Lakewood History

lakewood history

lakewood celebrates 125 years

Lakewood opens two museums and Fire Station, Library hosts Birthday Party for all to enjoy .Lakewood celebrated 125 years of History on Saturday May 19 when it opened both its History Museum and its Fire Department Museum to the public. The Lakewood Memorial Library also offered activities for the entire family for fun and learning about Lakewood History.

The event kicked off with a proclamation at 10 am in front of the Lakewood History Museum with Village officials, dignitaries, and members of the Village History Committee. The History museum was open with free admission, and boasts 125 years of artifacts from throughout Lakewood’s history. This was a rare opportunity to peek inside the rich history of the Village of Lakewood, both through the lens of community members enjoying lakeside living in beautiful Victorian homes, or staying in grand hotels, as well as through the eyes of the volunteer fire fighters who have protected the community for over a century.

The Fire Department was crucial to formation of the village, and plenty of history remains today. Village Hall was first built in 1915 and donated by James Ward Packard, of the Packard Motor Car Company, as a new state of the art fire station for the newly formed Lakewood Hose Company. So just visiting the Village Clerk, or coming to a board meeting, residents are experiencing Lakewood history.

Residents can also enjoyed learning about the very first vehicles that were housed in the new fire station. Just down Chautauqua Avenue in the new and much larger Fire Station, are the beautifully refurbished 1915 Hallock Machine Company Ford chemical fire truck which was the first motorized fire apparatus in Chautauqua County (still works!), and the hand-drawn hose cart that was used before Mr. Packard donated the motorized truck. That’s right. The Lakewood Fire Departmentwent straight from hand-drawn hose cart to motorized truck without the use of horses in the early days of the Village.

Lakewood and area residents turned out to browse the history museum, and the Fire Department Museum and station.

The Lakewood Memorial Library also hosted a variety of family oriented fun activities to celebrate Lakewood’s 125thBirthday! During Lakewood’s Birthday Party children and adults enjoyed a scavenger hunt, did old-fashioned crafts, and played old-fashioned games. Children also decorated a cupcake and enjoyed Old Fashioned lemonade!

At noon Old Lakewood came to life when children portrayed famous Lakewood citizens and talked about them.

The Village also be collected current day artifacts to place in a Time Capsule, which was sealed at a later date and will be opened sometime in the future.

brief history of lakewood

This is an expanded version of a speech given at the opening of the Lakewood Centennial Ceremonies, August 1993, by the noted Lakewood Village Historian, Helen G. Ebersole.
The area now covered by the village of Lakewood originally was divided into large farms. The owners of those large tracts of land are memorialized in local place names: Gifford, Southland, Bentley, Cowing, Winch, Stoneman, and Lowe.
The land along the lake was periodically occupied by hunters and fishermen, and ice harvesters in the winter. The first settlement of any size took place along the lakeshore, and Lakewood’s history actually began as it developed into a summer resort. In 1870 John Cowing built a hotel, the Cowing House, on that part of his farm which bordered on the lake. The Cowing House became The Lakeview House in 1873 and the small settlement, known as Lakeview, became Lakewood in 1879.
In the mid 1870s Warren Packard from Warren, Ohio, and his brother, John, from Meadville, Pennsylvania came to the Lakewood area and bought the hotel and several acres of the land. On their lakefront property, which they called the Lakeview Tract, the two brothers built a number of Gothic style summer cottages for rental purposes. Warren Packard built himself a $3,000 villa near the hotel. They also built a sawmill on property they owned near the railroad track to provide lumber for their extensive building projects.