Piece of history to meet wrecking ball
ADMIRING MURAL — Mike Jackson and Roz Zifzal admire the mural on what’s known as the old Mercer building on Liberty Street in Dillonvale. The mural was painted in 2006 and commemorated the building turning 100 years old. Now, however, because the building has deteriorated, it is set to be torn down, according to owner Joe Zelek, who has been encouraging people to see it or photograph it one last time. (Photos by Janice Kiaski)
ADMIRING MURAL — Mike Jackson and Roz Zifzal admire the mural on what’s known as the old Mercer building on Liberty Street in Dillonvale. The mural was painted in 2006 and commemorated the building turning 100 years old. Now, however, because the building has deteriorated, it is set to be torn down, according to owner Joe Zelek, who has been encouraging people to see it or photograph it one last time. (Photos by Janice Kiaski)
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DILLONVALE -- A piece of Dillonvale history won't likely survive to see the new year.
Anyone interested in viewing or taking pictures of a mural done in 2006 on what was the old Mercer building when it turned 100 years old had best do so.
The two-story structure is set for the wrecking ball, according to owner/businessman Joe Zelek, who has been advising people to come and see the Liberty Street building that features a mural showing the streets of Dillonvale as they were more than a century ago.
"Don't miss out on seeing or photographing a piece of our Ohio Valley history," an advertisement appearing in the Herald-Star recently has urged, directing inquiries to be made to (740) 769-7332.
"It's just got to come down because it's deteriorating," Zelek said of the building where he had operated Dillonvale Pharmacy from 1980 until it moved to its present location on Main Street in 1986.
In a recent conversation, Zelek said he felt compelled to announce that the building, which has been vacant for many years, would be torn down by RSV Inc., giving people an opportunity to see or photograph the mural one last time.
The mural always has attracted interest, according to Zelek, whose family commissioned the project in 2006 as a kind of visual and historic gift. The building that would serve as an art canvass is known as the Mercer building because in its early years, it was the office of Dr. William Mercer, the country physician and, ironically, the owner of the town pharmacy.
The mural depicts images created from old-time photos that show the hub of the town as its was 100 years ago. In a Herald-Star story published in October 2006, Zelek had explained the idea was to make the intersection at Liberty and Main streets look as it did when the Mercer building would have been new.
In his pharmacy, Zelek had displays of village-related photos that patrons enjoyed looking at and adding to -- street scenes of the village when Dillonvale was a hustling, bustling coal mining community, not to mention a shopping area for people from surrounding villages.
On a busy day in Dillonvale's infancy, so the story goes, 10,000 people might come from Jug Run, Mingo Junction and Adena to browse and buy. And a one-legged man named Mr. Henry, who had been maimed by a locomotive, stood out at the railroad junction holding a sign to stop traffic when the eight daily trains to Cleveland came through.
Such images inspired Zelek, the story noted, who liked the idea of a mural but knew of no one to do it.
But then artist Dave Lewis of upstate New York came to town to visit his brother, Mike, and stopped in at the Dillonvale Pharmacy, striking up a casual conversation with Zelek.
That would ultimately be the backdrop against which the mural would come to fruition, unfolding on a building that through the years had housed everything from the telephone office and an undertaker's business to Irene's Gift Shop and a private residence.
Zelek was delighted, thinking a mural painted on the building was a fitting way to acknowledge the structure's longevity and place in the village's history.
"It's very majestic and very impressive to think someone has the artistic ability to take a plain brick wall and make it into something very beautiful and historic," Zelek had said in the 2006 story.
Lewis was no stranger to doing murals. At the time he had done as many as 20, including ones in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston.
Soon it will be only a memory.
"That building has a lot of history," Zelek said. "I feel sad it's coming down."