Apparently the PNC bank building at 800 Western Avenue (originally First National Bank’s western office, and later BancOhio) at the foot of University Drive is being demolished; it may be gone by now.
It’s a shame that didn’t happen 54 years ago.
Since the bank building was there first (it shows up between the 1962 and 1964 city directory), it pushed the design of University Drive to the west when that boulevard was built (it shows up between the 1966 and 1968 city directory). That caused a cut into the hillside under the nice stone cottage at 810 Western…with the new road ending almost opposite the “Martin Hess Hotel” at 807 Western.
What Was It?
The vacant Hess Hotel was demolished in 1990, probably to make way for development. If University hadn’t ended there, the building (and its back building, possibly a summer kitchen / root cellar) could have been put to decent use and remained standing.
John Grabb notes the building was built in the 1850s by Martin Hess. I say it could also be 1840s; the “trabeated” doorway with sidelights and transom is typical of the basic Greek Revival style in those decades.
The building was a center-passage I House, meaning the core of the building is one room deep, with a stair hall in the center with one room on either side, and a full second floor of identical plan. It also had an original two-story ell on the back left (west) side, with a two-tier porch on the inside (east side) of that ell which was later enclosed. It probably had at least ten rooms – not counting hallways, additions, and porch enclosures.
The plain white-painted medium-height frieze under the front eaves is typical of our minimal Greek Revivals. The square attic windows are common in the area, especially north of Chillicothe.
The charming banked one-and-a-half story outbuilding was probably one room on each of its three floors with an enclosed corner stairway, and later additions. It looks like it could have been the original ‘cabin’ on the site, but was probably built at the same time as the tavern, as a support structure. Any barn / livery, other sheds, and the requisite privy were long gone by the late 20th century.
The 1990s development that replaced it was “Traditions,” now part of a complex by National Church Residences, whose entrance road is a continuation of University Drive. The site of the Hess Hotel is now shared by the new street and their newest, 2011, fifth building.
Gateways?
As it was, the Hess Hotel served a a bit of a gateway for old Chillicothe – like the Kern Tavern at the north end of High Street (desperately in need of saving) and the Mione Hotel beyond the end of Paint Street at the SR 772 / Cooks Hill Road split (demolished about 1980).
All of them were taverns, which were the the hotel / motel / convention center / restaurant of the early and mid-19th century. You can identify them by the additional front side door to what otherwise looks like a house. (That second door was the direct entrance to the barroom, in case you were really thirsty!)
Further History
The Martin Hess Hotel is also documented as a “Den of Iniquity” by John Grabb on pages 39-40 in his “Little Known Tales.” Some humor resulted from an 1874 police raid on its employees…and their customers, who apparently remained anonymous.
The Hess Hotel was also near a toll house on the Milford & Chillicothe Turnpike (Western Avenue in Chillicothe), as discussed in Orval Gattens’ 2019 post in the Facebook page “You know you’re from Chillicothe, OH when…”
On the turnpike running diagonally in a crop of the 1875 Gould’s Atlas of Ross County below, you can see the tavern parcel owned by “Mr. Hess.” The toll house is on the corner of Duncan McArthur’s estate “Fruit Hill Farm,” just west of what is now the Party House of Governor’s Place (on the lot of “S.S. Cooke” (?)). Woodbridge Avenue will later run though the property of…Mr. Woodbridge. And, you can guess what road runs though the farm of Joseph H. Plyey.
Buried, Like its Mother Stream
Additionally, there is a little stream that comes down the hill along University Drive. It tumbles off the hilltop behind Bennett Hall and the Stevenson Center / Quinn Library of OU-C, along the sledding hill and disc golf course, past Our Savior Lutheran Church and Hopeton Terrace.
It was undergrounded on the west side of the BancOhio building, presumably when University Drive was built atop its route there. Its open ravine on the north side of Western Avenue was filled in a few years before Norse remodeled the 1976 convenience store there, probably when ‘North’ University Drive was expanded in the 1990s.
The stream is one of many tributaries of Honey Creek, which flowed out in the open behind the Hess Hotel – now largely encased there in a six-foot-diameter culvert under the entrance to the National Church Residences complex.
I think I have a c1988 photo of the farmlike rolling grassy setting there – just a short stone’s throw from the oblivious bustle of Western Avenue.
Shawnees…Rapid Forge…B&B…Mausoleum…
I’ve tentatively named the tributary James Run, since Thomas James owned the hill beside it when he met a band of Shawnees there in the 1820s. (“Run” is the Virginian version of “creek” or “stream.”)
The Shawnees were camping there while on their way to Washington, D.C. James was in the iron industry (including Rapid Forge west of Bainbridge) and saw that their body paint was based on an iron-rich mineral. The Shawnees promised to show him where it came from in Missouri, where James soon developed another ironworks and eventually moved there to live (and die).
James was a major contributor to the large, historic Willis-Spencer-James-Cook-Musser House at 58 West 5th Street…rapidly becoming a B&B again.
His family also has a c1915 fantastic little classical temple vault in Grandview Cemetery that has a stained glass window of Jesus that I like to point out in my cemetery tours.
Read more in Pat Medert’s short bio of James in her Paint Street, or 4th 5th & Caldwell, volumes.
A Sci Fi Memory
My parents banked in the BancOhio building in the 1970s. For some reason, I have one strong memory of the place.
My mom went inside for a while, and I stayed out in the car, parked behind where the drive-through was. In high school I gradually raided my dad’s science fiction shelf (it was about 12 feet long), and was working on Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles.”
While at the bank (banc?) I read the scene where a current-day human colonist meets a long-dead martian in some odd and unexplained time fracture. I think only a year or two later, a television minseries was produced from the sci fi classic:
In Memoriam Historiae
Oh…and since the bank building was built between 1960 and 1962, it would be historical since it was more than 50 years old.
But, not nearly as interesting and historic as the mid-nineteenth century tavern that it in part led to be destroyed..about 30 years after the bank was built, and 32 years before the bank was destroyed.
Intrepid Heritage Services • Kevin B. Coleman 