Public Project
Endurance of the Spirit
13,950
Endurance of the Spirit
Location: Milwaukee, WI
Focus:
Photographer, Writer, Researcher, Fine Art, History, Documentary, Culture
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the city of Wheeling, West Virginia, hummed with the sounds of production. The Industrial Revolution in the United States was in full swing and had been drawing large numbers of people from rural areas of the country and from overseas to America’s burgeoning cities, including to this one located along the banks of the Ohio River in the Appalachian foothills. Those who arrived in Wheeling at the time found work in coal mines, iron works, steel mills, tool shops, glass companies, breweries, and cigar factories. And while Wheeling’s working-class laborers often faced pollution, long hours, and low wages, many of them managed to persevere and carve out an existence in the city. Some eventually achieved the prosperity they’d sought.
This is the Wheeling that frequently occupies the thoughts of the city's older residents—the city they say their forbears doggedly built and the one they remember with pride from the days of their youth. Over the course of the second half of the 20th century, the surrounding Upper Ohio Valley's manufacturing industry collapsed, fueling a steady exodus of working-age people and the city’s deterioration. Wheeling's population has fallen from its peak of 61,659 residents in 1930 to fewer than 28,000 in 2015. Given that viable full-time job opportunities remain in relatively short supply, demographers predict that it will be difficult to stop this slide.
However, despite the challenges, small signs of renewal are perhaps more visible in Wheeling today than they have been in years. Long-time residents and newcomers have founded city partnerships and grassroots organizations with the hope of revitalizing the city. They’re striving to preserve and promote its history, grow healthy food in what has long been considered a food desert, and create community for those who have been neglected and marginalized. A collective reassessment of the city's identity is taking place, yielding both eulogies for what is missing and hope for what might be restored or invented.
What calls to people in Wheeling today? Is it the song of dusk enveloping the grand old bridge? Is it the theater where Frankenstein appeared on screen before an entranced audience at the midnight show? It could be something already lost to time, like that elusive specter of the now vacant department store's holiday model trains making their rounds or some other loved thing that may somehow return to town. Or it could be the sense of promise that was held between these hills for someone's parents, the promise that built this city and then survived its precipitous fall, a promise that says you could write the next chapter of Wheeling's story.
This is the Wheeling that frequently occupies the thoughts of the city's older residents—the city they say their forbears doggedly built and the one they remember with pride from the days of their youth. Over the course of the second half of the 20th century, the surrounding Upper Ohio Valley's manufacturing industry collapsed, fueling a steady exodus of working-age people and the city’s deterioration. Wheeling's population has fallen from its peak of 61,659 residents in 1930 to fewer than 28,000 in 2015. Given that viable full-time job opportunities remain in relatively short supply, demographers predict that it will be difficult to stop this slide.
However, despite the challenges, small signs of renewal are perhaps more visible in Wheeling today than they have been in years. Long-time residents and newcomers have founded city partnerships and grassroots organizations with the hope of revitalizing the city. They’re striving to preserve and promote its history, grow healthy food in what has long been considered a food desert, and create community for those who have been neglected and marginalized. A collective reassessment of the city's identity is taking place, yielding both eulogies for what is missing and hope for what might be restored or invented.
What calls to people in Wheeling today? Is it the song of dusk enveloping the grand old bridge? Is it the theater where Frankenstein appeared on screen before an entranced audience at the midnight show? It could be something already lost to time, like that elusive specter of the now vacant department store's holiday model trains making their rounds or some other loved thing that may somehow return to town. Or it could be the sense of promise that was held between these hills for someone's parents, the promise that built this city and then survived its precipitous fall, a promise that says you could write the next chapter of Wheeling's story.
2 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
The city of Wheeling, West Virginia, lies along the Ohio River amidst the rolling hills of the unglaciated section of the Allegheny Plateau. Prior to the arrival of white European explorers, this region had been inhabited and utilized for thousands of years by various Indigenous peoples, including the Shawnee, Lenni Lanape (Delaware), among others. The name "Wheeling" itself is derived from a Lenape (Delaware) phrase meaning “place of the head” or "place of the skull," a reference commonly attributed to a legend about how a local tribe decapitated a trespasser and placed his head on a pole at the juncture of Wheeling Creek and the Ohio River.
