Trending
WARREN -- Standing in front of a colorful mural on North Park Avenue just north of Courthouse Square, Trumbull County Historical Society volunteer Megan Clark welcomed her visitors to a walking tour of what are considered Warren's "first suburbs."
The mural proclaims the area to be The Garden District, but Clark said the area also is known as Warren's Central City Neighborhood -- which grew in the late 1800s "to become one of the 'it' places to live in Warren" at the time.
Clark was giving visitors a walking tour of Park Avenue on Saturday to show and talk about eight buildings in a three-block area with lots of ties to the Packard brothers, who started the Packard Electric Co. and later the Packard automobile.
The neighborhood earned the name Garden District about 10 years ago -- after the area gained a reputation for crime. The revitalization group Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership combated blight by tearing down condemned structures in the neighborhood and replacing some with community gardens.
TNP held a contest in 2015 to put the mural at the corner of Park and Scott Street, and artist Amy Novelli's proposal was selected.
Park Avenue saw the introduction of larger, stately homes in the late 1800s, mostly built by children or grandchildren of those who had built the homes on Millionaire's Row, one block west on Mahoning Avenue.
"We all know that children generally want to stand apart from their parents, and, in terms of local housing, we see that trend with the second and third generations leaving Millionaire's Row and setting up their own establishments on Park," Clark told her audience. Millionaire's Row is the name of stately homes along Mahoning Avenue built earlier than those on Park Avenue.
Clark explained that Park Avenue was once mostly commercial, but, from Scott Street north, it was mostly residential.
But the Packard Apartments were a mix of commercial and residential all by itself. The apartments, also known as the Packard Flats, were the brainchild of J.W. Packard, who along with his brother W.D. Packard, built the first Packard automobile in 1899 and created the wiring company Packard Electric.
J.W. Packard built the apartments in 1901 so that he and his younger sisters could move out of their parents' home on Mahoning Avenue. The Packards moved into the apartments with seven of their friends.
"This was a happening place. This was the cool kids club, if you will, of the early 1900s. This was the latest and greatest. They are moving out of family homes on Millionaire's Row. It's just the next generation of money," Clark said.
J.W. Packard was "looking for this more luxurious and posh modern type of lifestyle and type of building," Clark said. The Packards and their friends "valued being close to each other. They valued being in one of the busy spots in town."
Commercial businesses and offices were on the first floor. The apartments on the upper floors had amenities such as electric door openers and electric lights.
"It surely would have been a happening place when it first opened," Clark said.
"We think about multiuse buildings being a new thing, it's not," Clark said. In the Packard Apartments, "you've got the first-floor very commercial and the upper level being quieter and more residential. These guys were doing it over 100 years ago."
By 1910, the Packard brothers had moved to their own mansions, and the sisters had married and moved to big cities like New York, Clark said.
The reconstruction of the building taking place will make the units more like condominiums than apartments, Clark said.
The last building on the tour was the Buckeye Club across Scott Street from the Garden District mural.
The building was constructed by James Scott in the 1850s, which is how Scott Street got its name, Clark said. When Scott and his wife lived there, his property extended to Elm Road to the east.
In the later 1800s, it was parceled, but the house has remained because of its second owners, J.W. Packard and his wife, Bess, Clark said. The Packard brothers' factory was just up Park Avenue on Dana Street. But Bess Packard apparently did not like living there, so they built another home on Oak Knoll Avenue.
Social clubs were popular during the years the Packards owned the building, and J.W. had just joined an exclusive men's club called The Buckeye Club. So when the Packards moved out, he donated the house to the Buckeye Club, which still operates today, Clark said.
Olivia Woods of Niles, who participated in the walk with her grandmother, Mary Anne Kilbert of Warren, said she grew up in Warren and recently moved back to the area after attending graduate school.
"It's interesting to hear the history and hear how vibrant those kinds of streets and houses were in the past," she said. "It was interesting to hear about the efforts to save some of the homes."
She learned that the owner of the Packard Apartments and the Harsh House next door tried to find someone to purchase the Harsh House, but no one with the ability to renovate it emerged.
"She said sometimes you drive down the street and see that house or building and wonder why it's just sitting there. It's not that people are not trying," she said.
Woods liked that Clark gave an update on the historic McFarland Funeral Home building. It was sold several years ago, but the new owners were unable to keep it operating. New ownership bought it for $15,000 in August, Clark said.
John Johnson of Leavittsburg said he enjoyed learning about the Edwards Mansion on Park Avenue that used to be AAA building. He had gone to that building many times but did not know its history, he said.