By 1812Blockhouse
Before there was a Secret City Tour, there was a Forbidden City Tour.
Before the annual look inside downtown Mansfield’s upper floors, hidden rooms, and seldom-seen spaces became a familiar local tradition, a 2012 event invited residents to see the city from a different angle. It was called the Mansfield Forbidden City Tour, and it offered something both simple and irresistible: access to places people passed every day but rarely, if ever, had the chance to enter.
Opening Doors Downtown
The tour took place on May 5, 2012, from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, with tickets priced at $20. It was co-hosted by Downtown Mansfield, Inc. and Preservation Ohio, the state’s original historic preservation organization.
The Mansfield event followed Ohio’s first Forbidden City Tour, which had been held the previous year in downtown Springfield. The idea was a natural fit for Mansfield, a city with a downtown full of older commercial buildings, upper-story spaces, architectural surprises, and stories layered into brick, stone, staircases, and storefronts. The tour began at Engwiller Properties at 4 West Fourth Street, placing visitors immediately in the heart of downtown.
A Glimpse Behind Familiar Facades
Among the buildings featured were City Mills at 160 North Main Street and the Eagles Building at 133 North Main Street, both examples of the kind of downtown structures that hold far more history than a sidewalk glance can reveal.
The tour also included the second and third floors above City News at 98 North Main Street, as well as City Grille at 37 East Fourth Street.
Another stop was the Charles Schroer Mortuary Building at 131 North Diamond Street. At the time, it was one more historic downtown building with a past. Soon, it would take on a very different future as the home of Phoenix Brewing Company, now one of downtown Mansfield’s best-known destinations.
A Successful Experiment
By all accounts, the Mansfield Forbidden City Tour was a rousing success. Its appeal was not hard to understand. Downtown buildings are public landmarks from the outside, but private mysteries on the inside. The tour gave people a chance to step beyond the storefronts and see the spaces where earlier generations worked, gathered, lived, and built the city’s commercial life. It also helped make a larger point: historic preservation is not only about saving buildings. It is about reconnecting people with places they thought they already knew.
From Forbidden To Secret
Today’s Secret City Tour carries forward that same sense of discovery, inviting participants to look again at downtown Mansfield and notice what is hidden above, behind, and within the buildings that define the city’s core.
This year’s Secret City Tour takes place this Saturday. More information can be found in our story below. We have also included four photos from that first Forbidden City Tour in 2012.
