302 12th St. SE was built to house the office for a coal and fuel yard which occupied lots to the right, now the site of new homes. Such yards were once common over the Hill.
If coal was delivered to the street in the front of a house, the homeowner was required to move the coal off the street within a day. Furnaces that used fuel oil became popular because the homeowner no longer had to worry about feeding a coal stove in the morning to heat the house, and fuel oil was much cleaner. Indicative of the times, even a small, utilitarian structure such as this had a decorative metal cornice and arches over the window and a door like those used on larger residential buildings.
Unfortunately, this was the only shot I could get of this building, with two cars parked directly in front of it and the neighbor’s trash cans blocking the view. I had first photographed the house next to it, which bears the number “302,” but realized it was wrong when I looked at the restoration society website. A contact I’ve made there told me there was a small house next to it that was part of the same property, so I went back to get a picture of it.
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For more information on this historic sites, go to the restoration society’s web page for the tour at http://chrs.org/historic-sites-tour-2020/
Best to view in "Original" because other versions resized by Pbase are decidedly unsharp.
The Fed grackle, posted earlier:
