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Steubenville - City of Murals

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:15:00 +0000

Steubenville City of Murals is home to twenty-five outdoor murals depicting scenes of Steubenville's history, including the city's celebrity, Dean Martin.

In downtown Steubenville you can see murals depicting the 1850s and 1920s city life of Steubenville. The murals are painted on the sides of many of the buildings in the area. You will find the city's rich history painted on outside walls in larger-than-life proportions.

Instead of turning the pages of a book, you need only turn a corner to come face to face with stories of the past.

See all twenty-five murals painted in Downtown Steubenville and Hollywood Plaza, including the mural of Steubenville celebrity, Dean Martin. Tour maps available at Steubenville CVB office.

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The Eckhart House

Sun, 11 May 2008 07:13:00 +0000

With most of its original architectural features well preserved, it is truly deserving of the title Victorian Wheeling’s ‘Crown Jewel’.

The three story Queen Anne town home is nestled in the heart of Victorian Old Town and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The home was constructed to demonstrate the importance of the family that built it, which it did magnificently. Newspapers of the day stated that it was a home of some significance. This compliment would have warmed the heart of any of the wealthy and important of the city.

George Eckhart had now arrived into high society with the opening of his new house on "Millionaire’s Row", in the heart of Old Town, which is today a national Historic District.

A brief introduction of Wheeling’s magnificent history is helpful to appreciate the Eckhart House, for the city grew from a small settlement of a few cabins during the Indian border wars of the 1770’s to one of the nation’s most powerful and wealthiest cities of the 1890’s. The Eckhart House represents the pinnacle of Wheeling’s progress.

Wheeling was discovered and settled by the Zane Brothers in 1769 via an overland route from the junction of the Youghogheny and the Monongahela Rivers. The settlement had a deep port on the Ohio River making transportation by boat nearly always possible. This enabled the city to grow slowly but steadily.

The early 1800’s brought peace with the Indians as well as the building of the first National Road. The road granted easy access to the west, and the calling of free land brought Americans by the hundreds of thousands. Quickly, as the nation expanded westward, Wheeling, its main supply route and gateway, grew to become a great eighteenth century city.

Its citizens utilized unrivaled technology and built a suspension bridge of magnificent proportions that opened on November 7, 1849. This structure opened commerce and transportation with the west unlike anything before.

Three years later the first railroad to reach the Ohio was completed to Wheeling. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linked Wheeling to its Eastern sister city, Baltimore, and reestablished these two cities as the preeminent western gateway. 1861 saw the start of the Civil War and Wheeling was made the Capital of Virginia.

By June 20, 1863 Wheeling was recognized as the capital of a new state, West Virginia. The city grew and prospered dramatically for the next 25 years until the capital was moved to a small central West Virginia City called Charleston where it remains today. The city and state never recovered from this loss and neither reached their full potential.

Even with its loss as capital, Wheeling grew well into the 20th Century. By the 1930’s the industry of the area began to disappear. The population of nearly 70,000 dropped 7% by the 1970’s, and steadily declined to approximately 30,000 today with the disappearance of most of its industries.

A silver lining exists to this seemingly sad story. Wheeling is a living treasure of American history. Here is where the pipeline was open to the settling of the west. Here is where the industrial revolution took place. Here is where one can still see, in its near entirety, the Victorian Era. The city’s decline was dramatic and painful, but it preserved the nation’s history, as if it were a time capsule, and tells America’s story better than any other city.

Original Architectural Features:

Numerous mantles including 5 double carved mantles.
Classic Queen Anne stained glass windows.
4 sets of pocket doors 10 feet high.
Inlaid hardwood floors.
Original chandeliers and wall sconces.
Lincrusta wainscoting
Several pieces of intricate ornamental fretwork.
3 story open staircase with carved oak balustrade.
Hand painted floral motif on the parlor walls and ceiling.

Web Site: http://eckharthouse.com

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The Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum

Sat, 10 May 2008 11:57:00 +0000

Our building is fully handicapped accessible, air conditioned, and has ample free parking onsite. And the building itself is a sight to behold!

