EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. PLYMOUTH — Today when you want to travel to another town you get on a highway. In 1907 you hopped on to an Interurban streetcar. The streetcar (captured in this photo) ran on the tracks of the Sandusky, Norwalk and Mansfield line, which […]
Larry Phillips
Posted inArea History
Remembering North Lake boathouse in 1945
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. MANSFIELD — When the streams of Toby’s Run were ponded into the body of water called North Lake in 1888, a new sporting pastime was born in Mansfield: the opportunity to go boating. Through the following generations the lake had a whole fleet […]
Posted inArea History
Sherman for President: when Mansfield was atop national politics
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. When you live around here for a while you can’t help but hear the name John Sherman cropping up around town in various contexts. It is easy enough to dismiss the awe with which is name has always been invoked locally because he […]
Posted inArea History
Richland County elects the President (not)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. MANSFIELD — There are dozens of cities and counties and precincts around the country who all like to claim the title of Presidential Election Bellwether — indicating that any candidate who wants to take the White House will have to carry their specific […]
Posted inArea History
Shawshank & Morgan Freeman on North Main 1993
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. In 1993 when Castle Rock Entertainment was filming The Shawshank Redemption in Mansfield no one could have imagined what a terrific impact the movie would still be having here more than three decades later. The scene of Morgan Freeman’s character ambling down the […]
Posted inArea History
View the Madison Theater through the years
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. MANSFIELD — People who grew up in Mansfield speak of the Madison Theater in such a way that you would think the place was still open for business. That is easy to understand: places lodged in the heart never go away — even […]
Posted inArea History
Remembering a glimpse of Miss Ohio in the 1970s
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. MANSFIELD — It was February or March sometime in the 1970s. We had just figured out how to get up on the roof of Malabar High School. It was one of those sparkling clear winter nights with a full moon and we knew […]
Posted inArea History
1899: Main St. at N. Park Street in Mansfield
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally appeared on Richland Source in 2016. MANSFIELD — When the photographer set up his tripod in the 1890s to capture this image of North Main Street, he was standing in the middle of a traffic lane and his equipment probably straddled a streetcar track. Capturing the same scene today entails […]
Posted inArea History
The life & afterlife of Davey Field
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. If you study baseball, and you study history, you begin to understand that both of these subjects are totally shaped and sustained by the same element of our existence: the element of time. Because there is no clock in baseball, it is easy […]
Posted inArea History
Park Avenue at Main has changed from 1949 to today
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016. MANSFIELD — There was a time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, when you could walk down Park Avenue West on a sunny afternoon and hardly set foot in the sun — it was such a cool, shady canyon of a cityscape. […]