Summit Avenue pre-1970
We posted a number of pictures that Bud Dimeo took of the National Plumbing fire on Second Street in little Italy. In 1959, the year of the fire, South Second Street was the main road in and out of Ellwood City as the four-lane highway was not even considered yet. We focused on the destroyed building itself in the original post, but Tim Gerard pointed out in one of the pictures you can see Summit Avenue before the four-lane cut the road in two. We tried to zoom in the best we could and as you can see, there were a number of houses that were torn down when the four-lane was put in. If you have any memories of the houses that are long gone or the families that were displaced as a result of the highway construction please leave a comment below or email us at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com
My mom used to live in one of those houses and her dad (my grandfather) worked at National Plumbing, his name was John Palipchack. The Morgan family later lived in the same house.
My dad & uncles worked at National Plumbing along with Palipchack. We were all trying to do what we could to stop the fire, but it amounted to standing there watching the the steel trusses melt into the packing house due to extreme heat from the fire. clockwise from the left side of Bud’s picture, which was probably taken from Dicerbo’s front porch, was Metz’s grocery store, across south second Mike Perry, Wally Lordo, Sam Pezzi, Eleanor Taylor, John Condi, John Pezzi, coming down summit B. Zona, Carl Izzo, Rizzo Mantz, George Garta, Bob Pascarella, John Russo, John Vetica, and back across South Second to the National Plumbing Office. I remember the guys watching their jobs go up in flames.