Clockwise around Central Park

When we tally Then & Now images of the Square in Mansfield, there are considerably more layers of Then than there are of Now. It’s not surprising, considering that this particular acreage is the absolute oldest place in town: everything started at the Square so it necessarily has accumulated the most historic Then.

And Now changes so rapidly that the line between the Past & Present is always pretty flexible.

So, this assembly of photos is curated to represent a Then mostly within memory of those who saw the 20th century, and Now changes almost every time I go downtown.

---

---

---

Then & Now: Main Street @ North Park Street 1899

When the photographer set up his tripod in the 1890s to capture this image of North Main, he was standing in the middle of a traffic lane and his equipment probably straddled a streetcar track.

Capturing the same scene today entails considerably much less risk since the camera is a half dozen paces away from the nearest moving vehicle.

---

---

Then & Now: The Manhattan 1927

These guys on the Square, standing on the sidewalk of North Park Street, are posed in front of the cigar store and pool hall known as the Manhattan. 

In more recent decades this site was a landmark called the Olympic Lounge, but from 1912 to 1946, when there were cigars and billiards on all four side of the Square, it was the one stationed on the north side.

---

---

Then & Now: North Park Street 1910

It might not be immediately obvious just exactly where this Then & Now is focused, because every building in this 1910 view has been replaced or reconfigured in the last century.  The two large structures in the center background both burned in 1944; the two on the right were removed when the City Municipal Building was built in the 1970s; and the two on the left have become four separate storefronts.

The cannon in the foreground moved across the Square into the front lawn of the county courthouse.

The photo itself is not too difficult to date because there is a huge sign front and center advertising an appearance at the Memorial Opera House of “The Ideals,” who turned out to be Mostly Pretty Girls.

---

---

Then & Now: Diamond Street @ North Park Street 1957

The walled confines of the Square, as defined by facades of buildings rising from the sidewalks, has been redrawn the most dramatically in the last fifty years on the east side of the quadrangle, along Diamond Street. These landmarks photographed in 1957 across from North Park Street, the Ford Flats, and the Odd Fellows building, were eliminated from the streetscape in 1975 in order to create the plaza in front of the City Building and let more wind and distant scenery into the Square.

---

---

Then & Now: Diamond Street @ The Square 1912

The old courthouse, photographed here in 1912, and the new courthouse seen below it, were actually both standing side by side for a few months at the same time; so that should give a sense of how large a space was opened to the east when the old landmark was demolished.

---

---

Then : Richland County Courthouse c. 1915

Built to “last 100 years,”the old courthouse had a hard time keeping rain out through is succession of roofs, and it bowed out four years shy of its century.

William Jennings Bryan spoke from these steps in 1900, for an hour and twenty minutes. Sixty years later John F. Kennedy stood in front of the courthouse as well, and accomplished the same thing in just under ten minutes.

---

---

Then & Now: The County Jail Weather Vane 1967

Where do you hide the key to the Jail? In Richland County it has always been hidden in the safest place: right out in public where anyone can see it.

The Sheriff’s Department, built in 1880 next to the old courthouse, included a series of roofline ornaments, like lightning rods, typical of the Victorian style. On the highest peak of the building, rising above the front door, was a decorative weather vane Master Key.

When the new courthouse was built in the 1970s, the main wing was situated right on the spot where the old Sheriff’s building stood, so when the old structure was torn down the architect carefully removed the Master Key from the rooftop and mounted it above the door of the new County Jail facing Second Street.

---

---

Then & Now: The Park Theater 1945

If you haven’t been to the Square at night since 1945, you may have forgotten that the roof of the Park Theater adds a unique element to the skyline of South Park Street. 

The funny obelisk lamps that define the upper building in the night were sometimes lost in the glow of the cinema’s showy marquee during the theater’s busy years starting in 1939 when the Park was built. 

In later years when the building was adapted for other purpose—as the Park Building—the skyline lamps burned out, and it wasn’t until recent times that they have been restored to illuminate the night sky.

---

---

Then & Now: The May Building 1911

The May Building has been on South Park Street since 1905 when this charming landmark was built on the Square.  With business storefronts facing the sidewalk, and residential apartments above stairs, the May Building was designed by architect Vernon Redding in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. 

Among the memorable residents of the May Building throughout its long life was the Orphium Theater, advertised in the first decade of the 20^th century as a place to find “Polite Vaudeville.”  They set the standard in Mansfield for politeness right from their opening show, which featured Dan Rice’s Educated Pigs.

---

---

Then & Now: Coney Island 1890

The building on the south side of the Square we know today as the Coney has been a restaurant for a long time, but it was originally conceived as a furniture store and funeral parlor.

The urban brick structure was built by the Wappner family in 1873 for their furniture business, and like a great many of the furniture dealers of the 1800s, they also dealt in coffins and chairs for folks whose funerals were held at home. 

By 1948 the space was occupied by Park Billiards, a cigar store, with an Army & Air Force recruiting office upstairs.  When the Army moved out Park Billiards turned the second floor into a ‘Sportsman’s Club,’ where various interesting forms of illegal gambling took place until they got caught at it.

In subsequent decades the upstairs has served as a Central Group headquarters for Mansfield’s AA community, and the street level was reestablished as a restaurant, today the Coney Island Inn.

---

---

Then & Now: Angle’s Grocery 1900

John Angle had a grocery store on the south side of the Square in 1900.  The storefront he occupied is today the home of the Richland County Democratic Party.  In the aisles where you would today browse for political signs you would have, in John Angle’s day, filled your basket with beans and beets.

---

---

Then & Now: South Park Street 1914

So how much difference does a hundred years make?  The answer is: a lot, and not much at all.  Take a look at South Park Street on the square in Mansfield and you’ll find a row of buildings that have aged well through the century…though some have undergone a little cosmetic surgery to keep up appearances.

Anchoring the west end of the street used to be the Southern Hotel, but it didn’t really make it into this 1914 photo anyhow so its absence isn’t all that significant in comparing then and now, though its presence in the social culture of the square is certainly missed today.

---

---

Then & Now: South Main @ the Square 1957

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 accomplished so exquisitely that the block still retains the diverse sense of random variability that was the charm of this view 60 years ago.

---

---

The Sacred Enclosure:

In the language of ancient Iran, it was the word for ‘an enclosed park;’ and then, perpetuated and translated through Greek, Latin, Old French and Old English it became our word: Paradise.

From the midnight roof of Richland Trust, Central Park is certainly an enclosed arboreal garden, and the enclosure is The Square.

---

---

Thank You

Images in this article come from many sources, including the Mark Hertzler Collection, Jeff Walls, Richland County Chapter Ohio Genealogical Society, Phil Stoodt, Bob Carter, Brett Dunbar, Eileen Wolford, Betty Angle Fox, Virgil Hess, and Marge Graham.

---

---