The fiery furnaces of hell rhetorical dynamism in youngstown

University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School March 2020 "The Fiery Furnaces of Hell": Rhetorical Dynamism in Youngstown, OH Joshua M. Rea University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.edu/etd Part of the Rhetoric Commons Scholar Commons Citation Rea, Joshua M., ""The Fiery Furnaces of Hell": Rhetorical Dynamism in Youngstown, OH" (2020). Graduate Theses and Dissertations.edu/etd/8285 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons.

For more information, please contact scholarcommons@usf. “The Fiery Furnaces of Hell”: Rhetorical Dynamism in Youngstown, OH by Joshua M. Rea A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition Department of English College of Arts & Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Lisa Melonçon, Ph. Nicole Guenther Discenza, Ph.

Date of Approval: 21 February, 2020 Keywords: rhetoric, place, invention, new materialism Copyright © 2020, Joshua M. Rea Table of Contents Table of Contents. i List of Figures. 1 “Here in Youngstown”.

4 Westlake Terrace and Idora Park. 7 Theoretical Exigency and Framework. 18 Chapter One: Rhetoric, Place, and Dynamism. 19 Rhetoric’s Spatial Turn.

19 Place as Setting for Rhetoric. 20 Rhetorical Practices of Engaging With Place. 21 Place as an Organizational Practice. 22 Place as a Topos for Public Discourse.

22 Place’s Effect on Identity. 23 Relationship Between Place and Memory. 24 Building a Foundation: Ecologies, Force, and Ambience. 25 Ecologies and Subjectivity.

29 Moving Toward Dynamism. 32 Invention and Re-invention. 37 Fluidity and Evolution. 39 Place as Reciprocal Participant.

43 Chapter Two: Archives, Histories, and Dynamism. 48 The Maag Library. 48 i The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County. 51 Reading the Archives.

52 The Materiality of Place in Research. 55 Why Archives? Why History?. 60 Chapter Three: Westlake Terrace. 61 Slums and Beginnings: The Invention of Westlake.

62 Building Westlake: Re-Inventing the Space of Slums. 66 A Nice Place to Live: New Meanings and New Tensions. 70 Desegregation and Freeway Construction: Material Refigurations. 76 De-segregation and White Flight.

76 Freeway Development and Material Re-invention. 79 Dynamic Decay: The Decline of Westlake. 81 The Villages at Arlington: A New Invention. 90 Chapter Four: Idora Park.

92 The History of Idora Park. 93 The Invention of Idora. 100 Idora Park’s Shifting Rhetorical Tensions. 106 The Fluidity and Evolution of Idora Park.

109 Idora Park as a Reciprocal Participant. 114 Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications. 117 Westlake Terrace and Idora Park as Rhetorically Dynamic Places. 117 Invention and Re-invention.

120 Fluidity and Constant Evolution. 122 Place as Reciprocal Participant. 124 Material Impact of Place. 126 Inventing Better Places?.

150 ii List of Figures Figure 1.1: Downtown in 1965 vs.2: Youngstown’s position relative to nearby cities .4: Abandoned steelworker homes on Youngstown’s east side .6: Idora Park in its prime (left) and after its closure (right) .1: Images of Slums .1: Idora Park in 1910 .2: A home on Volney Ave.3: The fire at Idora Park.4: The South Side after Idora Park .5: Idora Park in 2018 .107 iii Abstract This dissertation seeks to define the theory of rhetorical dynamism and illustrate how this theory can be applied to studies of rhetoric and place. The study builds on current rhetorical scholarship and adds to it with the four characteristics of rhetorical dynamism: that places are rhetorically invented, that they hold rhetorical tensions, that they are fluid and constantly evolving, and that they are active participants in a reciprocal rhetorical process. Rhetorical dynamism is illustrated in two places, Westlake Terrace and Idora Park, each in Youngstown, OH. By building a rhetorical history of each site, the study shows how each place is representative of the study’s theoretical claims.

Finally, the study finds that rhetorical dynamism can be usefully applied as a heuristic in future rhetorical scholarship to uncover instances of inequality and injustice and to find avenues to address these issues as they are grounded in particular places. iv Introduction In Youngstown, Ohio’s heyday, downtown (Figure 1.1 below) was a center of entertainment, business, and shopping. One could safely stroll down Federal Street or take a trolley to see Aretha Franklin perform at the Oaks Ballroom, shop at the Woolworth’s department store, or watch a play at Stambaugh Auditorium. The downtown many current residents grew up with, however, was far different.

From the 1970s on, if people even dared to brave this dangerous part of town, it was only to go to work at one of the few call centers populating the small skyscrapers or to drown their sorrows in a dingy dive bar. Boarded doors, empty buildings, and broken windows were the portrait of downtown for years. This makes the revived downtown of the past decade or so a stark contrast, but the signs of Youngstown’s decay and struggle are still prevalent. There are still demolished buildings and vacant storefronts, but they’re interspersed with new restaurants, bars, and even the first downtown hotel in 44 years.

Businesses are finally starting to come back (see figure 1.1), young professionals live in downtown lofts, and entertainment is making a comeback. Yet many people are still uneasy walking downtown; they stick to Federal Street, they don’t go down the dark alleys, and they walk quickly past the broken windows to get to the sparkling new places of a city rebuilding. Youngstown, then, is an example of how places are constantly (re-)invented and change dynamically over time. This brief example is one among many in Youngstown that make evident that the actual geographical and architectural landscapes that make up places are rhetorical - not just rhetorical artifacts to be read, but complex actors that are invented as rhetorical artifacts and 1 Figure 1.1: Downtown in 1965 vs.

