Good Riddence to Bad Rubbish!

This is interesting. If you have been a follower of this blog since before 2008 then you know full well what prompted me to run for the position of Mayor in our great City of Dayton, Ohio. If you haven't followed this blog for the last 4 years or longer then you can read the post here and a follow up post in 2009 here.

What happened to those houses? Well an interesting thing occurred. Someone from Chicago decided to invest his daughters college fund in tax liens for a quick return on his $100,000 investment. He bought a bunch of tax liens from that Florida investment company holding the liens on many city properties and then made a trip to Dayton to see what he had invested in. Once he realized that he had just wasted his daughters college fund on a bunch of useless property he held on to them all for one year and then negotiated with the City to give them away so he could get a good tax write off. So in December 2010 these two houses became the property of the City. I made it known that I would be interested in acquiring the parcels should the houses ever be demolished. I even had the wife call three demolition companies this year to get a quote on both houses so that we could negotiate something with the city to make them come down. None of the companies responded. I suspect they felt the houses were too close to the neighboring ones and they had enough demolition contracts already with the City that these two properties were not even worth quoting. Well, the City ended up contracting them out for demolition with one of the three firms we called as an extension of an existing contract. They know I am interested in the lots so that may have been a factor. I came home on Monday evening to this.

 By Wednesday the lots looked like this

 and this.

Now, just to be clear, I pulled no strings to have this done. I wouldn't want anyone to think that I am trying to take advantage of my position to improve my own neighborhood. After all, I have been in office for two and a half years and could have pressed for this back in 2010. These two houses have blighted my entire block for over 10 years. Now they are gone and I can reclaim some of the land that was once an original part of the Edgar and Volkenand homestead. Hopefully I will get a phone call asking me to cough up some money to buy the lots in the next few weeks. I will gladly hand my money over to the City for this! Of course it now means that I will have more grass to mow ......

More Molding Installed

The time has come to install more molding in the dining room. If you recall, the last time I posted about this the windows and doors were finally trimmed out and the room was starting to look finished. Well, now it is more finished! I have been installing base boards, chair rail and picture rail over the last two weeks whenever I get some spare time. The plan has always been to paint the chair rail and picture rail gold to match the gold in the chandelier, mirror frame, picture frames and the wall paper in the room. I started with a hammered finish metallic gold spray paint which produced the result in the three pieces on the right side in the picture below. To antique the gold I used my old friend, Amber Shellac. Two coats of the stuff produced the three pieces on the left. I painted some black edges to some of the molding to make the gold color stand out even more.

This picture shows some of the chair rail and base board in place. The room is almost finished at the time of writing. I just have to install the molding around the fire place area and on the ceiling before it will be done.

In this picture you can see the picture rail at the top of the wall. It defines the color change from dark green to dark red and is certainly more tidy than the wavy hand painted line I have had to look at for many years! You will also note that I added red and yellow painted daisy details to the corner blocks on the doorways. These compliment the details in the ceiling medallion which you can view in this old post.

So, slowly things are getting done around here. All be it very slowly .....

Shawen Acres Now

So if you read the previous post about the history of Shawen Acres and the Montgomery County Children's Home you would realize that the facility stopped being a home for orphans in the 1970s after it was determined that children were better off in foster care with individual families. The large administration building remained in use until 2001 when the modern Haines Children's Center building was opened. The original buildings have sat vacant and unused for 11 years. During that time the roofs of many buildings developed leaks or were accessed by racoons, birds and squirrels. Some of the basements flooded and the humidity inside the structure has caused paint to peel and floor boards and joists to buckle and warp. Vagrants have accessed the buildings for shelter and thieves have removed air conditioning units and copper plumbing. The porches have become popular locations for prostitutes to perform the horizontal hoochee and the 19 acre grounds are too large for the county sheriff to police. The county has submitted a proposal for demolition and a re-use plan that includes expanding the green space on the property and preserving the original nursery building which was restored and is currently used. The neighborhoods support the plan but the Landmark Commission voted 4 - 3 to preserve the structures. The county intends to bring the case before the city commission on May 30, 2012 because we have the ability to overturn the Landmark Commission recommendation. When I heard this I asked to see the interiors of the buildings. Some would say that I know a thing or two about renovation work. You are about to view a series of pictures. They are not labeled as to which building is which but I can tell you that all the buildings except one which was preserved several years ago are in similar condition. The structures are ALL concrete block institutional type buildings with no insulation and iron joist beam support for the second story in each structure. Many of the interior rooms are very small with concrete interior walls. There are no outstanding architectural details inside any of the buildings. The arts and crafts fire places are very plain. The only attractive feature about the buildings is how they appear from the outside. The tile roof, fancy chimneys and stucco English cottage style are the only good thing about the buildings. The buildings have deteriorated because the county uses money allocated for children's service to attend the needs of children and not to maintain and heat empty buildings. These buildings are not really relocatable due to the masonry construction and if they were renovated on site they would have to be used to serve "helpless and unfortunate children" due to a deed restriction.

