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Hidden Perrysburg:

Secrets of Front Street

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Hood Park and the River

A small park overlooks the Maumee River.

The Perry Statue

The statue of a War of 1812 naval hero.

The Constitution Guns

Two cannons that once sat on the decks of the frigate Constitution.

The Exchange Hotel and the Indian Bell

A story about the old Exchange Hotel, a remnant of which survives on Front Street.

Hood Park and the River Louisiana Ave dead ends into Front Street atop a high bluff that overlooks the Maumee River. Here, a bronze statue of Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry, after whom the town was named when it was founded in 1816, gazes down the length of Louisiana Avenue and its array of boutiques and stationary shops. Looking behind Perry�s back, one sees out onto the river. Dominating the width of the stream at this point is Audubon Island, a nature preserve, originally known as Ewing�s Island after an early settler who presumably cultivated it. Looking towards the river, on the left hand there is a second monument: an American Civil War soldier carrying a banner. This statute stands at the small rise known as Corn Cob Hill. As a plaque describes, this hill was where corn was stored in a silo to be shipped out of the docks below. Today, there is a small boat club where the docks once were. This marks the furthest point upriver a boat can navigate before running aground. Just a few hundred yards upstream wide stretches of river bottom appear naked during dry periods. I�ve heard that stiff West winds can blow all the water out of this western end of Lake Erie, leaving the Maumee river extremely shallow. Whether or not that is true, the simple fact that most medium sized boats cannot move much further up river than downtown Perrysburg is no accident. The town was established at the �foot� or lower end of the Maumee river rapids. The head of the rapids is upstream at the town of Grand Rapids. Not only is Perrysburg the point of the river at which most travelers by sea must get out and either abandon or drag their boats, but it is also the last point in the stream where travelers by land may attempt to ford the river: that is, to cross without aid of bridge or ferry. Depending on the season, various parts of the river may only rise up to a person�s waist: parts of the rapids cannot even float a kayak in the dry season. The factors that made this area unavoidable for travelers were compounded by the ferocity of the environment: until the latter part of the nineteenth century, Perrysburg, Maumee City, and the upstart town known as Toledo were surrounded by the Great Black Swamp.

The Perry Statue The original statues were marble, carved and erected in 1937. Over the years, however, erosion severely deteriorated the figures, a process accelerated by acid rain. Now the originals have been recast in bronze and replaced in their commanding position at Hood Park, overlooking the central intersection of Front Street and Louisiana Avenue. The original marble figure of Perry has been moved to Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island in Lake Erie, sheltered at the newly constructed visitors center of the Perry�s Victory and International Peace Memorial. The Memorial itself is a Greek column more than 317 feet high, which offers an ideal view from the cove where the American squadron anchored before and after the battle, to the area of the battle itself, on the open lake near West Sister Island. Flanking the statue of Perry at Hood Park, are two other figures. These depict a young cabin boy and a midshipman. It is worth noting that children served in navies of this period and faced all the peril of their adult comrades. In the proportion of seamen, marines, and soldiers wounded and killed on both sides, the Battle of Lake Erie was one of the bloodiest sea battles ever fought in American history. The battle was the first fleet engagement in the history of the United States Navy and one of the most decisive: no ships were sunk on either side and the entire British fleet was surrendered.

The Constitution Guns Walking west down Front Street from the Perry Statue, one may see some of the oldest private residences in Perrysburg, including the Exchange Hotel (see below). On the river side of the street, the sidewalk passes through a small park. From this place one has an ideal view of Audubon/ Ewing�s Island: beyond that, the river flats and bluffs on the opposite bank and the sister town of Maumee, including the gothic spires of the Andersons Company grain elevators looming over the northern horizon. The Perrysburg-Maumee high school football rivalry being what it is, there are two large cannon permanently mounted in the park, facing towards Maumee. On the easternmost cannon there is a metal plaque mounted in the concrete base, but easily missed. The plaque is correct in stating that these guns once stood on the decks of the most famous warship in U.S. history, the United States Frigate Constitution. They were given to the city in 1936. This much is true, but do not be misled: these great guns were never fired in anger; nor would it be advisable to fire them at all, for they are fakes. At the back of the cannon, on the top of the gun tube there is a small enclosure like a keyhole. On real guns of this period there should be a small hole through which the cannon is primed and fired. Oftentimes authentic guns that have been �sent out to pasture� in public parks have these touch holes sealed with metal, or welded shut. Sometimes the barrel is mounted upside-down, and the touch-hole is on the bottom. The cannons here have no touch hole, and to the expert eye they are wrong in other ways. The story goes like this: at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Constitution had long since been stripped of her original guns. In 1906, the Navy recreated her armament of 24-pounder cannons (incorrectly placing these large guns on her spar deck cannon ports as well as on her gun deck). In a book published in the 1920s, identical cannons to the Perrysburg ones can be seen in a photograph of the ship�s deck. In ensuing restoration work on the vessel, the Navy must have been left with a stock of over forty large iron cannon replicas. Therefore, they sent two for Perrysburg to menace Maumee with (in exchange for donations to pay for the restoration of the venerable ship).

The Exchange Hotel and the Indian Bell Across the street from Riverside Park and its ersatz cannon, stands perhaps the most historic original structure in Perrysburg, the Exchange Hotel at 140 West Front Street. The inn was built in 1823 by prominent local settler Samuel Spafford. It still stands on the south side of West Front Street, occupied now by a dentist�s office and apartments. In its day the Exchange was visited by such famous early 19th century figures as Daniel Webster, General Winfield Scott, and U.S. Presidents William Henry Harrison and James K Polk. It was gutted by a fire in 1907 and so the surviving building is only a shade of its former glory. With a building so old it is no surprise that there are stories connected with it. The story of the Indian Bell is the best known. In early taverns there was often a bell mounted somewhere on the property in order to summon guests to dinner. The Exchange was no exception. Spafford went to Detroit where the nearest foundry was located, and had it cast: when the foundry found it didn�t have enough metal to cast the bell to the desired size, Spafford melted down 36 Spanish dollars to complete it. He installed the new bell in the front yard of the hotel. The local Indians found great amusement in ringing the bell at all hours, until Spafford decided to move it to a safe place. Before he could do so, however, the bell disappeared. Spafford and two other men went to look for the stolen bell in the Black Swamp. After three days of searching, they heard the noise of a bell being rung in an Indian encampment near Upper Sandusky. There they found that the Indians had tied the bell to a horse and were chasing it around for entertainment. Having retrieved the bell, Spafford installed it on the Exchange building itself, safely out of curious hands. It remained there for many years afterwards, and now it resides in a glass case prominently displayed in the Way Public Library at the corner of Louisiana and Indiana Avenues.