William Tricker Inc. Historic District

Eight miles south of Cleveland, a three-acre nursery in Independence, Ohio, preserves a rare commercial aquatic farm. Its core includes a 1928 concrete block main building holding the store, office and laboratory, a second 1928 building for potting and storage, and eight Lord and Burnham greenhouses with cypress and glass roofs and cement tanks for water lilies and fish. A spring flowing from an old sandstone quarry, outdoor ponds from about 1919 and a natural gas well drilled around 1900 still serve the operation. The property mattered because of what happened here between 1919 and 1934. It became a leading grower of aquatic plants and a major distributor of tropical fish. Chemist William G. O'Brien, who bought the business in 1924, developed the first pH test kit on the site, and in 1934 the firm introduced the first outside aquarium air filter made in the United States. The site retains much of its original character.