The Power of Widgets

When I first posted on this blog in January, 2008 about the Olney Gallery, I was unaware of rehabilitation efforts that were underway, however tentatively. The December 31st online edition of Business First of Columbus noted briefly that the Olney Gallery and House had received approval for a historic preservation tax break from the Ohio Department of Development to the tune of $980,270. Overall costs of the project are estimated at $4.86 million, which probably explains why there hasn't been much forward movement on renovation in the face of Cleveland's comatose economy.

As mentioned before, the Olney Gallery at 2241 West 14th Street, in what is now the Tremont neighborhood, was the first art museum in Cleveland open to the public. The yellow brick gallery, adjoining the Victorian frame mansion known as the Lamson House, was built in 1892 by attorney Charles Olney, and designed by the architectural firm of Forrest A. Coburn and Frank Seymour Barnum.

Charles Olney's wife was the widow of Lamson and Sessions founder Samuel Sessions, who with brothers Isaac and Thomas Sessions moved their carriage bolt and nut company from Mt. Carmel, Connecticut to Cleveland. From Lamson and Sessions' website:

"Sales trips to the Midwest enticed Samuel Sessions to move the Company in 1869 to the banks of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio. In this area of expanding markets, less competition, good sources of raw material, steam power and transportation, he envisioned growth and prosperity for the Company. The partnership was incorporated in the State of Ohio in 1883 and named The Lamson & Sessions Co."

The fortune accrued from the manufacture of widgets would eventually lead to the establishment of publicly accessible art in northeast Ohio.

Above, the Olney Gallery in its heyday. In 1904, Charles Olney donated his collection of paintings, ivories and bronzes to Oberlin College, where it became the foundation of the Allen Memorial Art Museum. It would be twelve years before Cleveland's public could again view masterpieces of art, when the Cleveland Museum of Art opened in 1916. The Olney gallery, meantime, saw later use as a Ukrainian social club and a Puerto Rican social club. A woman who grew up on Cleveland's near west side in the late 1950s and 1960s remembers her father attending union meetings in the Olney building.

Right now the Olney remains empty, its windows (like those of the Lamson House) tightly boarded, its porch cluttered with leaves, dirt and litter -- half-decayed sheets of newspapers, crushed 16-ounce ale cans, an incongruous pair of above-the-ankle leopard print mukluks. What happens next?