‘Union Block’ full of action

First Posted: 12/11/2014

On a summer day in 1888, a correspondent for the Lima Daily Democratic Times was loitering in Robert Burns’ barber shop in the basement of the Union Block, on the lookout for gossip to fill the newspaper’s four pages.

That day, July 2, 1888, the Democratic Times reported the Lima oil field was still booming, and the Lima baseball club led the Tri-State League despite losing to Toledo two days earlier. Toledo, the paper explained, won by “hitting the ball oftener than Lima.”

In the “Odds and Ends” column on the back page, the barbershop correspondent contributed this item: “When seated in one of the chairs at Mr. Burns’ tonsorial parlors in the Union block, a Chicago lady came in and asked the artist if he could cut the English bang. ‘Certainly,’ replied the courteous barber, we make that a specialty.’”

The story went on to describe how the lady’s hair was “pasted down and divided into four departments,” cut, crimped and “curled back over the head until it had the appearance of a full-blown rose. The lady thanked him on leaving, saying he was the first artist she had found that could do the English bang outside the large cities.”

Although not a large city, Lima had come a long way since 1832 when Robert Porter Mitchell built a tavern in the wilderness, on the site now occupied by the Union Block. Lima’s population more than doubled in the 1880s with the discovery of oil, reaching nearly 16,000 by 1890. Industry boomed, and the railroads brought travelers from everywhere, including ladies from Chicago who were delighted to find a barber versed in the English bang.

In 1877, the Union Block was built where Mitchell’s tavern had stood.

“Arrangements are nearly completed for the erection during the summer of a new structure on the corner of Market Street and the Public Square,” the Lima Gazette reported Feb. 14, 1877. “The building will occupy the entire frontage on the Square from Jake Wise’s Clothing House, about 84 feet, and run back on Market Street to the alley, a distance of 125 feet. It will be three stories on both fronts and contain five business rooms on the Square with probably two on Market… The owners of the property, Messrs. A.N. Smith (who married Robert Mitchell’s daughter, Minerva), T.T. Mitchell (Robert Mitchell’s son), J.R. Hughes and Mrs. J.W. Crouse, have had the matter under consideration for a long time and mean to put up a building that will not only be a credit to the city, but one that will compare very favorably with anything to be found in cities of much more population than ours.”

By the fall of 1877, the Union Block was finished and filling up. The 1878-79 city directory lists the Bank of Lima, job printers O.B. Selfridge and E.B. Halladay, City Laundry, clothiers S.L. Bowlby & Co. and jeweler H.H. Cole among the block’s early tenants.

A.N. Smith dealt in stoves and tinware in the Union Block, while J.R. Hughes sold glassware and chaired meetings of the Woodlawn Cemetery Association there. Hughes’ name is on the memorial arch over the cemetery entrance. In December 1880, the Telephone Exchange moved “into their new room, third floor Union Block,” the Allen County Democrat reported. On April 14, 1881, the newspaper noted “the Stock Exchange is open for business in the Union Block.”

Selfridge and Halladay established the weekly Democratic Times (later the Daily Democratic Times) “in cramped quarters on the third floor of the Union Block” in 1879, the Lima News wrote in a Sept. 9, 1923, article. In 1920, the paper, by then known as the Times Democrat, merged with the News.

News was often just down the hall for the Democratic Times. During a violent summer storm on July 3, 1879, “a deafening clap of thunder was followed by an appalling peal of lightning, which struck the Union Block in the roof of the room owned by T.T. Mitchell, tearing about one third of the roof loose and making quite a large hole through it in several places.” Another building tenant, Frank Herman, who went to check the damage, “was struck by lightning and for a few moments was knocked senseless.”

The Union Block would be the scene of many small dramas in its early years. On July 26, 1897, the Times Democrat told the story of “Claude Railing, a man who came here recently from Decatur, Ind., to follow the painting trade.” Railing, “who is quite a stylish young fellow, has been paying attention to Miss Gertrude Baughman, a pretty but quite young girl,” the Times-Democrat wrote. Baughman’s mother objected. Railing tried to end his life in his room in the Union Block “by swallowing a dose of rat poison” but was found and survived.

On Dec. 7, 1897, the Times Democrat reported that “Harry Mauk one of the proprietors, and Frank Cavanaugh, an employee of a restaurant in the Union Block, became engaged in a fight over differences last night, and Cavanaugh is now under a physician’s care with several gashes in his scalp.” Mauk, the Times Democrat wrote, “chopped his head with a big bread knife.”

“Windy Jim,” described by the News as “a horseman” and wanted for burglary in Greenville, was arrested on May 2, 1899, after he was found loitering on “Union Block corner.”

The Lima Daily News, wrapping up the year in a Dec. 31, 1911, story, noted that a fire in the Union Block damaged the Art Printing Shop and Interurban Café. On Sept. 20, 1915, John Baughman, from Dunkirk, “who had been to Lima with a party of young men from Hardin County,” ran over Bent Rambo while attempting to steer his car between “the street car tracks and transfer station,” the Daily News reported. Rambo, who survived, was on his way to a wake when he nearly became the focus of one. A July 31, 1912, brawl in the rear of the Union Block left three men injured, two on the lam and all “badly used up,” according to the paper.

But mostly the Union Block was a place for businesses and professionals. A series of clothing stores would occupy the space originally leased by the Bowlby store. Lawyers, photographers, restaurateurs and dentists all would set up shop in the Union Block. Dentists Hall and Doty in a 1905 Daily News ad promised “The Hall Atmospheric Disk will keep artificial teeth firmly in place under all conditions while talking or eating.”

On Sept. 2, 1917, the Daily News reported the Union Block had been sold to the Hoover-Bond Furniture Co. for $58,000. Hoover-Bond, the paper said, planned “to erect a seven or eight story building” on the site when the lease of the Loewenstein Clothing Store expired in 1921. That deal fell through and, on May 2, 1923, the Lima News & Times Democrat reported half interest in the building had been sold to Walter DeKalb, a Lima architect, for $34,000. “The building, a three-story brick structure, houses three stores, six apartments and office suites,” the paper said.

Earlier this year, Rhodes State College acquired the Union Block with plans to demolish the structure within the next three years. In its place will be a $20 million Center for Health Science Education and Innovation.

In a letter to City Council quoted in the News on March 8, 2014, Lima Mayor David Berger wrote: “The purpose and scale of the Rhodes State College project should be understood as a transformative investment in Lima’s downtown. While the last several years have seen a positive investment momentum stimulated by new restaurants and retail shops, this institutional investment promises a permanent hub of activity that creates a long-term catalyst for a vibrant day and night time social and commercial scene in our downtown.”

Current plans call for that hub to be completed by 2017, 140 years after the former hub, the Union Block, was constructed.