Area History

At first glance it would appear that everything on the south side of Fourth Street (left side of the photo) has vanished since this postcard view was made in 1911. Certainly in the most bricks-and-mortar sense that is true: all of the buildings are gone today. Yet a close look at the postcard image shows […]

Long before there were “dollar stores” in America there were “five cent” stores, and then “five-and-dime stores.” King of them all was Woolworth’s. In the 1920s there was a Woolworth’s opening every 17 days in the US. By 1956 there were 2,100 of them. In the 1970s there were 15 stores closing every year; by […]

Before this begins let me be clear: Beethoven never set foot in Mansfield, Ohio. I have to say this or I’ll hear about it. Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) spent his entire life on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and he was never anywhere near my community. Yet he was unquestionably present here in […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 3, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the third in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes Her Tune, […]

In 1957 when a photographer captured this business block on South Main Street at the Square, the sequence of six buildings was occupied by nine different businesses. At the same site today nearly all of these same buildings have been incorporated together into one single business: Mechanics Bank; yet this feat of consolidation has been […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 3, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the third in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes Her Tune, while Volume II […]

ONTARIO — When the Richland Mall was built in 1968 it was an absolutely state-of-the-art shopping experience. The enclosed indoor space was intended to be so futuristic it included even the outdoors … in an abstract artistic interpretation. The sounds of rushing water from several fountains set the tone of “a natural glade” throughout the […]

In the broadest sense he wasn’t really homeless because he knew everybody in town: and they were all happy to feed him, and he was welcome to sleep anywhere he wanted. So his home was Mansfield. But Orrin Pharris had stopped maintaining the tenuous tether that bound him to any commonly agreed upon sense of […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 3, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the third in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes Her Tune, […]