The land wasn’t permanently occupied by white settlers until 1769, when Colonel Ebenezer Zane threaded his way between the hills and down to the mouth of the creek, laying claim to the land on which the city of Wheeling would be built. Conflicts between colonizing settlers and Indigenous groups continued, but his small river outpost survived. Wheeling was established as a town in 1795.
The terrain to the east of the area was initially a formidable obstacle to its development, but early residents petitioned Congress to bring the first federal highway—known as the National Road—from its origin in Cumberland, Maryland, across the Allegheny Mountains to Wheeling in 1818, thus connecting the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and facilitating the transit of goods and travelers between the cities of the East and the expanding Western states. They followed this by constructing the Wheeling suspension bridge—the first bridge to cross the Ohio and the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time it opened to celebratory cannon fire in 1849. And when the B & O railroad reached the city four years later, the transportation hub created by the confluence of river, road, and rail was complete, establishing a base from which Wheeling would grow and thrive for nearly 100 years.
The land wasn’t permanently occupied by white settlers until 1769, when Colonel Ebenezer Zane threaded his way between the hills and down to the mouth of the creek, laying claim to the land on which the city of Wheeling would be built. Conflicts between colonizing settlers and Indigenous groups continued, but his small river outpost survived. Wheeling was established as a town in 1795.
The terrain to the east of the area was initially a formidable obstacle to its development, but early residents petitioned Congress to bring the first federal highway—known as the National Road—from its origin in Cumberland, Maryland, across the Allegheny Mountains to Wheeling in 1818, thus connecting the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and facilitating the transit of goods and travelers between the cities of the East and the expanding Western states. They followed this by constructing the Wheeling suspension bridge—the first bridge to cross the Ohio and the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time it opened to celebratory cannon fire in 1849. And when the B & O railroad reached the city four years later, the transportation hub created by the confluence of river, road, and rail was complete, establishing a base from which Wheeling would grow and thrive for nearly 100 years.
3 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
At the Warwood Tool Company, William Davenport’s movements appear as a hypnotic dance in the face of the billowing heat of the slot furnace. He pulls a steel billet from a stack, swings toward the waiting furnace, and deposits it. Seconds later, after gauging the color—now white like some celestial object—he clenches and delivers it to the forging stage. The company was founded in 1854 and supplies tools to the railroad, mining and construction industries. It's one of Wheeling's few remaining functioning remnants of its significant 19th-century industrial age, but it faces the pressure of competition with cheaper foreign-made products and the contraction of the steel industry.
4 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
John Lapinsky, a former Wheeling-area machinist, bears the pain of arthritis to descend his front stairs on Wheeling Island. Lapinsky remembers when the Ohio Valley's manufacturing base was stronger. "I retired a couple of years before it all started happening around here. I was lucky," he says.
5 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
Equipment that was auctioned off after the closure of the La Belle Cut Nail Plant waits to be claimed. La Belle was one of Wheeling’s early industrial successes. Built in 1852, the plant produced four-sided cut nails, first with iron and then later with steel. This type, prized in construction work for its strength, preceded the round wire nails we more commonly use today. Until the late 1700s, nails had been made individually, with a blacksmith hammering four sides of the malleable end of an iron rod into a point. The nail-making machines that were operated at La Belle and elsewhere in the mid-1800s revolutionized the process.
LaBelle grew to be the largest producer of cut nails in the world and was responsible for Wheeling once being known as “Nail City.” By 1874, the South Wheeling complex housed 83 machines and employed at least 400 men.
A year-long strike at the facility in 1885 resulted in a shortage of cut nails and a subsequent influx of wire nails to make up the difference. Some workers were replaced by automatic nail feeding machines. La Belle would go on to be absorbed into the then failing Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation before finally closing in 2010. It was one of two cut nail plants left in the United States at the time of its closing; only ten employees remained when the machines were shut off.
