I started my previous article about one of my favorite Woody Allen movies, “Radio Days.” While that is in fact my favorite, I also like a newer film of Allen’s called “Midnight in Paris.”

This film debuted in 2011 and is about a man who visits Paris with his fiancée and falls in love with the city, but longs for the Paris of the past. He gets his wish because, while walking in the city at midnight, he is picked up by an antique car of the 1920s that takes him back in time. While in the 1920s, he meets all the movers and shakers of that time, like Ernest Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Picasso and the like.

When he returns to the present in Paris, no one believes his story, especially his fiancée. I won’t ruin the plot for you, but he returns to the ’20s a few more nights and gets deeper and deeper into the lives of the people he meets in the past.

It is fun to wonder about where I would go if I were to be scooped up tonight by an antique Packard automobile from the 1920s. If I traveled back in time, I would visit so many places that it is hard to narrow it down.

One of the first places I would visit would be the North End of Weirton. I have often wondered what those early streets and buildings looked like, especially in the 1920s. That area was the early beginning of Weirton, as it was the area first built up when Weirton Steel came to the valley in 1909.

I would imagine there were many tenement and boarding houses to house mill workers who were here just as the mills were being established.

In his book called “Memoirs of North Weirton,” John Pandelios recalled that his father and uncles built a three-story building at 225 Ave. B West. The first floor held the Progress Restaurant, on the second floor was his parents’ home and on the third floor, there were quarters for mill workers.

John’s family worked hard to create a new life in Weirton by being involved with early business and community here.

In the neighborhood there were bowling alleys, stores, pool rooms, coffee houses, dance halls, churches, meeting rooms and movie theaters.

For movies, there were many over the years, including the Olympic on Avenue A, the Rex, Manas and the State-all, located on Main Street.

The North End was the location of the first Weirton Grade School on County Road, where the fire station is now. Across the street was the original Sacred Heart of Mary Church and school. There also were the Weirton Christian Center; St. Peter’s AME Church, which is still there; and the first Greek Orthodox Church in our community. St. Paul’s was located on County Road, and close by was the first city building, located near the intersection of County Road and Pennsylvania Avenue.

John’s book gives so much information on North Weirton that one really begins to imagine actually being there. I would guess that if I was riding around in the imagined 1920 Packard, I would be in for a bumpy ride in the neighborhood.

John recounts that the roads were all paved with cinders with the exception of Fourth Street, part of Avenue A and Main Street because it was considered state Route 2.

The sidewalks in the North End were wooden planks and the streetlights were gas. If I chose to exit the Packard, I could hitch a ride on the streetcar.

According to John, “the trolley line began on Main Street at Avenue C and continued south through Weirton and Holliday’s Cove to a roadbed adjacent to state Route 2, and to the Market Street Bridge, across the Ohio River, to Steubenville.”

If I elected to stay in the Packard, I would have to cross the Fort Steuben Bridge, which opened in 1928 to go to Steubenville. Driving downtown on Fourth Street would have been quite a trip, and I could think of no other place to visit than the brand-new Fort Steuben Hotel.

The hotel featured ballrooms, a banquet hall and grill among many other amenities.

On opening night, Dec. 28, 1920, an estimated 700 guests were in attendance and, following speeches of welcome and dinner, a dance was held in the ballroom. It was the most exciting event in the city that year to be sure.

Steubenville was proud of the Fort Steuben Hotel. According to an article in the Steubenville Herald-Star on the day the place opened, the feelings of the citizens were clearly expressed.

“What the Hanging Gardens were to Babylon, the Acropolis to Athens, that is what the Fort Steuben Hotel is to this city, a gem, a joy, apples of gold in pictures of silver, a dream come true, a patch of blue in a cloud-tossed sky, a refreshing spring in a desert, an American beauty amid hollyhocks — that is the new Fort Steuben Hotel.”

There would be so many places to go if I was picked up by a time traveling Packard and went back to the 1920s. I think attending the opening of the Fort Steuben Hotel would be a great place to start.

Sincerely though, there are too many places to visit, too much to see on a trip back in time.

Visiting the North End of Weirton would be worth a visit, too, just to see Weirton’s early roots. Thankfully, we have primary sources like the newspaper and the book written by my late friend, John Pandelios, who lived it to relate what life was like at that time. Through historians like him, I am able to time travel through his enduring work. It may not be Paris of the 1920s but it’s a perfect trip back in time for me.

(Zuros is the executive director of Historic Fort Steuben)