Downtown now Images courtesy of John Harris (left) and The Business Journal (right) then generate their own rhetoric as they evolve and change. While some, such as Rai (2016), examine the rhetoric of place as a force enacted through dialogue and argument, I argue that places also enact rhetoric of their own, acting as “a form of communication” (Relph, 1976, p. 34; also see Adams et al 2001). Here I want to develop a theory of places that rests on the idea that places are both constructed by and generative of rhetoric.

To encapsulate these concepts, I use the term rhetorical dynamism, which I employ because of the relative dearth of terminology available for rhetoricians to study places. While there are some terms, such as Rice’s (2012b) ecologies, Rai’s (2016) rhetorical force, or Rickert’s ambience (2013), to name a few, none quite capture the fluid, evolutionary, reciprocal, and active nature of place that rhetorical dynamism provides. In this introduction, I begin to build a theory of rhetorical dynamism as a guiding framework for understanding place. Rhetorical dynamism means that places are active participants in an ongoing process of producing rhetoric, a process that is defined by shifting contexts and tensions.

Dynamism connotes energy, force, power, movement, and vigor. As 2 Adams et al (2001) point out, “place is increasingly recognized as dynamic and fluid” (p. xxi), and rhetorical dynamism helps us understand these qualities of place in conjunction with places’ inherently rhetorical qualities. Rhetorical dynamism, then, means that places (or other rhetorical actors) are active participants in an ever-present kairotic (see Rickert 2007) process of meaning- making and negotiation; because of this process places are characterized by constant change, progress, and evolution.

Furthermore, actors other than the place itself can be either the thing changing or the thing that is causing change at any given moment in the process of rhetoric. These actors are crucial to dynamism because places evolve with them in a reciprocal manner; they are part and parcel of the dynamism of a particular place. Along with rhetorical dynamism, I use several other terms that have contested or complicated histories; because of this, I want to provide brief definitions now to lay the foundation for the rest of the dissertation. These will be discussed in more detail in Chapter One and appear throughout the dissertation.

These terms include: ● Placemaking - a specific approach to urban planning, design, and management that emphasizes communal strengths to create places that promote the overall well-being of the populace. Good placemaking practices generally involve transforming under-utilized space into productive urban places (Lynch 1960; Lynch 1984; Schneekloth and Shibley 1995). ● Place and space - Though I focus primarily on place, space will come up as well, especially as I discuss how space becomes place. These terms are too often conflated, and I want to make a clear distinction here: ○ Space is that which we move through, the empty and open dimensions in which we all exist (Tuan 1977; Casey 1993).

As Gieryn (2000) puts it, space “is more 3 properly conceived as abstract geometries … detached from material form and cultural interpretation” (p. ○ Place is a particular location, position, or portion of space which is built, purposed, named, etc. As Tuan (1977) puts it, “enclosed and humanized space is place” (p. These definitions inform my understanding of invention and of the rhetorics of place and help build my theory of rhetorical dynamism.

I put these concepts into play in a study of Youngstown, Ohio. This dissertation explores Youngstown as one site that has been marked by the dynamism of place. Two of Youngstown’s places in particular, Westlake Terrace and Idora Park, capture the tension of what cultural geographers call “a living design which changes and is eventually replaced by that of a future generation” (Jackson 1951). Similar to the example of downtown above, these places have each experienced significant change over their histories and provide tangible examples of places enacting rhetoric.

Furthermore, each of these shows how the rhetorical invention of places can have significant and far-ranging material impacts, especially for under-privileged and marginalized groups. In what follows, I provide some general background on Youngstown and then introduce the two places I will study, Westlake Terrace and Idora Park, both for those unfamiliar with the city and to show why it is a rich site of study. Then, I will outline my theoretical exigence, including how my terms and theoretical framework help us understand place. Finally, I will conclude with an overview of the rest of the dissertation.

“Here in Youngstown” Situated in the Mahoning River Valley on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania (see Figure 1.2), Youngstown was once a thriving industrial town. With a peak population of 4 Figure 1.2: Youngstown’s position relative to nearby cities Image courtesy Sperling’s Best Places 170,002 in 1930 (United States Census Bureau 1930), Youngstown was an important producer of steel, a place built upon huge, roaring furnaces and blazing foundries, most notably the famous Jeannette Blast Furnace (Linkon and Russo 2002). The city featured an amusement park (Idora Park), a bustling downtown, a public research university, and, at one point, even a professional football team, the Youngstown Patricians. Connected to other industrial cities by the Erie Canal, the Ohio-Pennsylvania Canal, and extensive rail networks, Youngstown was once the top producer of steel in the country, surpassing even Pittsburgh for a time (Linkon and Russo 2002).

Steel made Youngstown a picture of prosperity. Neighborhoods embodied the city’s success with extremely high homeownership rates and a burgeoning and increasingly diverse population (Linkon and Russo 2002). Unfortunately, on “Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company’s Campbell Works shut down. Almost all of the other mills in the area would soon follow suit, putting thousands out of work (Linkon and Russo 2002).