LaBelle grew to be the largest producer of cut nails in the world and was responsible for Wheeling once being known as “Nail City.” By 1874, the South Wheeling complex housed 83 machines and employed at least 400 men.
A year-long strike at the facility in 1885 resulted in a shortage of cut nails and a subsequent influx of wire nails to make up the difference. Some workers were replaced by automatic nail feeding machines. La Belle would go on to be absorbed into the then failing Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation before finally closing in 2010. It was one of two cut nail plants left in the United States at the time of its closing; only ten employees remained when the machines were shut off.
6 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
Mel Joseph, a lifelong Wheeling resident, attempts to straighten a tangled American flag outside of Kepner Funeral Home in Wheeling. Joseph and his friend Bob Carl, also a lifelong resident, perform general maintenance for the Kepner chain of funeral homes, one of the few remaining family-owned businesses in Wheeling.
7 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
In the lobby of Wheeling's St. Alphonsus church, a picture of Jesus Christ hangs above a small table featuring a framed photograph of the empty chair adjacent to it. The photograph commemorates the church's long-time parishioner and sacristan, Charlie Saad, who often sat in this chair on days when he was serving at the church. Saad passed away in 2014. Over the past few decades, attendance has declined at many of Wheeling's Catholic churches and several of them have permanently closed their doors.
8 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
Members of Harold Winley and the Clovers begin gathering backstage before their performance at Wheeling's historic Capitol Theatre.
9 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
A crowd mills about at the Capitol Theater. The venue, which was built in 1928 and has hosted Jamboree USA and the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was reopened in 2009 after being closed for two years for renovations.
10 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
The current owner of the building that once housed the defunct Hazel-Atlas Glass Company walks through one of its many cavernous rooms. Hazel-Atlas Glass was one of the largest producers of glass containers in the United States. There are now discussions of demolishing sections of the complex and redeveloping the land.
11 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
Andrea Spain, Gabrielle Marshall, Emma Guy—three of the four high school students currently enrolled in Wheeling's Lyceum Preparatory Academy—absorb a lesson from headmaster Judith Jones-Hayes. In spirit, Lyceum is a reincarnation of the city's prestigious Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy, which closed its doors in 2008 after operating for more than 140 years. Lyceum is located in a mansion originally occupied by an early Wheeling merchant, and it features a curriculum that covers standard academic subjects, as well as rowing, fencing, Latin and violin.
12 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
Ron Scott, Jr., a counselor for at-risk youth and a third-generation Wheeling resident, and his mother, Linda Scott, a nurse, pose for a portrait outside of Linda's home in East Wheeling.
13 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
The small gymnasium of East Wheeling's Laughlin Memorial Chapel brims with life during a free-time period at an after-school program for the city's middle and high school students. "I would say there's not a lot of stuff anymore for the kids to do in this area," staff member and former attendee Monica Manns says. "We provide a safe space for them to come do homework and to get out in the community and help."
14 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
Four years after its closure, traces of human touch linger at the La Belle Cut Nail Plant. A nail that was bent and repurposed into a coat hook. Chalk tally marks adorning a concrete wall. A pair of gloves tacked above a doorway along with a message written in black marker on a strip of electrical tape. The message says "Joe's Last Gloves."
15 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
A man is bandaged after he fell on the street outside of House of Hagar Catholic Worker in East Wheeling. Kate Marshall, who operates the organization out of her own home, opens her doors to the city for meals on Sunday, offers her washing machine and shower to those who need them, and has taken in foster children who were in vulnerable situations—all of which are avenues for achieving her central goal for the city. “Our main mission is to be family to everybody here in this neighborhood,” she says. “The one thing I hope we are is hospitable love.”
16 of 16
© 2025 Keith Rutowski
Danny Swan and Gloria Reina take an evening walk with their son, Sero, along the banks of the Ohio River in Wheeling. The city's population has been declining for decades, with young people leaving in particularly large numbers. In the past few years, however, a few have reacted against the trend, putting down roots and starting families and new ventures like Swan's Grow Ohio Valley, which produces fresh and healthy vegetables in this area that had been considered a food desert. Some hope that initiatives such as these will help carve out a new direction for post-industrial Wheeling.
Close
