Restoration reveals historical details of Picking building

Tours will show what is involved in restoring
historic buildings.

By D.A. WILKINSON

VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU

LISBON — The creation of a doorway is an opening into the past, and the future.

The doorway is on the east side of the Jacob Picking building, the oldest brick building in Ohio.

Workers have been restoring the building for Renee Lewis of New York City and her sister, Stevie Halverstadt of Lisbon, for about a year.

The building that faces what is now Lincoln Way dates to 1803. Halverstadt said the new doorway replaces one that existed about 100 years ago.

That attention to detail is part of restoration, she said.

The building started as a hotel, but in 1867, M.N. Hamilton turned it into a store that sold prescription and patent medicines, glass, brushes, lamps, perfume, soap and paint.

Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war for President Lincoln, had an office in the building.

Halverstadt has obtained photographs from about 1900, when renovations were being made to sidewalks in front of the store. She got them from Barbara Kreie of Lisbon, whose family once owned the property. Halverstadt had the photos enlarged to study the details.

Halverstadt said of the village, “Even then, they were modernizing it.”

Tours set

During the Johnny Appleseed Festival, she and her family will offer tours of the building, even though the inside is not complete. The tours — with hard hats — will be from 1 to 9 p.m. Sept. 15 and 16.

People involved in the project, such as Mark Janowiak, who restored the windows, Mark Hissom, who did the roof and wood work, and Chris Cowan, who removed paint and did brickwork, will be available along with architect Scott Sheppard.

The windows, some believed to be 200 years old, are now insulated to modern standards, she said.

The talks will cover how old oak from the building was reused to make trim on the roof, and bricks and slate from demolished buildings elsewhere were reused in the project.

Halverstadt said she wants people to “see what is involved when you do restoration.”

That knowledge can be important in a village that has 176 structures in its National Historic District.

She believes that it is easier and less expensive to restore old buildings than to build new ones that won’t last as long. The roof of the new Columbiana County Municipal Court, she noted, has already leaked.

One of the photos shows a young lady in front of the narrow doorway, and several steps leading up into the store. Halverstadt said there have been so many layers of asphalt put down on streets since then that now there is only one step into the building.

The doorway opens on a north-south alley behind the courthouse that leads to the courthouse parking lot. The alley was once known as First Street and was lined with homes, Halverstadt said. Those buildings are all gone.

Halverstadt said it may take another year to complete the project.

wilkinson@vindy.com