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Happy Birthday, Youngstown
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Birthday 221
Video
Youngstown celebrates its 221 birthday with a party at the Tyler History Center and walking tours of downtown.
At just a week and a half old, Virginia Freeze was celebrating 221 years of Youngstown on Tuesday.
She may not have known it, but around her was a celebration with balloons, cake and the birthday song.
Her brothers, Edward, 5, and Isaac, 3, donned party hats, ate cake and blew birthday party blowouts with their parents, Jim and Grace.
The West Side residents were a part of more than 100 in attendance at Downtown Youngstown Partnership’s “Happy Birthday, Youngstown” event at Tyler History Center on Federal Street.
“We love downtown,” said Jim Freeze, executive director of Youngstown Area Goodwill Industries. “We try to get down here as much as we can.”
The partnership, Youngstown CityScape and Mahoning Valley Historical Society joined forces to throw the party for the city on the day John Young came to the area for the first time in 1796.
The party was made to be both fun and informative.
Phil Kidd, associate director of CityScape, and Bill Lawson, executive director of the historical society, each took a group of partygoers out on a walking tour of downtown to show off some of the history and talk about the future of several structures.
The groups were led to Central Square where they learned about the Civil War Soldiers’ Memorial in the center of the square. The memorial was initiated in 1870 by Ohio Gov. David Tod, who was from Youngstown’s Brier Hill area. The soldier at the top of the statue is not the one placed there in 1870. In 1951, the original soldier was knocked down by accident and had to be replaced.
Kidd also pointed out the restored copper statues returned to the top of the Mahoning County Courthouse on Tuesday.
The courthouse opened in 1910 at a cost of $1.9 million – $50 million in today’s dollars.
In the earliest photos of Central Square, the Tod Hotel often is shown. The hotel existed from 1869 to 1969, and in that time became an important piece of Youngstown history. Several presidents stayed at the hotel, and in 1960 President John F. Kennedy gave a campaign speech to thousands gathered in the square.
“Sadly, we lost the hotel,” Kidd said.
Today, the hotel building is International Towers, a federally subsidized housing facility for the elderly and disabled. It’s undergoing a $6.2 million renovation.
Also under renovation is the Stambaugh Building, dating to 1907. The building will reopen in December as a DoubleTree hotel.
“We have a great crowd down here,” Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally said at the birthday event. “If they haven’t been to downtown Youngstown for a while, they are going to see construction going on. They are going to see downtown restaurants. They are going to see [Youngstown State University] up the hill. For a lot of these folks, they are going to see something a lot cleaner and a lot nicer.”