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“The People of the Mahoning Valley: Stories of Identity and Innovation” opens today
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning Valley has always held tightly to the stories of its past.
Now that history – including the people and events that shaped the area – has a permanent home.
An exhibition titled “The People of the Mahoning Valley: Stories of Identity and Innovation” opens today at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society’s Tyler History Center, 325 W. Federal St., downtown.
The $500,000 exhibition occupies most of the first floor of the building. Visitors can check it out today for free at a one-day open house from noon to 4 p.m.
Bill Lawson, executive director of the MVHS, expects the exhibition will take its place among the city’s top cultural assets.
“There is a buzz out there about it,” said Lawson. “We want everyone to experience it and keep coming back.”
The MVHS has been planning and developing the exhibition for five years.
The exhibition offers a chronological tour of the city and its environs, and visitors should block out about an hour to absorb it all.
It starts with land developer John Young, who purchased a township of the Western Reserve in the late 1700s and established a town. Panels in the exhibit touch on the early industrialists who came next, the rise of the steel industry, and moves into the city’s blossoming into a metropolitan area with cultural, sporting and commercial icons.
Guests will recognize the names of the city’s early movers and shakers, many of whom have major streets named after them: Shehy, Wick, Hillman, Rayen.
Plenty of other names also show up: David Tod, Joseph Butler, the Warner brothers and Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.
Bringing home the city’s history through its people was the goal of the MVHS, who worked with Dayton-based firm Exhibit Concepts in creating the exhibition.
“We wanted to use people to tell stories, that then illustrate the bigger picture,” said Leann Rich, public-relations director of the MVHS.
Some of those names are notorious, such as mob boss Joey Naples and his partners. Organized crime is a part of Valley history, and the new exhibition has a section on it that includes a video made years ago by late WKBN-TV news anchor Tom Holden.
The sections include all sorts of memorabilia and artifacts, including old sports uniforms, antique manufacturing equipment and a roller-coaster car from the defunct Idora Park.
Each section has information panels that include interesting bits of history. Many sections have built-in screens that expand the information exponentially with photo albums and videos.
Although the exhibition is permanent, portions of it will be changed intermittently.
“The cases and panels and the themes are permanent, but we left it open to change out the stories, using different artifacts,” said Rich.