New and exciting sounds were heard in North Dover in 1882 with the beat of the steam locomotive exhaust, the shrill call of a whistle and the rumble of iron wheels on steel rails.

Clifton Aldrich and his dad rode on their manure spreader to see the first green and red locomotive come through. Joel Cahoon was taken by his sons in their wagon to see the newly laid track that Joel always said would come.

This train with the ambitious name became the “Nickel Plate.” The generally accepted story involves the rivalry between Norwalk and Bellevue, Ohio, with each bidding for the line to come through its town. Bellevue won, but the Norwalk Chronicle editor name it “the great, nickel-plated railroad” and the term became a nickname. Eventually, even the locomotives and cars were so marked. It was primarily a freight hauler but carried passengers, too.

The railroad station was the center of all the comings and goings in town. We remember that the Cahoon family negotiated the placement of the station on their property in Dover Township on the north side of the tracks in return for the track being laid through their property for lease.

Excerpted from “Bay Village: A Way of Life” is the following explanation of a day at the Dover, Ohio, train station:

“An air of anticipation hovered about the station. Things are about to happen. Folks were gathering; the men in tight-legged trousers, high choker collars and derby hats; the ladies with wasp waists, bustles and voluminous skirts all topped with impossibly huge hats. Baggage trucks are piled high with trunks, sacks of mail, boxes of grapes, crates of baby chicks, milk cans, and mysterious packages addressed to far way places.

“Then in the distance, the sound of the whistle. The train was coming. The people could see it down the track and picked up their suitcases as it swept to a hissing, steaming halt before them. With the brakes grinding and sparks flying from the wheels, the conductor stepped off almost before the train stopped. The ladies daintily lifting their skirts were helped on by the conductor, while the men followed. The baggage man boosted the trunks and mail and boxes into the baggage car.

“Then the word, ‘Board,’ called as only a railroad conductor could call it, a wave of his hand to the engineer, two toots of the whistle, the sharp bark of the engine, and the train rapidly disappeared down the track. The station was quiet again. Only the telegraph sounder clicked, and the wind hummed in the wires overhead.“

This little scene was repeated many times over the years at Dover Station in our Bay Village. The Travelers Official Guild for June 14, 1893, shows eight passenger trains a day stopping at Dover with trains east bound to Cleveland, Conneaut, Buffalo or westbound to Fort Wayne and Chicago. A 1914 Nickel Plate folder entitled “Summer Outings” is illustrated with idyllic fishing and bathing beach scenes.

In a list of country homes for summer boarders are Mrs. George Miller who only accepted women at 75 cents a day and lived 200 feet from the track, and Mr. Henry Wischmeyer who could board 40 people and charged one dollar a day to be on the beach.

North Dover businessmen caught the train at the station for Cleveland. They could conduct their business and be home in a day. The Cahoon sisters, who taught school in Cleveland, took the train to the station and got off at the Cahoon Store, were picked up there and taken to their home on Cahoon Road for the weekend. It made life so easy.

Soon the train was not the only way to go. Horseless carriages became popular and offered more independence, and the trains no longer made a stop at Dover. Through the 1940s, the station remained in use to receive freight and express, but finally it was closed.

In 1963, it was given to Bay Village. How fortunate we are that today it stands in Huntington Reservation. For many years it was the headquarters for Baycrafters. They used it as their Station Shop for the consignment of artists’ works for sale. Some years ago a Victorian Tea Room was added in the back of the building with the consignments still in the front waiting room. A caboose was brought in next to the station to complete the scene. When Baycrafters became Bayarts, the station became Vento Restaurant.

As you sit at the traffic light on West Oviatt and Dover Center Roads in Bay Village, facing east, your eyes see a two-story brick building with a sign that reads “Bay Hair.” To the north is a wooden building with a garage behind. Today, these buildings belong to the John Peterson family.

William (Bill) Blaha, who built the buildings, was John Peterson’s grandfather. William Blaha married Mary Januska in 1908 and their daughter, Marie Blaha Peterson, was John Peterson’s mother. In 2007, Marie’s beauty parlor became the longest continuing business in Bay Village when it celebrated 80 years. Five generations of this family have made Bay Village their home.

In 1914, William Blaha was operating a grocery store in Cleveland on East 65th St. when Edwards Foods, a wholesale food distributor, purchased the Cahoon Store from the Wischmeyer family. They approached Bill with an offer to move his grocery business to the Cahoon Store in Bay Village. He accepted and his grocery business opened on the first floor with the family living quarters upstairs.

Bill prospered. With Bill still operating his grocery in the Cahoon location, he purchased a piece of land from the Cahoon family, north of the store. The first building he constructed on the site was a double-bay auto garage with two Sohio gasoline pumps in front. Sohio advertised that it had a dot on its Ohio State road map for every township with a gas pump. When the map came out, however, the Bay Village location wasn’t on it. Bill made sure that the next road map Sohio printed had a dot locating Bay Village. You could say Bill was the man who put Bay Village on the map.

Bill built a brick building, in 1926, south of the garage and moved his grocery business and meat market. The family moved into a three-bedroom, one-bath apartment upstairs. Mary could always be found behind the cash register and Bill behind the meat counter. The family also operated a grocery store on Clague Road. This building no longer exists.

In the apartment on the second floor, Bill and Mary raised their family of four girls and one boy; Marie, Marguerite, Jo Ann, Millie and Bill. While in high school, Marie was a star basketball player on Bay’s championship team in 1926.

After graduation from Parkview School, Marie was asked to play for a semi-pro girl’s basketball team but opted to attend beauty school instead. She opened a beauty parlor in the wooden building north of the alley, in what had been her dad’s meat market.

