The Upper Ohio Valley's Industrial Heritage: The East Liverpool Museum of Ceramics

Abstract

From its headwaters in western Pennsylvania, the Ohio River snakes through a valley whose sublime beauty dazzled 18th-century frontiersmen and whose abundance of natural resources inspired ambitious 19th-century entrepreneurs. Today, the drive along the upper Ohio Valley is striking from another perspective: the landscape from Pittsburgh to Wheeling testifies to the desolation of deindustrialization. Once-bustling towns that drew their lifeblood from ready river transportation and from the region's deposits of coal, iron, natural gas, and clay now stand in ghostly silence. From Midland to Bellaire, empty plants remind passersby of the formerly prosperous steel and glass industries. In East Liverpool, a small city 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, a lone early-20th-century bottle-shaped kiln attests to the city's former standing as the ceramics manufacturing center of the United States (see fig. 1). This kiln, a tiny monument to the city's industrial past, once sat among dozens of nearly identical brick ovens that vented coal-black smoke into skies over East Liverpool. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Sites, the kiln is the property of the Ohio Historical Society (OHS), which opened the nearby East Liverpool Museum of Ceramics (ELMC) in 1980. Among OHS's fifty or more holdings in 1992, ELMC was one of a handful to focus on the industrial history of the Buckeye State. Located in a restored post office building built in 1909, ELMC has two floors of exhibits open to the public five days a week, March through November, for the modest adult admission price of $3.00. The museum houses a reference collection, available to scholars by appointment, that consists of artifacts and manuscripts related to local institutions, individuals, and the pottery industry.