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Youngstown Heritage Center kicks off fundraising campaign with open house
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A doll was included in a Hungarian ethnic culture display of items from the collection of Paula Horvath at the Youngstown Heritage Center’s open house.
By EMMALEE C. TORISK
YOUNGSTOWN
Bob Barko Jr. maintains that everybody comes from somewhere.
It just so happens there are a whole lot of somewheres — Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Ireland, to name only a few — still represented in Youngstown.
“Youngstown is a microcosm of the great American melting pot,” he said.
With that idea in mind, Barko and other members of the not-for-profit 545 Management Group are working to transform the former Our Lady of Hungary property, 545 N. Belle Vista Ave. on the West Side, into a place that highlights the area’s diverse ethnic heritage and its history. They call it the Youngstown Heritage Center.
“It’s not just about ethnicity. It’s not just about history,” said Barko, the group’s president. “It’s all of it combined together, and we’re ready to share the vision with the community.”
The 545 Management Group opened the building Sunday to the public, inviting people in to participate in guided tours, to see samples of future displays and to marvel at the chapel’s hand-hewn vaulted wood ceilings and its meticulously painted murals, all done locally and reflecting Carpathian and Transylvanian influences. The church was dedicated in 1955.
Sunday’s open house also marked the official kickoff of the 545 Management Group’s Youngstown Heritage Center Operations, Restoration and Improvements Capital Campaign. The goal for the yearlong campaign is $400,000 — about half of which will go toward improvements to the property, including new roofing, a modern heating and cooling system and handicapped-accessible renovations. The difference will be used for operating expenses and for installation of exhibits.
Barko said the chapel level of the building will house permanent and rotating exhibits that represent the wide array of Youngstown’s ethnic heritages. These displays will line the room’s sides, while rows of pews placed in a stadium-seating configuration will occupy its center, allowing for easier viewing of presentations. Exhibits on the lower level will showcase the city’s history, featuring memorabilia and artifacts such as soda-fountain stools from the Woolworth’s in downtown Youngstown.
Barko hopes the center will become a community anchor — much as Our Lady of Hungary Church had been from 1927, when the parish was started, to 2012, when it was merged with Sts. Peter and Paul Croatian Roman Catholic Church and St. Stephen of Hungary Church. Its new name is Holy Apostles Parish.
The 545 Management Group, which also consists of treasurer Dennis McBride and secretary George Kalosky, obtained the property — including the rectory house, pavilion and green space — from the parish and the Diocese of Youngstown in November. Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th, and the Rev. Joseph Rudjak, pastor of Holy Apostles Parish, among others, were instrumental in helping the group secure the property, Barko said.
Ray referred to the heritage center and the group behind it as a “good neighborhood partner” and called repurposing the building a “worthwhile project.”
“I hope that the community comes together and offers their support,” Ray said.
Father Rudjak added that the Youngstown Heritage Center is “a splendid way of remembering the congregation and the people who built this building.” Its destruction would’ve been a real loss, he said.
Now, in its new life, the building can help the area’s youth better understand their history, as well as the talents of those who came before them — such as the masons who used their skills rebuilding blast furnaces in the steel mills to construct Our Lady of Hungary Church with its red- brick exterior.
And for older members of the community, he said, it can “gently bring us into the reality of change.”
“Institutions change. Communities change,” Father Rudjak said. “This wonderful place is a sign of what was — and a sign of what could be in the future.”
Donations for the capital campaign are being accepted at Huntington Bank under the “545 Management Group Inc.” account; they can also be sent via mail, care of the 545 Management Group Inc., to P.O. Box 4513 Youngstown, OH 44515. In-kind donations of labor, materials and services also are accepted. For more information about the heritage center, contact Barko at 330-881-5819 or at youngstownheritagecenter@gmail.com.