MANSFIELD

20th and 21st centuries

By 1908, the blockhouse became a symbol of Mansfield's heritage during its 100th birthday celebration, and in 1929, the blockhouse was relocated to its present location at South Park.

The Mansfield Tire and Rubber Company was founded in the city in 1912, producing tires for automobiles. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Mansfield tire brand stood shoulder to shoulder with Goodyear, Goodrich, Firestone and Uniroyal, the "Big Four" tire name brands in the industry at the time. The Mansfield Tire and Rubber Company continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s, before its production started to decline in the 1970s. The company declared bankruptcy in the early 1980s, after closing in 1979, leaving 1,721 workers out of a job.

In 1913, parts of Mansfield were flooded when the Great Flood of 1913 brought 3 to 8 inches (76 to 203 mm) of rainfall across Ohio between March 24 and 25. The first road across America, the Lincoln Highway, came to the city in 1913, smoothing the path for economic growth. In 1924, Oak Hill Cottage, a Gothic Revival brick house, built in 1847 by John Robinson, superintendent of the Sandusky, Mansfield and Newark Railroad was the setting of The Green Bay Tree, Mansfield native Louis Bromfield's first novel.

In 1927, the 9-story Leland Hotel was constructed downtown on the southwest corner of Park Avenue West and South Walnut Street at a cost of $556,000. The Leland Hotel was the tallest building in Mansfield when completed, and was designed by architect Vernon Redding, that also designed the Mansfield Public Library, Farmers Bank Building, Mansfield Savings Bank Building and Mansfield General Hospital. The hotel was razed in 1976 to make way for a parking lot. What remains of the Leland Hotel today is the hotel's compass rose that was embedded in the sidewalk along Walnut Street where the front door of the hotel once was.

Like many cities in the Rust Belt, the 1970s and 1980s brought urban blight, and losses of significant household name blue-collar manufacturing jobs. In recent years, Mansfield's downtown, which once underscored the community's economic difficulties, has seen innovative revitalization through the establishment of Main Street Mansfield (known today as Downtown Mansfield, Inc.), and is a site of new business growth. In 1993, Lydia Reid was sworn in as the city's first female mayor and became the longest-serving mayor of Mansfield encompassing three four-year terms. Reid was succeeded in 2007 by Donald Culliver, the city's first black mayor.

In December 2009, the city was placed on fiscal watch by the state auditor citing substantial deficit balances in structural operating general funds. On August 19, 2010, Mansfield would become Ohio's largest city to be declared in fiscal emergency with a deficit of $3.8 million after city officials failed to pass measures on cost-savings and cut spending, blaming it on the Great Recession. The city's financial crisis lasted nearly four years before being lifted out of fiscal emergency on July 9, 2014.

Mansfield, in partnership with local and national partners, is addressing blight and economic stagnation in the city center.