Category Archives: Archiving Wheeling

To the Defenders of the Union

Seán Duffy August 5, 2016August 25, 2016 2 Comments 5909 Views

Featured Image: Soldiers' & Sailors' Monument of Wheeling

The Case for Moving Wheeling’s Soldiers’ & Sailors’ Monument

“So may the future days
Come nobly to our State:
When, prosperous and great,
Her citizens shall praise
Those who gave life and all to consecrate
Their land to liberty;
And bade their watchword be
These words in granite here,
To freemen ever dear,
Montani Semper Liberi.”
-From Soldiers’ Monument Poem by William Leighton

In case you haven’t heard, a campaign has been launched to move the Soldiers’ & Sailors’ Monument from Wheeling Park to the empty lot beside West Virginia Independence Hall. Read More

Local History Author

The Wheeling Renaissance, Part 2

Allen Dieterich-Ward April 22, 2016 1 Comment 6358 Views

The Fort Henry Mall: “Bold and Exciting” or “Reckless Schemes”

Postcard of the new Wheeling Post Office at 2501 Chapline. OCPL Archives Postcard Collection. — The new Post Office at 2501 Chapline Street. – OCPL Archives Postcard Collection.

After the heroic efforts required to fund the Center Wheeling urban renewal project, local leaders struggled to actually find industrial tenants after the area was demolished in the early 1960s. The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) eventually settled for a new post office and a trucking company – not exactly the catalyst for economic growth proponents had envisioned.

Over the next few years, however, URA officials had more success with a project assisting the expansion of the nearby Ohio Valley Medical Center, which in subsequent decades would become a mainstay of the regional economy. At the same time, the city’s public-private partnership turned its attention to a more controversial subject: the construction of a proposed “Northern Gateway” and civic center in the central business district. The increasingly decrepit Market Auditorium had long been a target of the Wheeling Conference on Community Development, the group of local businessmen who looked to the Pittsburgh Renaissance for inspiration in remaking their own city. When the URA demolished the site in 1964 and secured federal funds for a new civic center, the next phase in the Wheeling Renaissance seemed set to begin.¹ Read More

Ohio County Public Library Archives Private Collector

More Baseball & Soda Pop

Seán Duffy April 11, 2016 10 Comments 20893 Views

Featured Image: Wheeling Soda Pop and Bottlers

Spring Time in Wheeling, Continued…

Nothing says spring quite so clearly as an April day at the old ballpark, with the sun shining warmly on your face and tiny, cool bubbles bursting on the tip of your nose as you raise an ice cold bottle of sweet soda pop to your lips for a refreshing drink. Well, that’s our theory anyway, as we celebrate spring with a new exhibit of baseball artifacts combined with Thad Podratsky’s amazing collection of early Wheeling pop bottles — on display now at the Ohio County Public Library. As a complement to this display, we present a two-part post on the history of baseball and pop bottling in old Wheeling.
▶ Read Part 1: “A Social Game of Ball”

Part 2: The Pop-Post

An assortment of Painted Pops. Thad Podratsky Collection.

“I do Sierra Mist commercials not because they pay me a lot of money or because it only takes a couple of days. I do it because I have a respect for all sodas and I like to communicate that. Some people say soda, some people say pop. Where I’m from in Indiana they called it breakfast.”
-Comedian Jim Gaffigan

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”
-Lord Byron

Local History Author

Advertising with Style

Ohio County Public Library Archives January 30, 2016February 19, 2016 1 Comment 5061 Views

Victorian Trade Cards of Wheeling

In the late Victorian Era, businesses advertised goods and services with unapologetic flair.

Trade cards, which originated with 18th century French and English tradesmen, were particularly stylish. And the advent of lithography in the 1870s made it possible to mass-produce them in color, ushering a golden age — from 1876 to the early 1900s. Designed to appeal to those expected to do the shopping, the cards were either handed out personally to customers or placed on store counters.

Local History Researcher

The Wheeling Renaissance

Allen Dieterich-Ward January 9, 2016January 12, 2016 1 Comment 7069 Views

An Archiving Wheeling partnership with Weelunk.com.

“As Great a City as its Citizens Want it to Be”

If you had tuned into Wheeling’s WTRF television station fifty years ago, you may have caught an on-air announcement for “The Rebirth of Wheeling,” a series of ten articles reprinted from the News-Register that told a “factual story of a great city’s comeback.”

Slide used by WTRF for the "rebirth of Wheeling" on-the-air announcements. Hamm Collection, OCPL Archives. — Slide used by WTRF for the “rebirth of Wheeling” on-the-air announcements. Hamm Collection, OCPL Archives.

Archiving Wheeling

Our Top Five of 2015!