In 1917, work began on a new bridge over Cahoon Creek on Lake Road. Many workmen came into the village. There being no bank in town, the safe in Bill’s grocery was the place to go to secure their money. This way the workmen had access to their money when the store was open. For an emergency, he would open day or night. This was not your average financial arrangement, however, as true to his nature there would be no charge for the service. This was always done as a courtesy.

When the depression hit in 1929, Bill had a thriving business. Friends and neighbors Bill had lived alongside for years were now losing their jobs or had their wages cut so drastically they didn’t have enough money to feed their families. Bill began carrying a tab for anyone down on his luck. Some tabs were carried for years and some tabs never paid back. This generosity became a hardship on his grocery business, and Bill found himself going into debt. Soon he was not able to keep up with his own bills, and the store closed in 1940 when many customers defaulted on their tabs.

Some tabs were so large that he received the offer of a 40-acre farm near Warren, Ohio, and an apartment building on Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio, in exchange for the tab. Bill closed the store and put his property up for sale. Mrs. Sylvester purchased the property. Marie rented and operated her beauty parlor in the wooden building.

After the grocery store closed, the brick building housed the Bay Village Post Office, a TV Repair Shop, and Neil O’Conner’s Florist on the first floor. In 1963, Marie moved the beauty parlor into the brick building. Mrs. Sylvester, who married Mr. Hanushak, stayed true to her word with Marie. The Peterson family would have the first opportunity to buy back the buildings should her family decide to sell.

In 1985, the buildings were purchased by the Peterson family. The wooden building became ‘Potpourri,’ a popular card and gift store and then a dental lab. The Blaha’s grocery store was a family enterprise. As both the stores and the garage needed workers, grandpas, sisters, brothers, cousins, and brothers and sisters-in-law, became part of the family business.

Joe Januska met his future wife on a delivery run to the Kreb’s farm in Avon Lake. Despite everything that happened with the business, Bill always said, “I wouldn’t have done it any other way.” Bill’s generous heart stayed with him to the end.

Bay Village has five structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Although changes have been made to some of these structures over the years, these changes have not affected their status with the register.

In 1994, Rose Hill Museum and the Cahoon Barn (Community House) located in Cahoon Memorial Park qualified for this distinction. The application says, “Rose Hill Museum and the Community House are significant under Criterion A because of their association with the innovative philanthropy of Ida Maria Cahoon. Miss Cahoon was the last surviving child of Joel and Margaret Cahoon and was granddaughter of the township’s first settler.”

The 1917 Cahoon Will gifted intact the 128-acre family farmstead to the citizens of Bay Village.

Rose Hill Museum built by Joseph and Joel Cahoon in 1818 sits on a foundation of sandstone (Chagrin shale), on a hill overlooking Cahoon Creek. They used mortise and tenon joinery, horse hair plaster, milk based paint and white oak beams with poplar floors. The architecture is vernacular with a little Gothic Revival and Colonial Revival influence in the two 1842 and 1910 additions.

When it was a library, there were bay windows in the eastern addition. These windows and a north door on the south wing were removed during the 1973 renovation. The stairs had been relocated to the south wall of the northeast room when the building became a library. For traffic flow as a museum, some walls were added on the first floor.

The Cahoon Barn retains its basic form, proportions and structural features of the 1882 Gothic barn. It sits on a foundation of sandstone. The wood post and beam system remains from the old barn with steel columns and trusses added for reinforcement.

The exterior of colonial revival clapboard siding and windows were installed during the 1936 renovation by the Works Progress Administration. The inside was turned into a meeting room with knotty pine paneling, popular at the time. Kitchen and bathroom facilities were added.

The application for the National Register states, “Neither Rose Hill nor the Community House are major architectural landmarks. Instead they are representative examples of the architecture of their times, Community House being a well-preserved example of the 1930’s Depression-era architecture and Rose Hill retaining its form from its historic period of usage as a community resource.”

With the makeover by the Work Progress Administration, the farm became known as Cahoon Memorial Park and the barn as The Community House.

The Washington Lawrence Mansion is at 23200 Lake Road. The 1900 house was built in the Romanesque Style popular from 1870-1890. There have been many changes over the years. In 1948, it became Bay View Hospital, and its beautiful rooms were covered with wall board to make them more suitable for hospital offices and beds. When the building became Cashalmara, a swimming pool was added and the upstairs rooms became apartment suites. With the removal of the wall board, the original walls were revealed.

John Huntington Pumping Tower is located in Huntington Reservation. The tower built around 1870-1880 was used to store water brought up from the lake to irrigate the fields. All the implements are still inside the cedar tower; however, the siding on the outside has been changed.

Aaron Aldrich III House, built in 1830 at 30663 Lake Road, is the only building that hasn’t had major changes or additions. At the time the house was placed on the register, Aaron could have walked into his frame home and found it practically as it was when it was built – Greek Revival on the outside, and the rooms, floors, fireplaces and basement cooking area as they were 145 years earlier.

The tulip newel post, family wall paper from the late 1880’s, rugs and furniture were preserved with great care by Aaron’s great grandson, George Drake. Every item, whether a massive chest of drawers or Betsy’s library card, was saved.

With George’s historical treasure and unselfish desire to share, the historical society was able to put much of the “Bay Village: A Way of Life” sections together in their book. This was a “double house.” On the east side lived the Fred Drake family with grandmother, Mary Anne Stevens, and grandfather, Henry Aldrich. On the west was Henry’s sister, Lucy Aldrich Peel and her family.

George worked very hard and never gave up until his house was chosen to be on the register.