And then there are the toys - you'll see thousands of toys of all types and ages, from dolls and dollhouses, to toy soldiers, trucks and cars, trains planes and ships, Western toys, space toys, cartoon characters, ride-on toys, and just about anything else you can think of to bring back those great memories of childhood!

Our exhibits of toys and trains from every generation are sure to bring a smile to your face! Our scale model of downtown Wheeling and our Ohio Valley room are great for the heritage minded tourists out there, and our operating train layouts are fun for everyone!

We are the IDEAL destination for your school group church or youth group, the PERFECT activity for your Family Reunion, and the ULTIMATE stop for the whole family, either when coming to Wheeling, West Virginia, or when just passing through the area on Interstate 70!

The Dream Realized

In the middle 1970's, Allan Robert Miller and his son, Allan Raymond, began actively collecting toy trains. Their interests began with Lionel Trains, mostly of the postwar and then-current MPC varieties. By the early 1980's the collection had expanded to include both prewar trains and the trains manufactured by Louis Marx and Company.

Their interests continued to grow to include toys, both by Marx and by others, classic 1950's playsets, dolls and dollhouses, and other items, and the two began seriously considering founding a museum to house their many finds. As the collection grew, so did their knowledge of trains and toys.

The younger Miller has done work on numerous collector's price guides for Greenberg Publishing and Kalmbach Publishing, and has written articles for several nationally circulated collector's magazines. Both father and son have set up informational exhibits and spoken to local groups on the topics of toys and trains.

It became apparent that the dream would some day become a reality, so the search for an appropriate building began. Many sites were considered before they settled on the property at 144 Kruger Street in the Elm Grove section of Wheeling, West Virginia. The building, a Victorian era school built in 1906, provides an excellent historical location to house the many classic toys from their collections, as well as from other collections from around the world. The museum has ample parking, and is easily reached by anyone traveling in or through the Wheeling area.

On August 27, 1998, the facility was dedicated and opened for the first time for local media. Doors opened to the general public on September 1, 1998.

History

In the summer of 1905 a bond issue was authorized by which means money was procured to erect a new building to house the public school for the Elm Grove area. The old site and building were sold at auction, and a new site on the right bank of Big Wheeling Creek was purchased.

This site was originally part of the Moses Shepherd estate. This ground was once an Indian burial ground, and that diagonally across from the southeast corner once stood an old Indian mound. In the spring of 1906 work was begun on the new building and on March 4, 1907, the teachers and pupils said goodbye to the old school house and took up their work in the new.

The Board of Education at the time consisted of U.M.Hervey (President), W.L.Duncan (Secretary), G.W.Guy, and J.F.Shirk. The architect for the structure was Charles D. McCarty of Wheeling. The contractors were Elliot & Winchell of Clarksburg, West Virginia. The cornerstone was laid on June 30, 1906 by the Knights of the Pythias, Mystic Lodge No. 24. The cornerstone can be found on the right corner of the building as viewed from Kruger Street.

This building was an up-to-date structure for its time, a two-story brick, with improved basement, one of the finest in the state. It contained twelve recitation rooms, a room for the Board of Education, a principal's office and library, and two manual training rooms. It originally housed not only grades one through eight, but also a two-year high school program.

The building remained a public school until 1991, when the last classes of Ohio County Schools were held there. The building was then used by West Liberty State College for the 1994-95 school year, before being closed in the mid nineties. On March 18,1997 the building was sold at auction to the Eibel Corporation, which developed the building into the current home of the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum. The Museum opened on September 1, 1998. Another Eibel Corporation business, Elizabeth's Upholstery, also currently occupies space on the ground floor of the building.

The floors in the classrooms are made of Georgia yellow pine, and the woodwork throughout the building are red pine. The "tin ceilings" are believed to have been made by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, and are original; they are actually pressed steel and not tin! In the belfry of the school is still found the original school bell, weighing nearly 1 ton and still operational.

A few interesting side notes about the property are that the Linden tree in the front of the building is the oldest of its type in the state of West Virginia, and that the building contains embedded in its lower left corner a medallion indicating that it was the benchmark for the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey in 1957.

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