Archiving Wheeling January 1, 2016January 1, 2016 1 Comment 3931 Views

Featured Image: Archiving Wheeling's 2015 Year in Review

Archiving Wheeling’s Year in Review

Archiving Wheeling Logo Officially launched in December of 2014, 2015 was Archiving Wheeling’s first full year, and it was a indeed good year for our fledgling community experiment to bridge collections, tell stories, and preserve Wheeling’s history.

What made last year such a great year?

To start, there were the partnerships with Weelunk, Wheeling National Heritage Area Corporation, Friends of Wheeling, The California University of Pennsylvania and Heinz History Center Affiliates Program, West Virginia Northern Community College and Alumni Association; the collections showcased from Heritage Partners The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston Archives, private collector Thaddeus Podrastsky, an Ohio Valley Hollywood Star (double), and of course, our very own Ohio County Public Library Archives; and then there were the guest authors Kate Quinn, Margaret Brennan, Bill Hogan, John Bowman, Jon Kniesner, and Wheeling Jesuit History Major, Becca Rodgers, a 2015 OCPL Archives intern. Not to mention the nearly 35,000 blog post views by visitors from over 70 countries!

Yep, a good year indeed.

And now, without further ado, here our top five posts from 2015: Read More

Local History Researcher

A Witness to History

Margaret Brennan November 11, 2015November 24, 2015 Leave a Comment 4672 Views

Featured Image: Benwood Boy at Yalta Conference

Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and a Boy from Benwood

Andrew "Pepper" Kramer, Military Police, U.S. Army, 1943. — Andrew “Pepper” Kramer, Military Police, U.S. Army, 1943.

In observance of Veterans Day, November 11, 2015, we remember the amazing World War II experiences of a local man, Andrew “Pepper” Kramer, the brother of Dr. Mike Medovic’s mother. The family was from Benwood, and Andrew’s two brothers also served in Second World War, one at Omaha Beach and another with the Air Force in the South Pacific.

Sometimes we are in the right place in the right time, often through no action of our own, and we find ourselves in the middle of something much bigger than we could ever imagine. That was probably the case for Andrew, who took some very special pictures of three of the giants of modern history. Read More

Local History Researcher

Stogie Town

John Bowman September 25, 2015January 5, 2017 Leave a Comment 11060 Views

Only a Stogie from Wheeling Can Be a Wheeling Stogie

A variety of cigar boxes featuring "Wheeling Stogies" labels. From the collections of Thaddeus Podratsky. — Only stogies manufactured in Wheeling were able to sport the “Wheeling Stogies” label. From the collections of Thaddeus Podratsky.

No, this headline is not meant to be a tribute to the late great Yogi Berra, though it sounds like something he might have said. In fact, this is federal law.

Indeed, by federal law, for a stogie to be called a “Wheeling Stogie” it must be made in Wheeling.

Boston, July 6, 1899, in the United States Circuit Court, Judge Colt handed down a decision holding that, “stogies bearing the name of ‘Wheeling’ or ‘Wheeling Stogies’, could not be manufactured in Boston or elsewhere other than Wheeling and sold as ‘Wheeling Stogies’.”

Archiving Wheeling Local History Researcher

Avalon on the Ohio

Kate Quinn September 18, 2015September 18, 2015 3 Comments 21982 Views

Wheeling’s Short-Lived Coney Island Amusement Park

by Kate Quinn and Seán Duffy

An Archiving Wheeling Partnership with Weelunk.
For more great Wheeling stories visit www.weelunk.com.

“Avalon will always be there for all men to find if they can seek the way thither, throughout all the ages past the ages. If they cannot find the way to Avalon, it is a sign, perhaps, that they are not ready.”― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

No buildings are visible in this early 20th century view of the Sisters Islands from Martins Ferry.

What if I told you that you could see camels, ride a roller coaster, visit a German beer garden, fly to the North Pole in an airship, roller skate, dance, travel to Damascus, and take in Vaudeville shows all in the middle of the Ohio River near Warwood? Would you believe me? Well, during a long ago summer, you could do all of those things and more, on a magical little island dubbed “Coney.”

Archiving Wheeling

Glass Elephants, Revolvers, and Bulldogs

Seán Duffy August 30, 2015August 31, 2015 3 Comments 8783 Views

The Whimsical World of North Wheeling Glass

A historically important glass manufacturing center, around the turn of the 20th century, Wheeling and the surrounding Ohio Valley was teeming with active firms like Central Glass Works in East Wheeling, Northwood Glass in South Wheeling, Crystal Glass Company in Bridgeport, Imperial Glass in Bellaire, Fostoria in Moundsville, and Riverside Glass Works in Wellsburg, just to name a few.

But perhaps the most unusual glass manufacturer of the period was the lesser-known North Wheeling Glass Company. Read More