New ‘Medina Doors’ poster celebrates architecture, community

MEDINA – There is a new poster of doors in the Medina community that celebrates the local architecture and also highlights some of the whimsical entrances, such as the North Pole at Rotary Park and the marching band bus.

I’ve been working on this off and on for five years. I tried to get the doors in different seasons and times of the day, including some night scenes.

I was close to being done done in 2019, but wanted to wait until the Bent’s Opera House project was complete. I knew something good was coming with that restoration. It was worth the wait. One of my favorite doors is at Bent’s. It’s the old bank vault inside. It is adorned with ornate metal finishings, a sight to behold.

I was also able to recently add the door on the restored Walsh Hotel, a project that Tim Cooper has been working on for about three years.

I created a similar poster in 2015 of “14411 Doors” in the Albion and Gaines area. I learned from that project. That poster was 16 by 24 inches, which is an uncommon size. The Medina poster is 18 by 24, an easy size to find a frame.

I didn’t just hunt down striking doors in the community. I enjoyed finding individual letters and shapes to spell out M-E-D-I-N-A and D-O-O-R-S.

I will give away a poster to whomever can identify where I found all of the letters. I will give you the N. It’s from a grave at the St. Mary’s Cemetery. I think it was from Stockman but I didn’t write it down. There are 10 other letters to see if you can identify where I got them.

I will give you until noon tomorrow (June 23) to send your guesses to tom@orleanshub.com. Whoever gets them all first or whoever has the most correct gets a poster.

The posters are currently available for $17.99 in Medina at the Author’s Note bookstore and in Albion at the office for The Lake Country Pennysaver and Orleans Hub.

I tried to include prominent doors from some of Medina’s most awe-inspiring sites, such as the former Armory and many of the local churches. But I tried to find some that might be overlooked – the smokehouse at Forrestel Farm and the chapel at the West Ridgeway Cemetery.

You might also wonder why I have the big red apple from the canal and the cast iron lion from the gate by the alley at the Presbyterian Church. I see both as gateways for Medina. Those pictures also helped to frame the MEDINA and DOORS and balance the bigger bottom corner photos of the Medina Fire Department and children’s entrance at Lee-Whedon Memorial Library.

The apple is one of the first landmarks on the canal coming into Medina from the west end. That lion also is an enduring feature in the downtown. Many people walk by it every day.

There will likely be a poster-signing event and presentation at the Author’s Note in the future where I will give more information on my thought process for picking the doors, including some that were almost included but didn’t make the cut.