Hanover facts & figures

While I worked at the Evening Sun and even after I moved on to another job, I wrote an Ask Me Anything Column. I thought I would resurrect a few of those and share them here:

Q: Many years ago I was told that a tunnel existed under the square in Hanover going from the Gitt Building (old J. C. Penney store) over to the old First National Bank Building (now an attorney's office) behind the Picket Statue. This was used to smuggle escaped slaves north. If observed going into one building they were never observed leaving, thus confusing their pursuers. Is this true?

A: The short answer is it’s not true, but as you can tell from previous columns, I don’t like giving the short answer.

Dick McCool in “How about that!” column in The Evening Sun reported that there are two underground cavities below the sidewalks in Center Square – one was the waiting room for the York-Hanover Street Railways and the other, near Broadway, was the banana room for Decola’s Green Grocery.

In 1984 when the column was written these rooms still existed.

The waiting room seems an obvious use, but a banana room? According to McCool’s column, this room was used by the grocer to ripen bananas. He described: “A small gas stove heated the room and buckets of water were placed around the bananas to create a tropical, humid atmosphere.” I think a paper bag would have been easier.

Now, about the tunnels under the square; there are none, but there are the usual utilities lines, plus abandoned steam pipes from the Hanover Electric Power and Heating Company.

From 1904 until the mid-1960s, according to McCool, steam for heating was generated at a plant on West Walnut Street and piped to the buildings within a one block radius of the square. This was actually a common type of central heating, but was usually used by larger cities than Hanover.

Apparently, some of the stories about slaves and the Underground Railroad could be attributed to ghost stories that were told because of the noise from the expanding and contracting steam lines.