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The nine-car funeral train for President Abraham Lincoln departed Washington, D.C. on April 21, 1865. It arrived in Urbana on April 29 at 10:40 p.m. Urbana’s citizens erected an arch of evergreens and flowers near the station west of Main Street. A large crowd of mourners received the train. The arch was hastily removed, too narrow to allow the train’s passage. Other memorial gestures included a large cross, entwined with evergreen wreaths.
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Merion Village was named for the Nathaniel Merion family, who in 1809 settled what is now the South Side of Columbus on 1800 acres of the Refugee Lands. Entrepreneur William Merion operated “Merion’s Landing” in the 1830s to capitalize on the canal trade from the Columbus Feeder Canal. This area saw a large influx of German immigrants as the South Side industrialized in the mid-nineteenth century. Later, many Irish, Italian, and eastern European immigrants who worked in the local steel mills and foundries made their homes here.
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Steel-frame skyscrapers and retail buildings replaced wood-frame residences as the downtown evolved into a commercial district. A small public library branch occupied the north side of the square from 1923 to 1954. The Keith-Albee Theater (later the Palace) in the northeast corner of the square from 1926 to 1964, featured vaudeville performances and movies. Streetcar tracks around the square were removed for scrap during World War II. With expansion of suburban shopping malls, downtown theaters and department stores gradually closed. In 1973-74 Central Square was converted to a pedestrian Federal Plaza by closing off traffic on Federal Street one block east and west of Market Street. Central Square reopened in 2004 with a new traffic pattern, planting beds, and street furniture. Marker for “Central Square (1798-1899)” across the street.
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Toledo’s first fire station was built in November 1837 one city block due north of this site at the southwest corner of Cherry Street and Eagle Lane at 519 Cherry on what is now the driveway for the Goodwill Industries Building. It was a small non-descript, wooden building, built by contractors Hoisington and Manning for $78. It was replaced by a two-story brick building with tin-clad window sills and trim in December 1854. With fire trucks becoming larger and heavier, it was necessary to construct a new building in 1872 at a cost of $7000. Designated Station No. 2, it remained in service until 1953 when the new headquarters station at Huron and Orange streets was dedicated. It disappeared for good during the Urban Renewal projects of the late 1950s and 1960s.
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Built over a two-year period, from 1936-1937, by the Federal Works Progress Administration, the Glendale Steps survive as a monument to the work of stone craftsmen during the Great Depression. Spanning a 200-foot slope, the purpose of the Glendale Steps was to enable Akron residents to descend from South Walnut Street to a city park along Glendale Avenue. The 242 sandstone steps were dressed on site and hand laid by WPA laborers at a cost of $22,000. Depression-era budget problems prevented the City of Akron from completing planned improvements to the park.
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John Young included a public square in his town plan of 1798. A one-room log schoolhouse opened in 1803. In the decades that followed, the Market and Federal Street intersection became the social center of Youngstown with wood-frame houses, churches, and an opera house surrounding the square. Horse-drawn streetcars, running from Brier Hill through the square, became the first form of public transportation in 1875. From 1869 to 1969 the nationally known Tod Hotel dominated the southeast corner of the square. Guests included seven U.S. presidents. Federal Street was paved in 1882, and electric street lights were installed in 1886. The “Diamond,” as the square was sometimes called, became the transportation hub of the city, especially after the Market Street Bridge opened in 1899. Marker for “Central Square (1900-2004)” across the street.
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The Wilson Bruce Evans House, 33 East Vine Street, is a rare example of a residence built and occupied by an African American abolitionist and Underground Railroad operative. Free-born in North Carolina, Wilson Bruce Evans (1824-1898) moved to Oberlin in 1854. A skilled cabinetmaker, he opened a carpentry shop with his brother, Henry (1817-1886). Together they completed the original house by 1856. At the center of Oberlin’s interracial antislavery politics, Evans defied the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and was indicted for his part in the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. During the Civil War, Evans enlisted in the predominantly white 178th O.V.I., serving August 1864-June 1865. The Wilson Bruce Evans House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and named a National Historic Landmark in 1997. (Continued on the other side)
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Near this site in Over-The-Rhine was one of the original Kroger Grocery & Baking Company stores, where Bernard H. Kroger began serving the Over-the-Rhine area in 1902. Kroger was 23 years old when he opened his first store, The Great Western Tea Company, at 66 East Pearl Street near the Cincinnati Riverfront in July of 1883. By 1902, when the company was incorporated as the Kroger Grocery & Baking Company, Kroger operated 40 stores. By 1908, the company had grown to a chain of 136 stores in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky, and began making deliveries to customers with 200 mule-drawn wagons. Kroger was the first to combine meats and groceries under one roof and the first grocery company to operate its own bakery. Currently called the Kroger Co., the grocer is a major contributor to the local economy.