The Shenango Valley sits on the
western edge of Pennsylvania, where the Shenango River flows southward toward
the Ohio. It includes 8
communities in Pennsylvania and, on the valley’s western heights, in Ohio. Nestled in the river valley is the city
of Sharon. At the top of the east hill is Hermitage. When I was a boy, it was just Hickory Township. In those days, the real economic
center of the region was the Valley.
Sharon sat on either side of the river, while up and down the river were
the steel mills, the fabricating plants, Westinghouse, a railroad tank care
manufacturing center, and other industries. Sharon was a mill town. At one time it was a major steel producing area, based on
the easy availability of a fuel that left no residue. Today, much of that is gone, but there remains a powerful
and positive legacy of a family who, at the height of the industrial revolution,
ran the mills and, in their later years, contributed
greatly to the quality of life in the community. As a youngster,
I took their gifts for granted. Today,
I am amazed. Decades after the
Shenango Valley became part of the rust belt, its residents continue to benefit
from gifts to the community provided by the Buhl family as these communities
seek a new role in a new age. This
is the story of their legacy.
The Buhl Family
Frank Buhl was the grandson of
immigrants. His grandfather,
Christian Buhl, was a hat maker who emigrated from Bavaria in 1804 and settled
in Zelionople in Butler County.
Frank’s father, Christian H. Buhl, was born in Butler in 1812 and
learned the hatter’s trade. With
his brother, Fred, he moved to the Detroit area where they ran a successful fur
trading company. In 1855,
Christian H. left the fur trade and became an industrialist, developing
connections with a variety of banks, railroads, and several ironworks. He served as Mayor of Detroit from
1860-61.
In
1862, Christian H. turned his attention to the Shenango Valley. From the beginning, the Valley was attractive to iron
makers. It was one of a very few
sources of “block coal”—a kind of coal that contained no sulfur and burned
without leaving behind ashes (Mercer
County, p. 71). As early as 1850, Joel Curtis, a local
coal mine operator, decided to take the next step and use some of his coal to smelt
iron. Curtis established the
Sharon Iron Company, which occupied several blocks along the flats on the east
side of the Shenango River. The
company included a coal railroad, two mines, and ten industrial buildings,
including a furnace and rolling mill.
It also owned several company houses for employees. Christian H. Buhl invested in the plant
in 1865.
FrankH. Buhl was born in Detroit in 1848.
After graduating from Yale University, he moved to Sharon in 1867 to
work for the Sharon Iron Company.
He later became plant manager and then superintendent. He left the area in 1878 to take
charge of his father’s copper and brass rolling mill in Detroit, returning to
Sharon in 1887 to oversee operations at the Sharon plant. By 1888, it was the largest plant in
Mercer County, employing 700 workers . Frank Buhl went on to acquire and lead
other mills in the region, including the Sharon Steel Castings Company, the
first steel manufacturing facility in the Valley and in Mercer County. He also owned and operated several coal
mines in the region.
Shortly
after returning to Sharon, Buhl met and married Julia A. Forker. Julia was born in Mercer. Her parents, Henry and Selina Forker,
brought her to Sharon as a young child.
Her father, a coal mine owner, died in a railroad accident in 1885. The couple built a stone mansion on
Sharon’s east hill, within easy walking distance of downtown Sharon. The mansion remains today, restored and
operating as a bed and breakfast. The
Buhls lived in Sharon for the remainder of their lives, where they were
actively involved in the social life of the community. Frank died in 1918;
Julia survived until 1936.
Commitment to Community
The Buhls were childless and, after
Buhl sold his operations in the early 1900s, they devoted the rest of their
lives to community service. For
example, they continued funding for the Christian H. Buhl Hospital—forerunner
of today’s Sharon Regional Hospital—that Frank’s father had helped to get
started. One of their first
investments was in the Buhl Independent Rifles (BIR), an independent military
and civic organization that had grown out of a national call for volunteers
during Spanish-American War. Buhl
made the first donation to the BIR and was a frequent contributor; he also
loaned BIR funds (later cancelling the loan) to build an armory that housed the
weekly BIR drills and a wide range of social and civic events, annual banquets,
dances, and meetings. In turn, the
BIR supported other organizations, including the local chapter of the Sunshine
Society and a community basketball team (Mercer
County, p. 183).
