By PAUL ZUROS

We are very fortunate in Steubenville to have many cultural sites to enjoy. The city is rich with so many opportunities and possibilities to explore and discover. One of the most important aspects of our community is our many murals scattered throughout town. The program known as the City of Murals currently consists of 24 murals and is organized and managed by us at the Steubenville Visitor Center. When Historic Fort Steuben became the Steubenville and Jefferson County CVB in 2012, this program came along with it.

My colleague at Historic Fort Steuben, Mary Snyder oversees the program today and does a fantastic job promoting the works of art. When visitors come into the Visitor Center, one of the first questions asked is where the murals are and is there a map one can follow. We provide a walking route, and visitors can generally stay in the parking lot and can set off on their journey by foot from here. There are some you do have to drive to, but most are located right here in the downtown area.

The program started in early 1986 when the Steubenville Downtown Business Association began looking for some way to revitalize the downtown area. An idea was introduced to the group about the possibility of painting murals on buildings in the downtown area to commemorate local history and to encourage tourism. The mural project became the dream of Louise Snyder, the executive director of the Downtown Business Association, and shortly after the introduction of the idea, the project began to take shape.

Committees were formed to begin the process of selecting the appropriate wall, subject of the mural and, most importantly, an artist. According to Mary Snyder, the first mural needed to be well done so the public could see the potential in this project and without the success of the first mural, any additional murals would be difficult to realize. Working hard to find the right subject, artist and wall treatment was a challenge but ultimately the committee selected Michael Wojczuk of Boulder, Colo., to create the very first mural in the program. The subject of that mural was Steubenville’s main commercial street, Market Street at the turn of the 20th century. The mural was painted on a building across the street from the Towers building on Market Street.

As the first mural went up 40 years ago, visitors would stop and watch the artist as he created the larger-than-life work. Mary Snyder writes that “work began amid crescendos of skepticism, however, as the mural began to take on shape, form and color, skepticism gave way to curiosity.” At the completion of the mural, hundreds came out to the reception and dedication to celebrate this accomplishment, and the program was born.

Many murals have been painted by a variety of artists in our city since that first one in 1986. Honestly, there are too many to describe here in detail. Some of the most popular murals are the Dean Martin Mural on the Kroger building at Hollywood Shopping Plaza, painted in 1997 by Robert Dever. The mural features Dean in the center with scenes of Martin and Lewis, Dean on his TV show, Dean with the Rat Pack and, finally, a scene when he returned to Steubenville in 1950. Also at Hollywood is the mural called Pioneer Days, painted in 1997 by Eric Gohe. This monumental mural depicts a pioneer overlooking the valley where Steubenville would be built with the dates 1797 — to commemorate the founding of Steubenville — and 1997 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the city. Grohe painted two other murals in the city, the Steel Worker in 1994 on the Masonic Lodge, featuring a 15-foot steelworker near a pouring ladle of molten metal; and the 1897 Centennial Arch painted in 1897. This mural is located on the Elks building on Washington Street facing west. The mural depicts the 1897 centennial celebration when Steubenville erected arches on the streets in town.

On the opposite side of the building is the Tuskegee Airman Mural painted by Claude Ruston Baker in 2019 and recently updated and enhanced in 2025 by Pittsburgh-based artist Kyle Holbrook. This mural depicts the contribution of two Steubenville natives, Jerome and John “Ellis” Edwards. These brothers trained to be Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Jerome was killed in a tragic accident when his plane crashed stateside in 1943, but John “Ellis” went on to fly in Europe during the war. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions in Italy. These two murals on the Elks building, just like all of them, are important and irreplaceable parts of local history.

Our most recent mural is the 2024 mural “Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery.” This mural was painted by Holbrook and depicts Lewis and Clark along with Sacagawea and York, the enslaved man who became the first African American to cross the continent.

Over the years since the program started, we have lost more than a few murals due to demolition and other reasons. Those include “Waiting for the Train” painted by Dan Sawatzky, which depicted the old Steubenville train station; “Bell Telephone” painted also by Sawatzky depicting the C.D.&P Telephone Co., which showed the first telephone exchange in Steubenville in 1881; “White Star” painted by Donald Toth showing a scene of a downtown market owned by George Synodinos, father of Steubenville’s famous son “Jimmy the Greek” Snyder, who was featured in the mural; and “High Shaft” painted by Sawatzky which showed a scene from Steubenville’s High Shaft Coal mine. Lost also is our very first mural “Market Street.”

Today the murals are still popular, and visitors come from all over the region to get a mural map and a small booklet put out by the visitor center describing the murals one can see. We currently have 23 in the city, and they are a wonder depiction of our history in a larger-than-life format. Hopefully the murals will continue to draw visitors and help educate all those interested in local history. May we never lose this history.

(Zuros is the executive director of Historic Fort Steuben)