Alliance's Heighborhoods and Houses: Your Historic Home at RPL
The Alliance Area Preservation Society (AAPS) presents Alliance’s Neighborhoods and Houses: Your Historic Home, the first public program of its new Your Historic Home project, on Wednesday, May 18, 2016 at 7:00 p.m., in Rodman Library Main Auditorium.
Alliance’s Neighborhoods and Houses will give an overview of how Alliance’s neighborhoods came into being, the houses that were built there, and the people that built them. Participants will also get an introduction to researching the history of their own homes, and the opportunity to receive a house research “jump start” to find out who first purchased the property they live on, when their neighborhood was first laid-out, and the date their house was built. The program will be presented by Robb Hyde.
The first neighborhoods of Alliance were surveyed even before the town’s incorporation, but the community began years of explosive growth immediately after the Civil War. The Teeters Lamborn Addition was platted in 1866 and encompassed most of the land east of Union Avenue and west of Mahoning between Columbia and Cambridge Streets. Others followed over the next fifty years, some known by their originator’s name, like the John Auld, John Milner or Harry Sourbeck Additions, and other with more eloquent monikers such as Grandview. In the 20th Century, new neighborhoods west of town sprouted along Parkway Boulevard such as West Park Heights, College Hills and Antram Heights. Around the time of the First World War a unique area known as the Government Addition, which was one of 36 projects built nationwide by the Federal Government, was built east of Liberty Avenue; and the Parkside Homes opened up on the north side of town. The program will also talk about the fondly remembered Goat Hill neighborhood; Sears, Montgomery Ward and other kit houses; the community's Mid-Century Modern Homes, and post-WWII housing developments.
AAPS’ focus on research and additional programs in 2016 will be on Sears Modern Homes and other kit houses built in Alliance. These houses represent a period when the concept of home ownership and consumerism met in the creation of kit homes in a variety of architectural styles that could be planned by experts, manufactured in bulk, and built economically and efficiently in every corner of the country. Many were built in Alliance, and the program will reveal a bit of their history and locations. The program will conclude with a few basic research tips on investigating individual homes. AAPS will conduct a workshop for those interested in more in-depth research on June 7.
Over the next several years, Your Historic Home will help people throughout the community unlock the history of their own historic homes—be it a 19th Century Second Empire or a 50s Ranch home. AAPS plans to build a strong foundation of knowledge about the homes of Alliance, and help individuals learn how to research the history of their house. Each year we will focus research, surveys and programming around a particular house type found in the area, or a specific neighborhood in Alliance. We will also conduct house history research workshops at least twice a year, to teach people about the resources available to research the history of their home.
The Rodman Public Library is located at 215 E Broadway St. in Alliance. Free Parking is available. The Alliance Area Preservation Society is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic structures through education, research and documentation. It also owns and operates the Haines House, 186 W. Market St. in Alliance, (www.haineshoue.org) an Underground Railroad site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This program is free and open to the public. For more information, call 330-821-2665, ext. 101.
