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Firestone mansion fire likely was arson, state fire marshal says
NORTH LIMA
Tom and Connie Ellison, owners of the historic Firestone mansion that was destroyed in a fire Oct. 21, can’t imagine why anyone would have set fire to the 134-year-old house.
They do, however, believe that someone did it on purpose.
The state fire marshal’s office thinks so, too.
“The investigation is ongoing. But they do believe it was an arson,” a spokesperson for the office said. They are asking anyone who has information to call 1-800-589-2728.
“It’s one of those things when you first hear it, you think you can’t feel worse,” Connie said. “But each day that goes by, it’s more confusing that someone would do this.”
Beaver Township firefighters responded to the call at 3:44 a.m. that Tuesday at 600 Lipply Road.
By the time they got there, the house was destroyed, fire Chief Russ Osborne said.
And Tom has since demolished the little that remained.
“It’s a pretty gut-wrenching scene,” Tom said of the lakeside property that now features a large debris-filled crater where the house once stood.
It had been a two-story, 2,720-square-foot house with eight bedrooms, right next to Pine Lake. The mansion was built at its original site, adjacent to the Firestone tire-testing facility, in 1880 by the Lower family, relatives of Harvey Firestone. The house also was known as the Lower Homestead.
Firestone maintained the property for about six years before the Ellisons purchased it.
At the time of the fire, the house was for sale, and several buyers were interested, Tom said.
The value of the property was listed at $222,500 in Mahoning County Auditor records. The house was not insured.
“When you insure a house like that, that’s vacant and old, it’s costly,” Connie said about why they did not insure it. But, “There really wasn’t a reason, [we] just kind of didn’t.”
David Weber, 65, now of Dallas, grew up in the house and says it was like “an old family member” to him. His family lived there from 1953 until 2004, and he visited the house just two weeks before it burned down.
“What strikes me more than anything is the draw of the house itself,” he said. “It was a magnet for all kinds of community gatherings, family gatherings, church gatherings.”
His family moved there when Firestone transferred his father there to manage the testing center.
Weber recalled many people visiting the house over the years, to pick up baked goods made by his mother, or to sit outside and paint or photograph the house.
“Its setting, the way it looked, created community,” he said.
He tearfully recalled bringing his own family there to visit over the years.
“All of our children were there. They got to be where we grew up,” he said.
The Ellisons purchased the house in 2011 after Firestone brought Tom — who owns an excavating company — on board to demolish the house, Tom said. He instead decided to purchase it and move it about 1,500 feet down the road to a 5-acre parcel.
They purchased it for $50,000, according to Mahoning County Auditor records, and made a number of renovations. A new basement, foundation and driveway were among the improvements the Ellisons made.
“We had a lot of TLC in it. A lot of blood, sweat and tears,” Tom said.
Connie said they didn’t live there themselves because they are getting older and the house had too many stairs, but they live about a mile down the road and spent “endless” amounts of time at the property, according to Tom.
For Weber, his first, as well as his last memories of the house come down to one thing: community.
“One of my final memories of the house will be the response from Columbiana. It’s their loss, too,” he said. “It’s a shared loss.”