I am grateful for these long-gone local buildings

The Thanksgiving season is obviously a time to work on being grateful.

The common practice is to become more aware of the blessings, advantages, and gifts that you may take for granted. And there’s nothing wrong with working on it!

While what I have in mind this year is more unclear, I hope it might help me raise awareness of immediate reasons for gratitude.

If you’ve been following the saga of Newark’s 1900 Avalon Building, it turns out on social media that many people over the past century have shared personal stories that meander through the apartments above and the businesses below. Obviously there was an intention to save it again, but old buildings are not like cats and are lucky if they have two lives – three at the most. The water that put out the fire on the Avalon’s roof sealed its fate. And the harsh reality of historic preservation is that you can’t save everyone.

Although I never lived in, shopped at, or even set foot in the Avalon, its demise makes me think of other buildings now gone that are part of my life, if only now in memory and imagination.

For six years I had a desk at the 1886 County Children’s Home on East Main Street with the juvenile court. The structure was demolished in 2013 and while there were voices calling for its preservation, like the Avalon, the structure was too endangered to be preserved. However, it was a fascinating building where a lot of history took place over a century and a half, and it still appears in my dreams at odd intervals.

When I first visited Newark in 1989, the Auditorium Theater was still standing and was busier than the then-closed Midland across Second Street. Built in 1894 as the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, it was an echo of my hometown of Valparaiso, Indiana, which also had the unique feature of a Memorial Opera House built in place of a towering monument to Civil War veterans. There was a practical spirit connecting the two places, which I liked; Why spend a bunch of money on a memorial when you could commemorate the soldiers and sailors with something that everyone could use?

By this time, fires and decay had destroyed the building’s classical facade and sculptures, some of which you can still see today at VFW Post 1060 on Forry Avenue. The group of tallest statues are on private property elsewhere in the county but also survive. I saw performances and concerts in the old auditorium and still think of it when I walk past the Licking County Foundation offices now located on that site.

I recently had the privilege of attending a friend’s play at the Eisner Center on the campus of Denison University; It took place at the Hylbert Family Studio Theater and was well staged there. But I kept thinking about the Ace Morgan Theater, its knotty pine lobby, its history back with Morgan’s friend Hal Holbrook and later emerging student stars like John Davidson, Michael Eisner (whose center is now at this location), Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner.

In addition to long-lost family homes and places where I’ve enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner in years past, there are so many buildings I’m grateful for that no longer exist. Which lost places have influenced you and what do you remember?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller and preacher in central Ohio. If he were concerned with lost church buildings, this column would become a multi-volume book. Tell him about places that are no longer meant for you at [email protected] or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Knapsack: Historic Places Gone But Not Forgotten