Mount Vernon News

HOWARD — Locals call it “the old red mill,” but until the 1970s it was the Howard Elevator, where customers walked in the front door, off U.S. 36, and trains and wagons pulled up at the back door to pick up and deliver grain and feed. Built into a hillside, the four-story building is the tallest structure in Howard, but visitors only discover that when they walk around back.

The mill was built in 1871, the adjoining railroad tunnel in 1853. The mill’s three-story foundation is made of chiseled rectangles of rock set carefully in place; the tunnel is actually part of the mill, sharing the same foundational rock. The railroad bed is now part of the Kokosing Gap Trail, and in the summer bicyclists whiz past the mill and through the tunnel on their way to the river.

In the 1930s, the mill was the Howard Equity Exchange and was owned by Joe Tullos. It was operated by the Farm Bureau in the 1940s, then became known as Wayne Feeds until the mill and the surrounding farm were purchased by Emory and Mabel Divan in 1953. They changed the name to the Howard Elevator and operated it for 20 years.

The mill then stood empty for a long time, and by the 1990s it was dilapidated and crumbling.

Chris and Connie Price purchased it and began to renovate it for their home. A few years later, Robert and Deb Kirk purchased the mill and completed the renovation of the living quarters on the top floor. In 2004, it was purchased by Lisa Moster, DDS, and Christoph Meyer, who still live there with their son, Herbie, who is 6 and in first grade at Wiggin Street Elementary.

Mabel Divan still lives in Howard; Emory is deceased. Mabel recalls being surprised when she learned someone was renovating the old mill.

“It was really, really run down,” she said. “I just marvel at how well it turned out. It’s just beautiful.”

The Divans’ daughter, Marilyn Smith, who lives in Fredericktown, said there was once a small structure that served as an office on the west side of the top floor, but it’s gone now. She remembers playing with the other children inside the mill, jumping from stack to stack of feed and grain bags. And although it was built long before her parents were born, she remembers hearing that the stone for the railroad tunnel came from the farm on which the mill sat.

“There were side tracks up to the side of the mill,” said Smith. “And steps that went from the tracks to the Ralston Hotel,” which once stood across the railroad tracks from the mill. “When my parents bought it, Howard was a very active farming community. Dad did custom mixing; people would bring in their corn. He also had a mobile feed service, the only one around.

“At one time, feed came in burlap bags, but they were more like cloth, and came in floral prints. Women made dresses out of them.”

Smith said her father enjoyed watching the process as his old mill was transformed into a home.

“He loved it and he loved that the bike path was going in. He thought it was very interesting. He loved new things and new technology,” she said.

Moster, who is from the Cleveland area, and Meyer, who’s from Texas, moved to Millwood from Columbus in 2001.

“We were living in a little bitty house,” recalls Moster, “and we decided we wanted something a little bigger. We had to get our minds wrapped around the idea of living in a huge old mill.”

They found interesting artifacts inside: Big tongs for hefting ice or blocks of stone, parts of a large scale, an old cast iron Banner Franklin stove with ceramic tiles on the face, a grain separator and a grain cart. They also have a scrapbook of mill photos from long ago, and more recent photos of the building with gaping holes in the walls, undergoing repair.

Both Moster and Meyer, standing at the lowest level with their dog, Rover Ann, and craning their necks to look up at their son waving from an upper story window, refer to the highway-level fourth floor as “up top.”

“We hear blood-curdling screams all summer long,” said Meyer, “as bicyclists go through the tunnel. We don’t even pay attention any more, but the words they seem to like to scream are, ‘tunnel!’ ‘echo!’ and ‘hello!’ Sometimes I yell ‘hello!’ back. Sometimes people come to the door and say they remember coming here with their father in the 1970s to get feed.”

The family’s proximity to the trail is another perk of living in the mill. Moster regularly rides her bicycle to work in Danville, five miles away by the trail. One of Herbie’s favorite hobbies is finding chunks of coal — fuel for long-gone steam locomotives — in the back yard and building his collection of them.

Back “up top,” Herbie showed off his bedroom and his very own bathroom, accessible by circular staircase from the living room. He stood on his bed and tried to touch the windows set in the angled ceiling above his head. Next to the mill’s attic, which is empty and windowless, Herbie’s bedroom is the tallest point of the tallest building in Howard.