Mount Vernon’s Roundhouse Lane earned its name

MOUNT VERNON — This excellent early postcard preserves a prominent Mount Vernon feature that survives today only in name: the roundhouse.

It was not a full roundhouse, such as major railroad hubs had, but instead a quarter-section of a full circle, with a rotating platform.

In this postcard image, it is the section of the large building jutting forward on the right side of the picture.

Engines could be pulled up into that area and rotated to head out on a different track section.

The main building behind the roundhouse was the repair shop for the Cleveland, Akron & Columbus Railroad.

This was the spot that readers may recall from my earlier series on the death of Kenyon College student Stewart Lathrop Pierson in 1905, who was run over by a locomotive.

It was when the fateful engine from that train was brought into the repair shop to have maintenance done that the crew realized something was very wrong when they found blood stains and the remnants of Pierson’s jacket.

For many years, this facility served the CA&C Railroad, which was later sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad. After its abandonment, it was finally torn down in the 1980s.

Ellis Brothers is located there today, and the main reminder of what was previously there is the road that runs from South Mackenzie Street, right after South Mackenzie’s intersection with Howard Street.

This little road is today called Roundhouse Lane, and it traces the path of the railroad spurs that led into the original roundhouse.

The railroad continued on past the shops and ran along the Kokosing River until crossing it as it headed toward Gambier.

That section of the railroad is today the popular Kokosing Gap Trail.