Abandoned Eastern Ohio: Traces of Fading History

by Cindy Vasko

Eastern Ohio holds a vast collection of forlorn structures that continue to fade away. Some sites were gifted an additional shot at life, while others are disintegrating at the hand of nature or will see the wrecking ball's force. The once-mighty industrial belt of Eastern Ohio is a silent landscape of rusting hulks. Ruins touch the imagination at fundamental levels and hold a sense of the past and the present. See the Ohio State Reformatory where spirits of the past must surely reside; the quiet, abandoned, but historic, company village of Iron Soup that once joined with a formidable steel mill; the large rail gate yard with its skyscraper-like communications tower surrendering to natural elements; the glorious Victory Theater, fortunate to have a new lease of existence; and a church, school, and rectory that once served as a spiritual center for a community and now confronts imminent demolition. This collection of abandonments reveals how we surrender our history for traces of dissolving stories.

Genres: Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

Published April 26, 2021

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although this was kind of interesting, overall, I am still disappointed because I really thought the author was going to look at places in counties such as Ashtabula or Trumbull and heading South into Jefferson County, but no.

While Vasko did look at places around Youngstown, she also stretched her area to include Cleveland's Spanish Gothic Community Theatre, which yes, technically this is in NorthEAST Ohio, but I was thinking there would be more abandoned manufacturing type plants, etc.

The biggest stretch came when she kicked off her places with the Ohio State Reformatory, which I would say is in more North Central Ohio that leans a little to the NE, but definitely not EASTERN Ohio!

I really thought the focus of this book was to be on "America's Manufacturing Belt," but that's not what we got or at least not all of it. The parts that showed what happened as we approached the 40th Anniversary of Ohio's Black Monday in 2017 - an event that in 1977 pink-slipped 5,000 Youngstown Sheet and Tube steelworkers, the Campbell's Iron Soup Community, etc. were all very interesting. I just wish there had been more from this area or East Liverpool, Bellaire, Steubenville, etc!

[David Garza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off promising. Cindy Vasko got a lot more philosophical in her introduction than John Ponchak did in his similarly titled Abandoned Eastern Ohio; she seemed more emotionally invested, too. But then she got too emotionally invested, devoting too much print real estate to Donald Trump's failure to deliver on a manufacturing rebound. Within the context of this book, this came across as personal venting on her part because it felt like a forced tie-in. The places in this book were abandoned decades ago. Dwelling too much on Trump seemed out of place and unnecessary; perhaps just a mention would have made more sense.

Some of Vasko's best photos can be found in the chapter about Cleveland's Variety Theater. I wish her descriptions under her pictures talked more about what was going on in the photos themselves. There are some interesting things I see that I'd like to know more about. Instead, too many of her captions contain unrelated information, generally reiterating information she already mentioned a few pages prior.

The history and photographs in here are worthwhile, but it felt like inspiration sputtered to a halt at some point compiling everything.