Museum celebrates 15th anniversary

Bus tours and traveling exhibits are helping museum attendance.

By DON SHILLING

VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR

YOUNGSTOWN — Former State Sen. Harry Meshel celebrated the 15th anniversary of the downtown steel museum with a challenge.

It’s time for a community group to be formed to advocate for the center among state officials and build public support in the Mahoning Valley, Meshel said.

“We’ll call a meeting, and we’d like to see your participation,” Meshel said Thursday to about 40 invited guests, including Youngstown State University President David Sweet and Bruce Zoldan, president of B.J. Alan Co. in Youngstown.

Meshel, 83, of Youngstown, clearly still has a passion for the museum that he first proposed in 1977, shortly after Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced it was closing its Campbell Works.

Meshel fought for years to get funding for the museum, which is officially called the Youngstown Historical Center. The state Legislature approved $3 million to build the museum in 1983, but it took until 1992 for the museum to open with its permanent collection.

Honored with portrait

To honor Meshel’s efforts, the museum staff celebrated the anniversary by unveiling a portrait of him, which will hang in a classroom that was named after him when the museum opened.

“I wanted to create a monument of the steel industry because of the deep and abiding impact it had on the community,” said Meshel, who worked three years in the open hearth at U.S. Steel while attending Youngstown College.

He said some people in the community were upset with him in the late 1970s because they wanted all efforts focused on reopening the Campbell Works. Meshel, who served as senator from 1971 to 1993, said he knew all along, however, that the community couldn’t raise the $200 million needed.

Meshel said his biggest concern now is that the museum is not being used enough by the community, especially school groups.

“People are forgetting our history,” he said.

Efforts to draw visitors

Nancy Haraburda, site manager for the museum, said efforts are being made to boost attendance. More than 8,000 people visited the museum in the state’s most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30. It was an increase of about 800 people over the previous year.

“We’re moving in the right direction, but we’d like to move even faster,” she said.

She added that she would like to add 1,000 more visitors this fiscal year.

A big step forward occurred this spring when bus tours started stopping at the museum for the first time in eight years, she said.

The museum is also showing more traveling exhibits to draw repeat visitors, she said. A current exhibit depicts life in the 1940s, and next year the museum will have an exhibit on Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist credited with saving the lives of Jews during the Holocaust.

The museum’s permanent exhibit, “By the Sweat of Their Brow: Forging the Steel Valley,” explores labor, immigration and urban history, using videos, artifacts, photographs and reconstructed scenes.

shilling@vindy.com