Take 2: Warner Bros. marker restored

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Warner Brothers historical marker downtown, severely damaged in a windstorm nearly three years ago, has been restored, thanks to Antonette Ferguson of Fullerton, Calif.

Ferguson is a friend of Betty Warner Sheinbaum and Cass Warner Sperling, the daughter and granddaughter of the late Harry Warner, who is the eldest of the famed Warner brothers film-studio founders.

Ferguson was the driving force and financial contributor in repairing and reinstalling the damaged marker, said H. William Lawson, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, in a news release. The marker is on in the center of West Federal Street in front of the DeYor Performing Arts Center, which was originally one of the first Warner Bros. theaters.

Ferguson will visit the DeYor at 11:30 a.m. Sunday to tour the auditorium and theater lobby and inspect the marker in the street.

The Ohio historical marker honors the Warner Brothers, the Hollywood movie moguls who once lived in Youngstown.

After emigrating from Poland and living for a time in Baltimore, Md., and Canada, the Warner family arrived in Youngstown in 1896. It was here that the four Warner Brothers — Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack — purchased their first Edison Kinetoscope projector and began showing motion pictures at carnivals and in rented storefronts in the Mahoning Valley. The brothers opened their first nickelodeon theater — the Cascade — in New Castle, Pa., in May 1905.

In 1912, the brothers relocated to New York City and California and began to build their successful motion-picture business, eventually undertaking all aspects of the industry from financing, to production and distribution of films, and the development of a national chain of corporate-owned theaters.