Fairmount Orphanage- Fairmount Childrens Home

I have been wanting to get inside this place for a while, so Saturday I set off to gain access to this Historical old building, I also wanted to get out and take some shots with my new Canon mirrorless body, the EOS R. The weather here has been crappy and Saturday morning was no different, about 17 degrees and snow flying. The is the Fairmount Orphanage or Fairmount Children’s Home it is located on the outskirts of Alliance Ohio. A local garden business was located on this property for quite some time and the place was off limits to creative explorers. But recently I noticed the business was no longer open so I set out to explore a bit.

The institution opened on Oct. 20, 1876, the Campus was very large on about 100 acres. In  1847 an act was passed by the state legislature authorizing counties to join together for the formation of children’s home districts. Following the Civil War, hundreds of Ohio children were left homeless. The children? They came from everywhere, and they were taken to the home for a variety of reasons, they were kids who had no parents, kids that had one parent, or kids that had two parents who couldn’t take care of them. Sometimes they were kids who had to be taken out of their homes.

The school operated through nearly 10 decades until Stark County commissioners closed the facility in 1973. The county sold the facility and families lived in it — at one point several at the same time — through the 1990s. No one was residing in the home, however, when it was destroyed by flames in December 2002. This one structure which I think is the main entrance is the only building left standing, but I may be wrong because the cottages for the living quarters were built with the same design. There is also a small graveyard for the Children’s home located across the street, looks like mother nature has taken over and I might try to find this when weather is a bit better, it’s a wooded area now. I have a few more shots I took of the inside I will share later. It was fun to get out and shoot with a new toy!

Thanks for stopping