Article published August 30, 2009 Seneca courthouse champion has passion for preservation Ohioan helped rescue 50-plus sites across U.S.
Franklin Conaway has led the charge to save Seneca County's courthouse. 'I think the nation's biggest failure is that we have not taken seriously our responsibility to create a beautiful nation,' he said.
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THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH
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TIFFIN - Take a drive around downtown Tiffin with Franklin Conaway, and it's quickly apparent he has more on his mind than the Seneca County courthouse.
The nationally known preservation expert led a successful year-long effort to convince county commissioners to preserve the historic landmark, but his vision extends beyond the sandstone courthouse that not too long ago was slated for demolition.
"I love looking at the architecture here. Look at that little building," he says, pointing out a narrow building on Washington Street with a quaint balcony perched outside the second floor.
The former post office down the street, which is now being eyed for a Civil War Museum, is another favorite.
"It's a great building, just great," he said. "One thing that's so nice about it is the Doric columns, which are very unusual for that period of building. It's like the state capitol building in Columbus."
It is what he describes as the great quantity and quality of significant architecture in Tiffin that compelled him to invest his time and energy putting together a plan to save the anchor of the downtown and spur other revitalization around the courthouse. His work was rewarded last week when the Seneca County commissioners voted 3-0 to support the $7.99 million restoration plan presented by Mr. Conaway's group, the Seneca County Courthouse and Downtown Redevelopment Group.
"The reason I care about Tiffin is the same reason I care about the other communities I've worked in, and that is, they can provide not only an example for how our communities can become far more livable than they have been but also create a choice in lifestyles for people that they simply have not had for the past 70 years," Mr. Conaway said.
"All people don't have to live in suburbia and spend large parts of every day in automobiles. Even in small towns, we can live in attractive urban environments where there's a healthy mix of residential, commercial, and recreational uses."
Mr. Conaway, a Chillicothe, Ohio, native and resident, is known in cities across the country where he has worked as a consultant on transportation, renovation, land use, and historic preservation projects. A lawyer by training who worked for many years in his family's construction business, he has been a consultant for the city of Des Moines, the Historic Savannah Foundation, the Illinois Landmarks Commission, the Urban Council of Albuquerque, N.M., and the Columbus Downtown Development Corp., among others.
He estimates he's helped to save more than 50 buildings that, like the Seneca County courthouse, were in imminent danger of demolition. They have included the 1933 Union Terminal in Cincinnati, the former Masonic Temple in Columbus, the Santa Fe Railway buildings in Albuquerque, and a number of smaller structures, such as an unusual brick, octagon-shaped house in Circleville, Ohio, that was to be torn down to make way for a Super Wal-Mart.
In one extreme case in the 1970s, he was able to get an emergency federal court order in the middle of the night when demolition began unexpectedly on Union Station in Columbus. He had been working with developers on a restoration plan for the landmark when the nighttime demolition began.
He managed to stop the bulldozers in time to save the one remaining grand arch, and it is now part of the new Arena District in downtown Columbus.
He's careful to emphasize that he hasn't saved every structure he's gotten involved with, nor has he ever done it alone.
"No one person ever saves a building. It takes people to save buildings," Mr. Conaway said. "The two things that have to come together are the right people and enough time to put a program together that makes sense to everyone."
Royce Yeater, director of the Midwest office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said his office was encouraged when Mr. Conaway showed up in Tiffin to help save what would have been the first courthouse to be razed in Ohio since Franklin County tore its down in 1974.
"We've worked with Franklin on several projects like this," Mr. Yeater said. "We find him very credible, very knowledgeable, very effective, so when he dived into this thing, we thought there's a prospect we might win this thing."
After Seneca County voters defeated a bond issue to save the courthouse in March, 2008, and commissioners sought demolition bids, Kenneth Davison, a retired Heidelberg College history professor, sat down with Franco Ruffini, deputy preservation officer for Ohio, to figure out what could be done. Mr. Ruffini suggested they approach Mr. Conaway - a man Mr. Davison recalled was a speaker at a historic preservation conference at Heidelberg way back in 1977.
"Right away, I knew the reputation of Franklin even then, so that's how he got involved," Mr. Davison said, adding, "His experience in handling preservation matters came to the fore just beautifully. He was kind of like a chess player. He was thinking ahead all the time."
His strategy of buying time and bringing together the best experts worked. Seneca County commissioners say they will restore the courthouse as long as the requisite funding can be secured and if the project can be done on the $7.99 million budget the group outlined.
Rich Focht, president and chief executive officer of the Seneca Industrial and Economic Development Corp., said Mr. Conaway brought an outsider's perspective to Tiffin that enabled the locals to "look at the landscape a little differently."
"I think every community looks the way it does because of decisions people make, and sometimes if you continue to make the same decisions, you're not going to get different results," Mr. Focht said.
Mr. Conaway was one of the founders of Preservation Ohio, a nonprofit group created in 1982 as a statewide voice for the preservation of Ohio's historic architecture. Executive Director Thomas Palmer said Mr. Conaway's effort in 1996 to save the former Masonic Temple, now known as the Columbus Athenaeum, was extraordinary.
"It was in a worse situation than Tiffin," Mr. Palmer said. "It was a matter of days [until demolition]. He went in and masterfully negotiated this stay of execution, and now it's a wonderful meeting facility in the middle of downtown Columbus that otherwise wouldn't be there."
Larry Fisher, former president of the Columbus Downtown Development Corp., has worked with Mr. Conaway on several projects. He said Mr. Conaway has the experience and background, including training in Europe, that give him the ability to assess a situation, find the best solutions, and get people to see how those might work.
"The whole combination of talents and experience he's had really make him a fine example of a preservationist in the really, really best sense of that word," Mr. Fisher said.
While critics may question why Mr. Conaway cares about the Seneca County Courthouse, Mr. Conaway, who has managed to juggle several other projects during the year and a half he devoted to the courthouse, said his interest in Tiffin is not about whether he has any ties to the community.
"First of all, I care about America, and I think the nation's biggest failure is that we have not taken seriously our responsibility to create a beautiful nation," Mr. Conaway said. "We have the song, 'America the Beautiful,' and I think in everyone's minds that refers to our national parks and our natural beauty but does not refer to the built environment that we've created for ourselves."
He said he firmly believes people of all income brackets have the right to live in a beautiful world and a duty to make it one. He said American children need to be taught, as children in Europe are, the importance of architecture and the built environment.
"I think that's a national insult that we have not placed more importance on creating and maintaining beautiful communities, particularly because all of our cities and our small towns were at one time quite handsome and beautiful," Mr. Conaway said.
Contact Jennifer Feehan at: jfeehan@theblade.com or 419-724-6129. Permanent LinkSeneca courthouse champion has passion for preservationhttp://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090830/NEWS16/908300318/-1/NEWS04STORY:2009908300318
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