Great Grandma Lizzie Coughlin's Home in 1923

My Aunt Kay recently gave me a postcard sent by my Grandfather, Connie Coughlin, to his mother, Lizzie Ierg Coughlin in March of 1923. My Grampa was 31 at the time, almost 32, and he had three children, Fran, Jack, and Bob (my Dad). Later that year my Uncle Bill was born. Grampa sent the postcard from Chicago. I can't imagine what he was doing there. I don't believe he was playing baseball anymore. Was he there for work?

The postcard was sent to Mrs. E. Coughlin, at 893 Ansel Road, Cleveland. That home is still there 90 years later. It is just south of St. Clair and just west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (formerly called Liberty Boulevard) and the beautiful Rockefeller Park that runs from Lake Erie to University Circle. My Grandma Cora Bowers Coughlin and her parents, Frank and Mary Voelker Bowers, lived in this same neighborhood--at the time a solidly middle-class area.

The neighborhood and the house itself can be seen below.



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I drove down Ansel Road yesterday, September 29, 2013, and was astonished at the number of homes boarded up and the number of empty lots where homes have been demolished. This home is about a half mile south of the Gordon Park baseball fields and just a little more than a half mile south of Lake Erie. My Grampa must have played ball at Gordon Park. I myself played there in the mid 1960s.