The Hebron Armory and Hebron Power Plant

The 17th National Guard Armory was built through the efforts of Colonel H.D. Burch who served in the Civil War. Burch's experience in the military is credited as the reason the Armory was built in Hebron in the late 1800s. The building was three stories high and located near the junction of the National Road and Route 79. The local guard units met and stored their armaments on the second floor. There was a "shot tower" at its pinnacle, surrounded on all four sides by a walkway. The building was used for a variety of functions, including, weddings, town meetings, reunions, class plays, and other school functions. It also served as a meeting place for those in nearby communities. One could often see the grounds crowded with wagons, horses, and buggies. The Armory burned in 1901 and the Hebron Power Plant was built on the site in1902. The plant was built for the purpose of providing electric power for the Interurban Transportation System which ran from Columbus to Hebron, Buckeye Lake, Newark, and Zanesville. Drawing from the Canal, it used a great volume of water for cooling their steam boilers and condensers. The plant was originally fired by gas from the company's own gas field. When the gas wells quit producing, the plant was converted to coal burning units which were hand fired. When the interurban line went out of business in 1929, it cut back on the local electricity demands. The plant still provided power to part of Hebron but not enough to survive. The Ohio Power Company bought the power rights giving Hebron enough money to build the municipal building on 116 Main Street. In the late 1940s in a large canvas tent, Mr. Frank Glassman of Bexley opened a surplus store on the site. A few years after it opened, a tin roof was placed over the tent and wooden walls were erected. A floor was never installed and customers walked on dirt covered by sections of cardboard and wood. Large flat tables containing stacks of clothing and whatever Frank would purchase for resale; camo clothing, shoes, sneakers, boots, paint, tarps, hunting and fishing equipment, and much more. The store was dismantled in 1994.

Image 1: The Armory in the late nineteenth century.

Image 2: A crowd gathered outside the Armory building.

Images 3, 4, and 5: Photographs of the Power Plant Building.