One-time Harvey music podium returned to Rider’s Inn

The podium that once served the music program at the old Harvey High School in Painesville has become a symbol for Elaine Crane as she seeks to bring back the 225-year-old Rider’s Inn from near oblivion.

Long before she leased the building, with its restaurant and guest rooms, to Kaela Alex, the old podium had served as the restaurant’s hostess station — lovingly restored and donated to the Inn by Ron Balogh, the late Painesville City Schools music director. He was a jazz musician who had been among those to play at the tavern’s open mic nights. Those evenings of music and good cheer, begun by Crane after she purchased Rider’s in 1989, had become a benchmark of hospitality at the old Inn, which once was a stagecoach stop.

But the podium, along with dozens of Rider’s fixtures that had stayed behind when Alex took over, had disappeared by the time Crane regained control of the inn earlier this year.

“Members of the Harvey High Class of 1972 discovered the podium at Miscellaneous Barn (a Painesville Township antique store) and bought it back,” Crane told The News-Herald. “They’ve again donated it to Rider’s Inn.”

Those Harvey classmates remembered the podium being used by Balogh when he directed the high school’s marching band back in the 1970s.

When Crane got back the keys to the inn in March, she feared it was about to be condemned because, she said, utility bills hadn’t been paid and pipes had frozen when utilities were shut down.

“I’m trying to make lemonade from lemons, and we have a lot of work ahead of us,” she said. “The building hadn’t been maintained, but engineers have told me it’s still structurally sound.”

Conflicts in the landlord-tenant relationship eventually will be resolved in court, she said.

Meanwhile, Crane is seeking other items missing from the inn, such as plaques from historical societies celebrating its history and a cabinet of mementos that included letters to the Rider family.

Although Crane owns the inn, she no longer wishes to operate it. She’s hoping to find another tenant once repairs are made.

Area musicians, many of whom once played at the Inn’s open mic nights, are organizing a two-day music festival to take place sometime in late August, she said. It will help raise money to bring the one-time stagecoach stop back to its rightful place in Painesville’s history.

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