421 West Avenue Detailed Information:

4,000 Square Feet

21 rooms

5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 3 fireplaces

Construction: tile, brick, and concrete

History

Arthur G. Smith was the “S” of I.T.S. Rubber Company. This is the Elyria company formed in 1914 by Karl Ingwer, George Tufford and Smith to patient and market a unique, long wearing, easy to apply rubber heal for shoes and boots.

By 1916 they were making over a million dollars a year and they were shortly, in 1923, to use those profits to create Ridge Tool Company. In the mean time they built houses. The Karl Ingwer House (202 Ohio St.) was no longer exists and is now a parking lot behind the County Justice Center.

Ingwer became president of I.T.S. and Arthur G. Smith (not William Smith as stated in Tufford’s obituary) became vice president. Both Tufford and Smith would eventually assume similar positions at Ridge Tool.

Arthur G. Smith bought 421 West Avenue just after his August 1910 marriage to Ethelyn Wells Dailey at the home of her parents at Lakeside. As the partner, with his father William in a West Broad Street Elyria show store, Smith was, like the previous owners of 421, solidly middle class. The price increases seem to reflect little more than economic conditions in a growing and prosperous city.

Records at the Lorain County Recorders show that in 1885 J.B Linderman, a dry goods merchant, had sold the property to Carrie Weinle whose husband was superintendent of the Mussey Quarry on 15th Street—Price $1,000 ($30,598.76 in 2022 dollars). In 1898 the Weinles’ sold to Myna and Charles W. Sawyer Price— $3,000 ($107,280 in 2022 dollars). Sawyer was partner in Teasdale and Sawyer, a shoe store in Cheapside. Sawyer has political aspirations to be Sheriff in 1910. When he failed to get the Republican nomination he sold out to his business partner and sold 421 West Avenue to Smith for $3,650 ($114,036.76 in 2022 dollars) in September of that year.

Lorain County Tax Records for 1911 list the value of the land as $2,180 ($68,109.63 in 2022 dollars) and the value of the buildings as $1,430 ($44,677.41 in 2022 dollars). These figures vary only slightly over the next few years until 1918 when the typewritten figure for the value of the buildings $1,300 was crossed through and replaced with $15,000 ($294,842.38 in 2022 dollars) with the note “house".

This explains why City directories list the Smith’s address for 1916-1917 was 1 Jackson Terrace, an apartment house at 203 5th Street.

The Smiths had gone from solidly middle class to solidly rich in four years and their new 4,000 square ft. Colonial Revival home of concrete and mahogany, hidden rooms and a tile roof and reputedly the first attached garage in town reflects this. 421 West Avenue is surely what A Field Guide to American Houses means when discussing Colonial revival construction: “masonry predominates in high-style examples.”

Unfortunately Arthur Smith sold 421 in 1923 and it was sold again in 1938 and divided into seven or more apartments in the 1940’s and then abandoned after a fire a few years later.

It had sat empty with a leaking roof and no utilities for four years but present owner Sheila Massimiani says, “When I walked in the front door I fell in love with the woodwork the architecture, the tile floors. I refinish wood for a living and I love woodwork. Plus this house is unique, everything about it was unique—the large rooms, the footbath”.

And she put her money where her heart was— she bought it and she is putting it back into the order Arthur and Ethelyn Smith found when they moved back to 421 in 1918.

Story by Tom Mahl emwmahl@eriecoast.com