Posts Tagged hazel dell

    Originally the bridge that connected the Northside (Hazel Dell) to Ellwood City, was a covered bridge. The road that climbed the bank on the south side met 6th Street and Glenn Ave.

    When it became time to get a steel bridge there was a lot of debate as to where it should cross. Eventually the new bridge was installed 150 yards downstream from the covered bridge, connecting Sixth Street and College Street.

   After 30+ years, a new bridge was built in 1915, a little upstream at Fifth Street causing an odd little “round-a-bout” on the North end of the bridge around Dom’s (later 7-11), Red Hot’s, and the various stores that occupied the little strip over the years. The Veterans Bridge (Fifth Street) stood until 1994 when construction began on the current Fifth Street bridge that was dedicated in 1995 to the Veterans of Ellwood City and to the 100th graduating class of Lincoln High School.

Originally Published on Dec. 16, 2008 

Excitement was in the air among those that called Ellwood City home towards the end of 1959 as it was announced that a new Loblaw’s food store would be opening in town. It was announced on the front page of the Ellwood City Ledger that Costa H. Spoa would be leasing his proposed new store on Wampum Avenue to the chain store.
Construction had been held up a number of times but was well under way on the 100 by 140 foot building. The house that originally occupied the property had a rich history in Hazel Dell and rather than being torn down, was moved east along Wampum Avenue to 111 Wampum Avenue.
Mr. Spoa already operated a grocery store on Spring Avenue near the Tube Mill and would continue to operate that store (today the site of Pizza Joes). He would also continue to own the property on Wampum Avenue as Loblaw’s was only leasing the property.
At the time of the front page Ledger article, Loblaw’s operated 240 stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and New York including one in New Castle and a second Loblaw’s was expected to open November 19th of that year in New Castle.

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

This is not the first time I have said this and will not be the last time I say this but I do not know everything. In fact, if you ask my wife I know very little and my knowledge of the history of the rectangle building on the corner of Line Avenue, Smiley Street and Wampum Avenue in Hazel Dell demonstrates this.

Today the building has been remodeled with a large kitchen added and serves the community as The Store. Before the convenience store, the building housed Video World for a number of years. Before the movie rental business, the building sat empty for a number of years and until recently that was the extent of my knowledge of the building.

    I have been told the following so if this is wrong (which wouldn’t be the first time) it is not my fault this time, well not completely my fault.

Both Wilson’s Milk Bottling Plant and Ellwood Pure Milk were located at the portion of ground in question but which came first I do not know and many of you just made a face and said “of course ____ came first”.

Ellwood Pure Milk started on Fountain Avenue before constructing the yellow brick building that a lot of you may be familiar with. I have been told that they built or remodeled the building but this may not be true.

Wilson’s Milk Bottling Plant was also located at the intersection of Line Avenue, Smiley Street and Wampum Avenue at one time. The bottling plant was last active in the late 1950’s then the plant stood idle for many years until it was razed or rebuilt. I do not know if they tore down the bottling plant to build Ellwood Pure Milk or if Ellwood Pure Milk built the building Wilson’s used.

    If you know the truth behind the chicken/egg mystery, please share your memories with us or actually any memories you may have of the little building. Please share below or email me at infor@ellwoodcitymemories.com

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

    Mrs. Kay Garwig owned a boarding house in Frisco that had to be torn down when the railroad tunnel was dug out beginning in 1890. The single mother moved into the budding town in 1891 and purchased one of the original Hazel Dell land owner’s houses, the Petit house. Mrs. Garwig turned the house into a boarding house for the railroad workers, passengers on the P & W Railroad, & everyone else who came along.

The Nathaniel Petit & John B. Hazen houses were the only houses north of the new tracks but south of the creek. Beginning in 1891 a number of houses started to be built along Fifth Street north of the tracks. There is a little bit of a mystery as to the original location of the house as it had to be moved. One book mentions that the Petit homestead formerly stood near the “future” site of the Hamilton Brothers on Fifth Street. Another article hints that the house had to be moved because it was located on land designated for the railroad.

After Meritt Green, on behalf of the Pittsburg Company, purchased the family farm, Mr. Green and his family moved into the Petit house. The house was moved less than one hundred yards between Fifth Street and Sixth Street facing Spring Avenue. It was eventually torn down and the site is now occupied by the Alpha Apartments. Until recently there stood an old dilapidated one story wooden house behind the apartments that looked like it hadn’t been lived in for the last hundred years. Mrs. Garwig had given her daughter the land behind the boarding house at her wedding in 1894 and later lived in the new house in the rear of the apartments.

