hazel Dell. Hazel Dell originally was on both sides of the Connoquenessing until Merrit Green and Henry Hartman purchased all the farms on the South side of the creek to build Ellwood City. The roads through Hazel Dell were the old Indian trading paths from when the Shawnee & Delaware Indian tribes occupied the area. It was these tribes that actually named the Connoquenessing, which means “can’t canoe”. Hazel Dell was cut in half by the Connoquenessing and connected by the covered bridge known as the Jones Mill Bridge or White Bridge (built 1858 and razed 1898) located at the present site of the Fifth Street Bridge.
Hazel Dell did not become a borough until 1901, almost ten years after Ellwood City. The borough of Hazel Dell officially consolidated with the borough of Ellwood City in 1914.
Finally, point number twelve reminds you of the time period that the picture was taken. The buildings with no windows behind the houses are not garages, but barns. Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908 but didn’t begin the moving assembly lines in his factory until 1913, so there were not very many cars in the town when this picture was taken. Some of the buildings are barns, other smaller buildings are outhouses. My grandmother’s house inside Pittsburgh Circle was originally built as a boarding house for tube mill workers before indoor plumbing was the big craze on HGTV. Four bedrooms, BIG bedrooms, and no bathroom.

If you noticed something I missed or if you feel that I got something wrong, please leave a comment below or email me at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com

Originally Posted February 5, 2010

I want to express my gratitude to Kirk Zikeli of Zikeli Auto Repair on Clyde Street for providing another picture to Ellwood City Memories. This picture is of the BRAND new Ellwood City Volunteer Fire Department’s 1954 American LaFrance Pumper truck being unloaded from the railway car in 1954.

    The picture of the new fire truck being delivered was taken at the corner of Eighth Street and Beaver Avenue. Thank you again, Zeke.