Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1978. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
one of 36 National Register listings in Ashtabula County · listed in 1978 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Ashtabula County.
National Register reference number.78002002- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 310 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Harwood Block between 1880 and
1975: 306 Animalia, 3 Plantae, 1 Fungi. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. Woolman, Allen, T.F., Armbruster, D. C. (Daniel C.) and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
8 workings within 5 miles of Harwood Block: 4 past producers, 3 producers, 1 plant.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Conneaut, the town this property stands in, in 28 storm reports between 1994 and 2023: 13 thunderstorm wind, 9 hail, 2 flash flood, 2 waterspout.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A band of showers and thunderstorms enhanced by the warm waters of Lake Erie moved into Conneaut on the morning of the 22nd, producing significant flash flooding along the lakeshore. Doppler radar estimated between 3.5 and 5 inches of rain fell throughout the city of Conneaut in less than 1.5 hours. Major street flooding occurred, with semi trucks stranded and numerous underpasses flooded. Many structures were inundated, including a restaurant on Broad Street.
Heavy rain and rapid snow melt led to a rapid rise in rivers and streams across Ashtabula County. Rainfall amounts of 2 to 2.25 fell on top of six to ten inches of heavy snow. This snow rapidly melted as temperatures warmed into the 50s on the 28th. Up to an additional inch of water equivalent rainfall was released from the melted snow. Small streams and creeks came out of banks flooding farmland, roads, and a few homes.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
1,531 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The 3-story, High Victorian Italianate painted brick building has a cast iron are 1/1 light, closely spaced. The bays are separated by single or paired in the cornice are the letters HARWOOD BLOCK. story has three doorways, two of which have stairways to the third floor. The CONDITION EXCELLENT UNALTERED main hall is said to have excellent acoustics.
CHECK ONE and corregated metal siding.The upper floors are identical in detail though XGOOD has always occupied the major center portion with smaller stores on the first story was always divided into three storefronts.A department store raised circular medallions, and the cornice is supported by paired and single with a large decorated corbel.Above the third floor the full entablature _UNEXPOSED by Co.L of the Ohio National Guard.Its last use was as a dance hall.The repeats the guilloche band in the architrave, a molded frieze has a row of decorated frieze and wide molded cornice. Each end of the entablature terminates The east side adjoins other commercial buildings of a later date.
The west DATE RUINS colonettes on molded bases.The colonnetes have Corinthian-style capitals side has plain, segmental arched windows of narrow proportion.There is a floor.The third floor was first used as an Opera House, later it was used storefront.The structure is in the shape ofa trapezium with no two sides AREAS OF
Statement of significance
concurring, the Main Street was roped off and the pieces laboriously hall. The stage is still intact. 1500-1599 1889 1800-1899 1600-1699 INVENTION ARCHEOLOGY-HISTORIC XARCHITECTURE SIGNIFICANCE PERIOD PHILOSOPHY AGRICULTURE ART EDUCATION BUILDER/ARCHITECT MILITARY INDUSTRY assembled in the street, thenattached to the building. LITERATURE _CONSERVATION _EXPLORATION/SETTLEMENT was a major stop for touring companies. _POLITICS/GOVERNMENT space was 1eased to Co.L of the Ohio National Guard for drill space.It Conneaut. With the exception of the first floor the building remains much TRANSPORTATION SOCIAL/HUMANITARIAN display window but is still intact. scheduled for refurbishing to open as a community center.
for touring companies between Buffalo and Cleveland.The great names are east portion was used by various tenants including a jewelry store and drug served this use through W.w.I.After the war it was converted to a dance was a stairway leading to the third floor.It is now covered by a A.W.Pelton store recently went out of business but it hoped that a new -1700-1799 The third floor was an opera house from 1889-1903.It was the major stop - 1400-1499 -1900- -LAW -COMMUNITY PLANNING Around 1873 Amherst Harwood assembled four parcels of land and built his commercial block around 1889. The cast iron front was made for Harwood for about 50 years by E. J. Curphy, a tobacco shop. This space is now a said to have played there - the Drews, Barrymores and Fiskes. In 1903 the store.
ARCHEOLOGY-PREHISTORIC in Chicago and shipped to Conneaut on the Nickel Plate Railway.There The principal tenant for many years was the A.W.Pelton Co.,a department were no instructions for installing the iron front.With the village The opera house is commercial use will be made of the space soon.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 78002002, 14 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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