The F.H. Buhl Club
In
1901, the Buhls began work on the F.H. Buhl Club, setting aside funds for:
The maintenance of a club for
social enjoyment by means of games, such as billiards, pool, bowling, checkers,
chess or other innocent amusements, including also facilities for gymnastics
exercises, swimming, and other athletic sports; the maintenance of a library
and reading room for the use of its members and the encouragement of education;
and the erection, furnishing and equipment of a building for the use of said
club, with a hall for public and private purposes. (Buhlbullet)
A new building was constructed on
East State Street, a short walk from the Buhl mansion, to house the club. It was completed in 1903. The ground floor included bowling
alleys, a small auditorium, locker and shower rooms, and general rooms; the
second floor included offices, the library stacks, a reading and reference
rooms, as well as a billiard room and gym. A music room and several meeting and classrooms were on the
third floor.
The
library faced State Street and featured marble floors and a two-story
semi-circular stacks for books with hardwood shelves, a large reading/reference
room, and a children’s library. Initially,
the library was available only to Buhl Club members, but in the 1920s, voters
approved a levy to support the library, which became the Sharon Free Public
Library in 1923. It
attracted nearly 2,000 members in the first year and continued to grow,
expanding children’s branches to five local elementary schools. By the late 1960s, the library was
over-crowded, forcing a move to a new facility a block away from its original
Buhl Club home.
Julia Buhl and the Buhl Girls Club
After
Frank Buhl died in 1918, Julia continued his community service work. One of her many projects was the Mercer
County branch of the International Sunshine Society. This group supported under-privileged children, arranging
summer vacations on local farm and providing medical and dental care,
eyeglasses, shoes and clothing, and hot lunches for school children. In the 1930s, she remodeled the
Boys’ Club, and, in 1936, expanded the club’s basic mission by opening a girls’
club on the site of the old Buhl Independent Rifles Armory. Memberships were given to female students who maintained good
grades in school. Over the years,
it served as a recreation center for girls and as a venue for dances and other
social events. The Club continued
operations until 1987, when its services were consolidated with the F.H. Buhl
Club.
Buhl Community Recreation Center
Today,
the Buhl Community Recreation Center
operates out of the original F.H. Buhl building on East State
Street. Recent youth
programs included academic tutoring, piano, guitar, and voice lessons, and
instruction on crocheting and German.
A mother/child “Fun Time Gym” program focuses on developing gross motor
skills, while a “Prince Party” introduced young girls to ballet and the social
graces. Dance classes were offered for pre-school youngsters through
teenagers. Youth gymnastics
training was offered for beginner through advanced. Adult programs included yoga,
volleyball, guitar, painting, voice, crocheting, sewing, piano, and
German. In addition, members and
guests have access to an indoor swimming pool and handball and racquetball
courts, ping pong, pool, air hockey and other games. A new service introduced in 2013 was a Building Blocks Child
Center in the site of the original Children’s Library. In addition, the Center hosted an arts
and crafts show and a community sing.
A
focal point for many Center fitness programs is the Henry and Catherine EvansFitness Center. Recently, Fitness Center has been
enhanced with the addition of $100,000 in new cardio and strength training
equipment.
The
vision of the Center
is “to provide individuals &
families a positive, accepting environment, enabling them to achieve excellence
in their leisure, education, physical fitness & life.” Center Director Tony Rogers notes, “There’s
hardly a person here who won’t tell you how being a member has changed his
life, who found a mentor or got advice, who was touched in a positive
way.”
In 1907, Buhl began to acquire land
in Hickory Township (now Hermitage, Pa.), bordering Sharon, for the purpose of
creating a park “for the benefit and enjoyment of the public.” By 1911, he had acquired 300 acres,
which he began to develop. The
“Buhl Farm” (a term he used to avoid confusion with an amusement park)
initially included four miles of roadways, seven wells for drinking water, an 11-acre
artificial lake (today called Lake Julia) and a lakeside building—the
Casino—that was used by swimmers and for dances and other social events.
Buhl
Farm opened in 1914, with the goal, according to Frank Buhl, that it be “used
as a playground and a place of cultural enhancement for the public in general
and especially the residents of the community." It included a picnic grove with a shelter
building. There were also tennis
courts, an athletic field with seating for 1,000 spectators, a children’s
playground and a golf course. For
many years, Lake Julia was a popular ice skating site in winter months; a
professional ice skating rink was creating when the Lake no longer was
appropriate. Lake Julia was
recently re-dredged and re-opened.
