Browse Exhibits (70 total)

Located thirty miles west of Cleveland and situated on the intersection of Lake Erie and the Black River, the growth of Lorain, Ohio as an industrial city has in many ways mirrored that of Cleveland.   Lorain is literally titled the "international city" because of its ethnic diversity, ranging from Russian to Hungarian, to Mexican and Puerto Rican groups.  Most ethnic groups traveled to Lorain to take advantage of the abundance of work during the early twentieth century. 

Specifically, the growth of the hispanic population in Lorain is directly related to the steel industry.   This exhibit begins to explore that relationship.  First Mexicans arrived in the 1920s to work at the National Tube Company, then Puerto Ricans came to work in the late 1940s. 

Compare and contrast the Mexican experience and the Puerto Rican experience of arriving and adapting to the community in Lorain. 

A focus on the trends in word usage and audience in advertisements, specifically the automotive industry. (late 1800's-present)

As consumers , it is important to understand how the power of words influences what people buy and why.

What can be discovered about the motives of the advertiser to the targeted audience? 

In the late 1800s the Cuyahoga River became a key element of Cleveland’s industrial revolution with the growing of oil refiners, chemical manufacturers, also steel production, lumber companies and other related business which all occupied the banks of the river in the Flats of Cleveland. After the Industrial revolution the environment became ruin because of the pollutants from the companies alongside of the river. Debris, oil, dead fish and many other things floated on top of the river which caused the Cuyahoga to become flammable and a threat to the companies on the bank. The economy depended on the industrial companies that surrounded the river but the river also was a main source for import and export besides the railroads that went into the flats. The exhibit will help you go through the history of the Cuyahoga River including the important fires that occurred throughout the years.

This exhibit examines Mentor, Ohio from early America to the modern era.

Native Americans lived in the region prior to the settling of the Western Reserve. Early residents arrived in Mentor in 1797. These residents named the community after the character "Mentor" in Greek mythology keeping with the tradition of the Western Reserve.

Mentor grew rapidly due to the town's proximity to Lake Erie and the Ohio and Erie Canal. The railroad would soon pass through Mentor in the early 1850's. Mentor served as the home President of James A. Garfield and father of the Uncle Sam.

The City of Mentor itself was officially established in 1855.  Many Mentor residents earned their living as florists or horticulturalists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Due to the beautiful rosebushes developed in the city in the 1930s, the city had earned the nickname, "Rose Capital of the Nation." Mentor developed also as tourist trade attracting businessmen that sought to escape from nearby Cleveland and other industrial areas.

Following World War II people settled into the suburbs such as Mentor; however still working in Cleveland. In the 2000 U.S. Census, Mentor was the most populated city in Lake County with over 50,000 people residing.

The story of the Cuyahoga River in the second half of the twentieth century is one of both economic prosperity and environmental decline. This time period begins with great industrial productivity in the Cuyahoga River Valley based on two companies, Standard Oil (Sohio) and Republic Steel. These two companies were symbols of industrial power in the United States that altered the landscape of the Cuyahoga River forever. This same story and timeline has an inverse relationship with the water and air quality of the same geographic region. During the fifties and sixties the river was essentially dead and the air was choking. It wasn't until TIME Magazine published an article about the river fire that actions were taken to improve the environmental quality of the region.

TO THE USER: Examine the inverse relationship between industrial prosperity and environmental decline as you look at the images in the exhibit. What evidence do you see (or not see) of BOTH economic prosperity and environmental decline?