I’m getting a reputation. A friend from Wisconsin was cleaning out his mother-in-law’s place and came across some ephemera from Youngstown and wondered if I’d be interested. He sent a photograph, and I realized that the pictured stationary was the old Arts and Sciences Offices at Youngstown State, at 525 Wick Avenue, across the street from the Butler. This week, the pictured stationary and the original matching wax envelope enclosing the stationary arrived in the mail.
As a freshman, I remembered going there to meet my professor to discuss my first draft of a term paper on Perelandra. I visited the building several times during my first years at YSU. It was also the home of WYSU, the campus Public Radio station. I saw the studios and found myself envious of the record collection! We always entered the building from an entrance off the driveway passing through the center of the building to parking behind the building. The building was torn down about the time we graduated to make way for Bliss Hall for the Performing Arts and the McDonough Museum of Art. In 1977, the College of Arts and Sciences moved into the newly built DeBartolo Hall.
The building began its life after World War II when “motor hotels” or “motels” were built across a country rapidly being connected by a road system to accommodate growing automobile travel. The Butler as well as downtown Youngstown with its mix of theaters and shopping, and a growing college provided the incentive to build this tastefully constructed red brick two-story motel on Wick Avenue across from the Butler and overlooking Smoky Hollow.
The envelope enclosing the stationary lists three other motels that are part of this chain of “motor hotels.” The Noble Motel and the Town House Motel were both in Cleveland and the Rest Motor Hotel was in North Randall, probably near the race track.
Postcards I found of the motel describe it as follows:
The Most Modern Motorist Hotel in Ohio 70 Units – Completely Air-Conditioned 24-Hour Telephone Service Coffee Shop on Premises Two Minutes’ Walk from Downtown On State Route No. 7 and U.S. Route No. 62 525 WICK AVENUE – YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO. AAA Approved. Telephone: RIverside 3-1141 (from Pinterest).
Another post card indicates that at one time, it also featured a steak house and a swimming pool.
Two minutes is pretty optimistic to walk from that location to downtown, but it plainly was walkable as we did many times during college. For someone who didn’t want the hassle of parking and traffic downtown, which could be considerable in Youngstown’s heyday, the motel provided a comfortable alternative.
At some later time, the motel was known as the Wick Avenue Motel, probably reflecting a change in ownership. I suspect the growth of suburban motels in the 1960’s brought competition. I could not find a date when the university acquired the building. By 1970, university maps show the building as “ASO” or “Arts and Sciences Offices.”
Many of us who went to YSU in the 1970’s will remember this building as a place of meeting for advising or course discussions with professors. Others will have memories of when it was a motel, a forerunner of motels including chains like Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson’s that eventually sprang up along the highways of a nation with a love affair with travel–including some folks who lived in Wisconsin who found their way to Youngstown, stashed away some stationary, that over half a century later brought to life another Youngstown memory.
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!