The front of the administration building will be salvaged and reused on the grounds.

This is the back of the administration building. The attached gym was demolished in 2004.

A vulture flew out of this hole in the roof while I was there. Maybe it was feasting on something inside!

This is just one of many large piles of raccoon poop present in one of the buildings.

This ridge under the carpet is due to a warped floor joist that has risen some six inches.

This is looking up through the ceiling to the light shining through a hole in the roof.

The renovated former nursery looks like this.

Now that you have read all this and seen the pictures you would likely agree that the only future for these structures is to demolish them. However, if you have the funds and a reuse plan for the buildings that serves the purpose as listed in the deed restriction then you can call the Assistant County Administrator, Amy Weideman at 937-225-5802 to discuss your ideas. If they are feasible then the county may throw in funds that are saved from the demolition budget which is almost $350,000 for the entire project. I would do it before summer though because these will start to come down in the fall of this year assuming we overturn the decision of the Landmark Commission that is.

Shawen Acres AKA Montgomery County Children's Home - Then

According to Wikipedia

Shawen Acres, also known as the Montgomery County Children's Home, is an historic complex at 3304 N. Main St. in Dayton, Ohio. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 9, 1991.

It was originally designed as an orphan’s home. Dr. Charles Shawen donated 19 acres (77,000 m²) to the county March 21, 1926 for "wayward and homeless children." The complex comprises a main building, annex, gym, and 10 English-style cottages in a park-like setting.

Here is the Sanborn Fire Insurance map from 1932

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This is how the grounds looked in 1955. Not certain what the extra buildings were but one may have been a boiler room to heat all the buildings.

This was the nursery building back in the day. This is the only building that has been renovated and is still in use today. You can read about the place in it's current condition in the next post.

Here is a photo of a photograph that hangs on the wall in the renovated nursery building showing the place soon after inception.

This stone lies near the same building.

There is a sad tale to tell about this facility now and you can read about it in the next post.

Black is Black

I am finally starting to get the molding up in the dining room. This room has no molding at all. It is hard to believe that at one time the room looked like this.



Then it started to get put together again.



The windows have looked like this for a long time without any molding and without curtains.



Since I have been on a curtain binge lately, I figured that it was time to get the curtains up in this room. They have been packed away for three years. I had to do a little restoration work on the window sills since they had been destroyed back in the 1950s when this house became apartments. So I found some old 2 X 4s in my basement and repaired the sills using some really long screws and Bondo.





Then I measured up some pine boards and painted them black to match the fireplace mantle and nailed them in place. I got the curtains up too.



So the first picture above has become this. I still have the chair rail, picture rail, ceiling molding, three doorways and the baseboards to do but at least I've started.



We are in the eleventh year of our ambitious three year project!

Sometimes I Impress Myself

This is a story about a window. In August 2001 I took this photo because I just knew there was something behind the wall. It made a hollow sound when you knocked on it.



You can see the same window in the background in this picture taken in 2004.



There are two other windows in the room and they got stripped



and eventually finished in 2005.



Last year in December it still looked like this



While the other two looked like this.



I paid a lot of money for those curtains and I don't want the third set to sit around in boxes for years so I decided it was time to restore the woodwork to this window. Getting one inch thick wood is impossible and getting custom cut pine boards was going to cost me $20.00 a linear foot so this one window was looking to cost $480.00 in wood alone. I compromised and bought three standard 2 X 10 pine boards and some 1/4 inch thick lattice. I also bought a small can of gun stock colored wood stain and a quart of amber shellac and did my magic. I experimented with color on the base and corner molding cut from the standard boards. I had to use paint thinner to dilute the wood stain as I applied it to reduce the intensity of the orange color it made the wood. The lattice was added to all the edges to give the illusion that the boards were one inch thick. Total cost was $156.00 for wood and stain but since my palm sander fell apart on me mid project there was an additional cost of $50.00 to replace it!

I was smart enough to realize that things are not always the same length in old houses so I started by putting the top boards in place first. Then the bases.



Turns out this was a smart move because the vertical boards are one inch longer than the other ones around the room. Anyway, after a single coat of diluted stain and five coats of shellac, we have this



The color is near perfect with the rest of the room. Now all I have to do is finish the rest of the window with a few coats of shellac and get those curtains installed. This is how I impressed myself ......