    As I have already mentioned, Ellwood City owes its birth to the Ellwood City railroad tunnel, Beaver Falls, the vision and dedication of Ellwood’s founder H.W. Hartman, and hard work of men like Merritt Green. Hartman was dissatisfied with the conditions in Beaver Falls where he was the head of the Beaver Falls Water Company and Hartman Steel Company when he heard the railroad was planning to carve out the tunnel to bypass the slower line through Hazel Dell. That is when the visionary put his plan for an industrial resort town into action by building that town around the new “shortcut” line.

One of the things I like to do when I get old scenic pictures is to track down the location of the original picture and see how different it looks today. Sometimes it is difficult to do in the case of comparing the business district of Hazel Dell from the layout with the old Veterans Bridge to today. However, in the case of these pictures of the men paving Line Avenue with bricks (by hand), it is very easy to compare.

       On the left of the older picture you can still see the bell tower of Bell Memorial Presbyterian Church. On the right side you can still see the bell tower of the old Hazel Dell School that sat on the corner of Line Avenue and College Street. There are a couple more houses in the new picture but the new picture is missing the line of maple (?) trees that lined the south side of the street.

      There has been a lot of discussion about the business section of Hazel Dell at the end of the Veterans Bridge, but here is a new name. The first of the buildings erected in the “downtown” section on the south side of Wampum Avenue east of the former Fifth Street Bridge was home to the Zona & Sulia Confectionery. The building was built by T.C. Marshall. Pictured here outside the confectionery building are Mike Sulia and his daughter Effie.

      I am always very appreciative to all those who have shared pictures with Ellwood City Memories. Sometimes I am unable to get the pictures onto the site right away as I have to make sure they are not copyrighted, but pictures like these that were donated by Scott Mackey make my task very easy.
I would like to thank Scott for these pictures he took of the construction of the current Veterans Memorial Bridge on Fifth Street. It is very easy to forget how much further west the old Fifth Street Bridge was located. I know it is mentioned a lot how the construction of the current bridge drastically changed the landscape to the Hazel Dell business district and also led to the destruction of the oldest building in Ellwood City. However, I for one do not miss driving around that island at the intersection where the end of the bridge ran into Wampum Avenue (west), Todd Avenue, North Street, and Wampum Avenue (east).
      In the one picture you can still see that under portion of the bridge closet to the bank where outside pillars are cement, there used to be a large arch like a road ran under the bridge. Does anyone know if there was a road or walkway that ran under the bridge?
Speaking of under the bridge, that pathway they built to get the cranes and cement trucks to the creek would have been a fantastic addition to Ellwood City. A pathway to the creek and a path wide enough to ride a bicycle to Ewing Park would have been a nice little side effect project. There is still a pathway up from the creek at the Ewing Park Bridge. A smaller foot bridge at the site of the old Harmony Line Bridge connecting the path to Ewing Park would have been nice and maybe someday might happen. You can see that the construction workers built a temporary bridge across the creek in one of these pictures so I guess I can hope.
      Back to the bridge, who remembers the 4′ x 4′ sheets of steel they used to cover up the holes on the sidewalk of the old bridge? I remember walking to school across that bridge and the cement would be crumbling away exposing the steel grid under the cement until one day you are walking to school (freezing) and then all of a sudden there was a hole. After a couple of days, they would just cover the hole with a steel plate and you would start watching the next spot wear away.
Speaking of the sidewalks, do you remember the large cement barriers separating the sidewalks from the roads? Those were not there when the bridge was originally built. The only thing separating the road and sidewalk originally was a normal six inch curb. I remember the way the bridge moved when the Forge trucks or Blanks trucks went across, who ever decided to add the barriers, thank you.

      I do not know if it is because of Louise Carroll’s articles in the Ledger or what it is but I have found out that the folks from Hazel Dell are apparently the most nostalgic people in town. Ellwood City Memories gets more stories from them than from any other section of town. I actually had people that were upset that I had yet to mention Taylors Dairy Store (formerly Tritt’s Dairy). Apparently it was THE place in the Northside where everyone went for homemade ice cream. Tritt’s Dairy Store sold milk, snacks, ice cream and candy. 
      The building itself has changed a little from it’s days as Tritt’s Dairy as the front door has been covered over, but if you look carefully at the picture you can still see two of the steps that led into the store. The original owners, the Tritts, lived in the back of the store and upstairs, as the white addition was added years later. The Taylor’s, who owned the stores later, lived in the white house attached to the store for sometime.
      The empty lot next door to Taylor’s Dairy used to be a grocery store (when facing the building, it would be to the left of Taylor’s.) The small store called Nagel’s Grocery is still remembered today by those nostalgic Hazel Dellions for its “wonderful produce and lunch meats”. We do not know yet if the “missing” building was later the home of the Suds and Duds and Ray’s Toy town that burned down, but I am sure we fill find out…
      Please share your memories below or email us at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com