By 1812Blockhouse
On a fall evening in 2016, the setting sun cast a golden glow on western facing buildings in Mansfield. Included among those was the Alexander Fraser House, sitting as it does on a rise on Park Avenue West overlooking the entrance to South Park. That sight occasioned the taking of the photo above.
Fraser was the owner of a granite manufacturer and wholesaler which bore his name. Before building the 681 Park Avenue West house, the family resided at 202 South Diamond Street. He was born about 1860 in Kincardinshire, Scotland, and learned the granite and marble business in Aberdeen. Fraser then emigrated to the United States about 1889 with his wife, Maria.
Business boomed in Mansfield from the firm’s long-time location at the corner of South Diamond and Flint Streets. Both of the Fraser’s sons were educated at the prestigious Phillips Andover Academy. Dr. Herbert Fraser then studied in Scotland, and later became an internationally known speaker and writer on trade policies and head of the Economics Department at Swarthmore College.
Alexander Fraser died in 1918, and Maria in 1927. Both are buried in Mansfield Cemetery in a plot which includes, as one might expect, a beautiful granite grave marker.
The Fraser’s house was built about 1910, and was designed by Mansfield architect Frank B. Hursh. Hursh, a Richland County native, attended Ohio Northern University, and began his architectural practice in Mansfield in the late 1890s. Other Hursh designs include the Mayflower Memorial Congregational Church, St. Matthew Lutheran Church, and First United Brethren Church; and the residences of G.F. Krause, George Stodt, George Bricker, Joseph Hoffer, J.S. McFarland, and others in Mansfield.
The residence sits immediately to the east of the columned gates to Brinkerhoff Avenue and South Park along Park Avenue West.
The Alexander Fraser House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
