Early Cambridge buildings remain intact underground
CAMBRIDGE — Underneath Ellie’s Cottage, at 653 Wheeling Ave., is a hidden gem of Cambridge history.
Those who have had the opportunity to step through the white door in the back of Ellie’s, have experienced walking down a narrow flight of steps that led them back in time.
At the bottom of those steps are the original storefronts built sometime around the 1840s.
The still-intact buildings and sidewalks, which have come to be known as Cambridge Underground, were discovered during the Wheeling Avenue construction/ streetscape project in 2011.
Upon the discovery, Frank Leyshon, manager for Swan Estate Inc., and former owner of the building, insisted that construction be halted and a historical study be conducted on the underground buildings, according to Mary Beth Sills, director of Cambridge Main Street, which conducts occasional tours of the site.
According to a 150-page report from the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, which studied the buildings per the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, work could not continue on the construction until a review of the buildings was complete and a determination was made as to whether the construction would adversely affect the historic site.
According to Sills, the report indicated that the buildings were only one of three known underground storefronts in the United States.
The storefronts became buried when, in the late 1870s and again in the late 1940s, Wheeling Avenue was raised to the level of the valleys and gullies in the area.
Wheeling Avenue, at one point, ran right in front of the underground building
“So when they raised it, of course, they moved all the entrances upstairs and these just became unusable space,” Sills said of the underground buildings.
According to a report from the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, the buildings served multiple purposes over the course of time from a store to a Chinese laundry and even a fallout/bomb shelter during the Cold War.
Those who visit are able to view a cot and survival boxes from when the building served as one of several fallout shelters in the Cambridge area.
Still intact after all this time are the original brick walls which, according to Sills, the stones for are believed to have quarried locally, the wavy glass six-pane-over-sixpane windows, the wooden floors, brick sidewalks and wallpaper.
The wooden floors are an important part of the building as back in the time they were constructed wood floors would have been seen as a sign of wealth.
Those who have visited the site would have seen not only the original wallpaper on the wall but also original art and graffiti which still remain.
Sills does not believe there are any more underground storefronts left on Wheeling Avenue except one, which is sealed off.
Ohio Historic Preservation Office has recommended that the building be preserved for historical value.
“While this research has not produced a definitive answer as to when the basement of 653 Wheeling Ave. was built,” Nancy Campbell, chief researcher for the office, said, “preserving its unique character for further investigation and future use has been an important result of the consultation that was undertaken for the Section 106 process on the road-improvement project.”
How they are going to preserve it is a challenge that
Cambridge is trying to figure out with Ohio History Connection.
Decades of wood rot and wet floors may pose a challenge and the city would like to prevent any further deterioration, Sills said.
Sills attributes that deterioration to the limited tours.
“We don’t do a lot of tours because you don’t want a lot of foot traffic down here,” Sills said. “The more traffic on the hardwood floors the worse it is for them so we limit the tours and things that we do down here for that reason.”
During the tours, led by Sills, she talks about how the buildings were not just storefronts but bomb shelters and she shares the history of the buildings, the area, and how they were discovered. Sills also shares pages from the research report and news articles written about the buildings with tour groups.
The tours are only offered a couple times a year and are often limited to groups of 10, according to Sills.
The tours are advertised and a limited amount of tickets are available for purchase.