Mantua Center School--Neither Fire Nor Flood

This post is transcribed from an article in what appears to be the March 1913 edition of The Ohio Architect Engineer and Builder.  A while ago I sent a notice to some of my contacts about The Ohio Historical Society's special posting on its website about the flood of 1913.

The following article, "Lessons from the Flood," was written by Paul Cahill, the architect who designed the Mantua Center School building.  With the annual meeting of The Mantua Restoration Society, Inc., scheduled at the school building on Monday, April 22 (doors open at 6:30), I thought this article might be of interest.  Here it is.

Ohio has suffered from a flood more devastating and terrible in its effects than any during its history.  To attempt to describe the horrors and awful suffering or even to reckon the property loss is not the intent of this article.  We should not allow the terrors of the catastrophy to hypnotize or deaden our minds, nor should be [sic] turn from it with careless indifference as something of little immediate interest for those of us who suffered no direct loss.

The flood brings its lessons which we should seek to catch, and from which benefit may be derived, if the problem is grappled in an intelligent way.

Frame buildings have long proven dangerous when fire risk has been considered.  Under the mighty impact of the swollen waters, they have been crushed like egg-shells.  Floating from their foundations they are not only a loss themselves but a menace to property and life in the vicinity.  For the same reason a derelict at sea is shunned a floating building is feared.  Swept onward by the force of the water it becomes a missile which the power of man is unable to stay.  Other buildings are apt to be damaged, rescuer and rescued in boats cannot escape it.  Finally, stranded against a bridge with other debris it helps dam up the water until wider areas are submerged and finally the piled up water or the frantic dynamiting of men sweep the bridge on down the valley and the pent up waters rush on to further destruction.

Masonry, it is true, did not altogether escape the effects of the flood.  But the cases where it failed are so rare that the lesson to be learned here is obvious.  Masonry walls are safer from destruction themselves and do not become dangerous to life and property down stream when they do fail.  Good hard mortar in the walls would have saved some of the brick buildings that collapsed.  Others where the earth around the foundations was washed out could not have been saved by any precautions short of methods heroic enough to keep the water away from them.

An almost inevitable concomitant of tornado, earthquake or flood is the uncontrolable [sic] fire that completes the work of destruction.  In the San Francisco disaster some years ago, the tornado at Omaha and the flood in the Miami valley last month, the original catastrophy was in each case augmented by fires which raged more or less uncontrolled for hours.

It would seem that more stringent legislative restrictions were necessary to prevent cheap frame buildings from being erected.

There will always be those who object to progress of any kind.  There are always those whose theory of economy is limited to the item of first costs.  It is not to be expected that these people will join heartily in an effort to raise building standards.  Yet this is a matter in which the common interest of all is at stake.

Cleveland suffered little in comparison with other towns in the State of Ohio and other adjoining states.  Her geographical position practically assures her safety, unless a flood similar to the one in Noah's time should again assert itself.  True the usual sleepy Cuyahoga river with its ugly windings caused a furore and might have been more serious than was the case in the low-lying inhabited parts along the course of this stream.  Whilst we view the aspect as suffering no direct loss, still there is always an underlying current of certain circumstances from which she is bound to suffer from indirect sources.

Architects in search of additional business can feel the effects of such floods for their building trade appeared prosperous at one time, but now there seems to be an almost unexplained reason for a slackness in that order of things.

From a glance at the situation there are some reasons that are justifiable for this cause; first the State has appealed to the bankers to invest certain amounts from its capital at a low rate to meet the necessitous demands of the more seriously affected districts, and that indomitable spirit, Patriotism, which is always to be found in the views of the American race, will assert itself and will doubtless make the City of Cleveland somewhat weaker in its finances for her own affairs.

Then again, there are other trades outside that of building which will suffer.  Practically all conceivable manufacturers who have an inter-city trade will be considerably hurt and whatever ideas those concerns had of extending their business would naturally suspend the plans for a future date.  Thus we see from these few points how it is possible that towns not in the wake of the flood can be directly affected and suffer considerable loss.
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A note on the above:  Many people know that the Mantua Center School building was erected after the disastrous Collinwood School fire in Cleveland, in which the building went up like a torch and killed something like 170 people.  The Mantua Center building is listed in the site assessment conducted by Dave Summers and Associates as "non combustible."

In addition, the walls are 18" thick from the basement up to the little hip above ground, and 14" thick above that. 

At the annual meeting on April 22, Christine Borkan, who edited and completed the nomination of the building to the National Register of Historic Places, will give a half-hour Power Point discussion of the building--its architectural features, structure, and place in history.  This is a very rare opportunity to learn more about our building and about what that designation--"The National Register"--means.

With the school building on the north end and the East Lawn cemetery on the south, Mantua Township has a true historic district: an area laid out like the New England greens of the late 18th century; three buildings around the green from the 19th century; and the school building, erected in the early 20th century before the traditions of  classical architecture had been displaced by industrially influenced boxes.  And today, many modern school buildings are eerily similar to prison design, with blockhouses at the ends.  We have something very, very special.