Not since the Great Fire and Flood of 1892 had the City of Oil City embarked on such a major project in a prime business district. That was the cry for action that began in 1958 and ended in 1963 with a dramatic transformation of the East End neighborhood. It would be the first of three such redevelopment projects that would alter the East End, the Main Street area and
Siverly, one of Oil City’s most unique neighborhoods, was the last one to give up its independence as a separate borough when it finally merged with the City of Oil City in 1910. There are several unusual claims as to the riverfront community – it once boasted the largest inland refinery in the world; it claimed a factory that was the largest manufacturing plant in the world for oil and
Oil City was in the national news on April 10, 1984, and the local reaction was anything but positive. The page one story was in the prestigious Wall Street Journal newspaper and was titled “So You’ve Landed A Headquarters Job? Don’t Smile So Fast.” Susan Carey, a staff reporter for the Journal, a daily newspaper with the largest circulation in the U.S. at that time, wrote about the tribulations facing
Oil City once claimed a large and thriving Jewish population with dozens of families living in neighborhoods throughout the town. In the 1920s, about 155 Jewish families lived within the city’s boundaries while Franklin, Titusville and Clarion claimed slightly smaller numbers. The influx of Jewish families to the Oil Valley began within a year of Col. Edwin Drake’s successful oil well near Titusville in 1859. Roxanne Hitchcock of Oil
Many Oil City residents earned high recognition as well as enormous wealth. Others, meanwhile, have shared ties with those individuals who had both fame and money. The relationships included leading U.S. businessmen, company founders, and philanthropists. Here’s a quick look at some of those brushes with fame and fortune: Andrew Carnegie In 1900, public library enthusiasts, including the Belles Lettres Club members, were eager to establish a free-standing library in
Oil City and the surrounding area luxuriated in wealth gained from the booming oil and gas industries for decades. While those successful men, and a few women, had direct ties to the local industries, others had connections to the region that were not associated with those commodities. Some residents, too, never sullied their hands in the oil patch but shared their largesse from those labors in later years. Here’s a
Oil Well Supply, located in a sprawling plant in Oil City’s Siverly neighborhood, was one of the city’s most unique manufacturing companies and a major economic force within the community. No history of Siverly can be told without the story of Oil Well Supply being added to the mix. The company would take over, and later expand, the site of the former Imperial Refinery when it was shuttered and abandoned
The Oil City Relief Association and city hall teamed up in December 1894 for a week-long celebration to raise money for the city’s poor. Billed as the Winter Midway Plaisance, the events mirrored similar activities held in major cities across the U.S. at that time. They were in tribute to the Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, held the previous year to mark the 400th anniversary of
Oil City’s unique history can come out in bits and pieces. The community can claim one-of-a-kinds, distinguished public servants, music accolades and a wide assortment of the ‘Did You Know?’ categories. Here’s a quick sampling of our ‘Did You Know?’ heritage: Did You Know? Two sports-related items in the Aug. 23, 1888, edition of the Oil City Weekly Derrick newspaper are eye-catchers. One item told of Col. Louis Rogers Browning,
A Milestone in 2022 Second Presbyterian Church, one of Oil City’s most imposing churches, marked its 150th anniversary in 2022. Organized on Jan. 13, 1866, with 29 charter members, church members met in a rented hall at the corner of Front Street and Central Avenue. There was some discussion that the new church should merge with the First Presbyterian Church that was organized five years earlier. However, that effort stalled