Youngstown, Ohio‘s central square lies at the intersection of Federal Street, Wick Avenue and Market Street and began to be developed after the Civil War when a monument was placed in the center of the intersection. By 1900, the city’s prominent banks, hotels and businesses ringed the square.
By the 1930s, the half-circle consisted of haphazard parking and crude way-finding, which was streamlined in 1955.(1) But traffic continued to congest at what was arguably Youngstown’s busiest intersection. In 1969, Mayor A.B. Flask and city engineer J. Phillip Richley proposed a $1.8 million development that would include a pedestrian mall for Federal Street and a tunnel for Wick Avenue under the square. The monument would be moved to the end of Federal Street, replaced with a fountain surrounded by black terrazzo.
Construction was set to begin shortly after but was scaled back. Not surprisingly, the tunnel under the pedestrian mall was scrapped.
Sources
- Peskin, Dale. “Great Expectations: Square Tunnel.” Vindicator [Youngstown] 16 Jul. 1978: 3. Print.
