We need your financial help to save this remarkable piece of Galion, Ohio, and national history!
The Gill House sits on the main street of Galion, a community of 11.000 populating an hour north of Columbus. We need to raise a total of $20,000 between now and October 1 to pay off a first mortgage and to ensure the house remains in the hands of those committed to its preservation. As of August 15, we have raised $8000 in cash and pledges.
Why is this important? Consider the following:
- The Gill House represents 200 years of the Gill family, which arrived in the area in 1818 as only the second pioneer settlers. The original Gill House still stands behind the current one, which was finished in 1904 for Bloomer and Nellie Gill; Bloomer was the grandson of David Gill, pioneer settler and first Galion schoolteacher.
- The Gill House was designed by noted architect Louis Kamper, who trained in the finest classical architecture firm in the world, McKim, Mead & White in New York City. Kamper later became the architect for the grandest hotels built in the city of Detroit, including the venerable Book-Cadillac Hotel. Of the Neoclassical residents designed by Kamper in the period between 1895 and 1910, the Gill House is the ONLY one still standing! Anywhere.
- The house was visited by Gill family friends inventor Thomas Alva Edison and his wife, Mina Miller Edison; by automaker Henry Ford; and by inventor Harvey Firestone. The Gill family also had close connections to industrialist John Deere, to author Mark Twain, and to J. Edward Day, President Kennedy's Postmaster General who implemented the national zip code.
