Brier Hill Italian Fest to revive Youngstown neighborhood this week

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Clinging to the hillside above a steel mill, Brier Hill was once the city’s largest Italian neighborhood, and a lively place.

The neighborhood will echo with memories of its heyday when the 19th annual Brier Hill Italian Fest returns, from Thursday to Aug. 22.

The event sprawls out for a block from the intersection of Calvin and Victoria streets in Brier Hill, bringing the old neighborhood back to life. Former residents return each year to the streets on which they grew up.

Highway projects resulted in the razing of large swaths of the neighborhood beginning in the 1950s, and the economic collapse of the steel mills lead to its decline.

But the neighborhood got a glimmer of hope earlier this year when V&M Star announced a giant expansion of its plant where the Brier Hill Works of Youngstown Sheet and Tube once stood.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com complete with a schedule of events for the run of the festival.