MANSFIELD — The walls of the former Westinghouse “A” building can start tumbling down on Monday as far as Jennifer Kime is concerned.
A mammoth, historic entrance into the 200 E. Fifth St. manufacturing site has successfully been removed and preserved for eventual restoration, Kime said on Friday.
Full disclosure: Kime would much rather the entire building be saved. But she and other local historians recognized the building was too far gone. That’s when the effort to salvage a doorway to history began.
The effort to save a bit of local history was timed to be complete before a R&D Excavating wrecking ball starts knocking down the five-story, decaying failure that has sadly dominated Mansfield’s east end skyline for the past three decades.
An event that’s been dubbed as the “Westinghouse Demolition Extravaganza” is set to begin Monday at 3 p.m., a process that’s expected to take six to 10 weeks to complete.
Meanwhile, the former entryway was removed this past week, literally stone by stone and brick by brick, by WR Restoration and transported to the grounds of Oak Hill Cottage.
The work was done through an agreement among the city, the Richland County Land Bank, Richland County commissioners, Richland County Historical Society, Mansfield’s Historic Preservation Commission, Downtown Mansfield Inc. and the Ohio State Historic Preservation Office.
“(Westinghouse) is a big part of the community,” Jennifer Kime, Downtown Mansfield Inc. CEO and local history lover, told commissioners several months ago when the historic rescue mission was proposed.
“We have a lot of industrial properties in town that are all really important,” she said.
Kime said Friday the stones that were removed are in “phenomenal shape.”
“We were really unsure what the quality of the pieces would be,” Kime said. “The building sat there over 100 years and we didn’t know what kind of shape the stone and brick would be.”
“We were thrilled,” she said.
Kime said officials with WR Restoration were not sure what was used to make the stones and that an analysis would be done into “a unique combination of materials.”
The stones were are being safely stored at Oak Hill Cottage near the old carriage house. “What better place to store it,” Kime said with a laugh.
Kime said the quality of the stones provide local officials confidence the ultimate reconstruction of the entry way will go well, perhaps back at the original site.
“The footer pieces were not able to be removed as they are part of the (building) flooring and go very deep,” Kime said. “If those can be saved during demolition, we could potentially build it right back on top of them and the cut floor.”
Those decisions will be made down the road, according to Kime.
“We are not sure when we will get access back to the site,” she said. “When it’s ready, we will be ready.
“I just think this is an exciting way to communicate an important part of our community’s history. It will remain there for generations as a way to tell people what Westinghouse meant to this community, to the residents and to women in the workforce,” Kime said.
