By RYAN E. SMITH
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Article published Monday, July 19, 2004
Local residents ate up a book on Toledo's Hungarian heritage last year, and now officials at the University of Toledo believe they're hungry for more.
The UT Urban Affairs Center, hot off the success of a book it published about the Birmingham ethnic neighborhood, has formed a press to publish more books of local interest.
Its first product is a guidebook for downtown Toledo providing photos and architectural and historic descriptions of 57 significant buildings and sites.
Examples of Toledo's lost heritage - such as the Paramount Theatre, reduced now to a parking lot - also are remembered with pictures and basic information.
The pocket-sized Discover Downtown Toledo pamphlets, which include a map, cost $5 and are available at the main branch of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library as well as Thackeray's Books and the UT bookstore.
They are free to anyone who takes part in the Discover Downtown Toledo tours, sponsored by the UT center and the library during the summer.
"I think the value is priceless," said Ted Ligibel, director of the historic preservation program at Eastern Michigan University and a Sylvania resident who helped revise the guide.
"It's good for not only local people who are kind of rediscovering their heritage, but for visitors and tourists who want to know about how a city developed over time."
The Urban Affairs Center has a history of working with faculty members and local groups on publications that mostly deal with local history and other local topics, said Sue Wuest, the center's assistant director.
The idea to form a press dedicated to northwest Ohio was born after Hungarian American Toledo, which was published in 2003 by the UT center, sold more than 1,000 copies.
Officials decided to use the profits from the book as seed money for similar projects, said Thomas Barden, a UT English professor who is director of the press and who co-wrote the book on Toledo's Hungarian history.
Mr. Barden said the press will focus on general-interest books for the region, things unlikely to draw the eye of national publishers or most academic presses.
"Not a scholarship tome, but a good read for the citizens of this area about this area," he said.
Next up will be a history of the Irish in northwest Ohio. Seamus Metress, a UT anthropology professor putting the book together, said the press could encourage other cities to pursue similar undertakings.
Mr. Barden said other potential works could deal with the history of local unions and other ethnic groups or provide the stories of area World War II veterans as a local version of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation.
Eventually, he said, it could expand into fiction and poetry too.
Contact Ryan E. Smith at: ryansmith@theblade.com or 419-724-6074.