Over
the years, other features were added to Buhl Farm, including a swimming pool
and pool house adjacent to the Casino, a Farm House that today is the home of
the Avalon Golf and Country Club, an Activities Building housing child care and
a Summer Youth Program, a memorial garden in memory of Julia Buhl, a baseball
field, a driving range, a fitness trail, and a gazebo. In 2001, an arboretum project was begun
that today features more than six hundred trees.
The
park itself is free and open to the public. Anyone can use it for jogging picnics, playing tennis or
using the other facilities. The
swimming pool has a small fee, but it is kept low. The park is a popular site for family and school reunions,
wedding receptions, and other events.
An
important part of the original park was a free nine-hole golf course
—still the only free golf course in the United States. Called “Dum Dum” by locals, the
free course has several simple rules that reflect Buhl’s commitment to free
public access:
·
Each golfer must have a bag, a minimum of four
clubs, and a putter.
·
No children under seven are permitted on the
course.
·
Children aged seven to eleven are permitted to
play if they are accompanied by an adult and have completed a formal golf
instruction course.
·
Shirts are required; “short-shorts” are not
permitted.
·
No alcoholic beverages are permitted.
·
Play is limited to groups of four members or
fewer.
Dum
Dum introduced many Valley youngsters to the game of golf. Joe Thiel, owner of Joe Thiel Golf
Schools, wrote in 2008
“ . . . like most children growing
up in our blue collar city I could not afford the expensive game of golf, but
through Mr. Buhl’s generous gift this 9-hole course was free for all youngsters
like me as it still is today, and I wore out my welcome. With old Sam Sneed signature hand-me-down
gold clubs, I would be there from 5:30 am in the morning when the sun was just
perfect on summer days and did not return until the church bills rang at their
5:30 daily time. From the time I
was 10 years old I knew . . . that I would at all costs become a gold
professional.”
“We
have been blessed with an asset that very few Communities will ever have,”
observed Buhl Park Corporation President Phil Marrie in a December 2013
Facebook message.
He noted some of the many services that the Park provides to the
Shenango Valley community today:
Free
public concerts during the summers that brings the residents of the Communities
together to appreciate what was given to us and to enjoy relationships that we
have developed over the years. A swimming pool that is operated to allow all
residents of the Shenango Valley have a community pool that benefits all. A
fantastic place to walk and run and be with friends and enjoy the beauty of the
Farm. Many activities that allow our youth to understand environmental
needs....Fishing in Lake Julia.....Programs during the year to teach students
of the Valley, about the environment.
Conclusion
It
was not unusual for companies to provide recreational facilities to their
workers in the heady days of the Industrial Revolution. In the Shenango Valley, for instance,
Westinghouse Corporation also created a small public park that included tennis
courts, baseball diamonds, and a picnic area. What made Buhl Park, the Buhl Clubs, and the library unusual
is that, often, they were created after—in some cases decades after—the Buhls
sold their interest in the local steel mills. The Buhl facilities were, upon reflection, more of a personal
contribution to a community that had been good to them than an investment in
worker satisfaction.
It
is worth noting that Frank Buhl also lent his name to the town of Buhl, Idaho,
which was founded in 1906. Buhl
had been a major investor in a large-scale irrigation project in the area,
which is now known as the Trout Capitol of the World. Yet, as Steve Cump noted in the Magicvalley.com news service, “Our man Frank gets no respect hereabouts.” The Buhls contributed not to
their own name or business interests, but to the community where they spent
their adult lives.
The
challenge, today, is that it is harder to define community. Wendell Berry defined “community” as a
local interdependence: “ . . .a
community is a locally understood interdependence of local people, local
culture, local economy and local nature.” (Sex,
Economy, Freedom, and Community, p. 120). In today’s global economy, when supply chains,
production, and value chains are distributed globally, it is sometimes harder
to see how we are interdependent on a local scale. Part of the legacy of Frank and Julia Buhl is the vision
that one invests in ways that help create community.
References
Berry, Wendell.
Sex, Economy, Freedom, and
Community. Pantheon Books,
1992.
Mercer County Historical Society. Mercer County
Pennsylvania:Pictorial History 1800-2000.
Donnnig Company Publishers, 2001.
