Hidden History of Toledo by Lou Hebert

Author:Lou Hebert [Hebert, Lou]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781467140294
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing SC
Published: 2019-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

EAST TOLEDO’S MAN OF TREES

You’ve probably never heard of Louis Hirschy. But if you live in East Toledo or spend any time there, just look up and you might behold the progeny of his passion. His works of art, if you will. For Louis Hirschy was a sculptor, an artist of landscape, and his medium was trees. Lots of them. This mostly forgotten Swiss immigrant who arrived in Toledo in the latter part of the nineteenth century is credited with planting a forest of trees in East Toledo. Thousands of trees helped to create an urban woodland on the east side of the river. These giants of maple, oak, elm and sycamore were planted one by one, year and after year, with Hirschy’s hand guiding each root into the earth with a love of nature that was deep and reverent. More than a century later, many of those trees, or their offspring, still live and tower above the streets as a living legacy to this “Man of Trees.”

So who was Louis Hirschy, and why did he do this? According to what few articles have been written about him, Hirschy came to the United States from Switzerland at an early age in about 1875 and lived initially in eastern Indiana, where he worked at various jobs and attended college at Valparaiso University. By 1900, he and his wife, Louise, had relocated to Toledo, settling into a wooden two-story home at 503 Fifth Street near Greenwood in East Toledo. Hirschy, despite his academic training and literary background, worked for a number of years at the Toledo News Bee selling subscriptions and later took a job at the Toledo Shipyards on Front Street as a laborer. That is where he earned a living for the rest of his life.

Working at manual labor in a shipyard may seem an odd career choice for a man like Louis Hirschy, who was as enamored with books and literature as he was with trees and nature. In his 1936 obituary in the Toledo News Bee, he was called a “student of world literature” who was surrounded by one thousand books in the study of his home. It was in that beloved library where he was found dead by his two sons at the age of seventy-eight.

One of those books in his library was a cherished and rare Zurich Bible, printed in 1531, which he obtained while selling Bibles in Indiana during his youth, gladly trading one of his new Bibles for the early German-language Zurich Bible. The farmer who traded it thought it old and useless, as it was written in German. Hirschy saw it as something rare and of great value. He was correct, of course, for the Zurich Bible was the first printed Bible in recorded history. It is a rare and precious example of early printing. Family members who inherited the book thankfully thought it should be shared with the rest of the world, so they gave it to the Toledo Public Library. It now resides in the Rare Books collection and can be viewed upon request.

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