Youngstown is small, and its memory is long.
Today, the fallen steel giant is redefining itself: Over there, a Hilton took over the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company’s office; here, a U-Haul storage facility has occupied the milk bottle-shaped architecture of the former Isaly’s Dairy.
In Bruce Springsteen’s crooning imagination, Youngstown had “smokestacks reaching like the arms of God into a beautiful sky of soot and clay.” But its booming steel mills are a thing of the past. In 1977, on what’s known as Black Monday, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company’s Campbell Works closed, resulting in 5,000 lost jobs. Over the next five years, 50,000 lost their livelihoods, beginning a decline from 140,000 residents to under 60,000 today.
A map of Youngstown, Ohio, with an inset showing it’s location in the state.
Location: The Mahoning Valley in Northeast Ohio
Population: 59,605 (2024 census estimates)
Area: About 36 square miles
Housing: 56 percent owner-occupied housing (2020-24 census estimates)
The vibe: A former steel industry giant, Youngstown’s growing downtown retains neoclassical buildings from its turn-of-the-century heyday and postwar homes on its suburban outskirts.
The city accumulated a history of crime, violence and poverty, as well as an abundance of abandoned buildings, often landing it in “bleakest cities of the world” roundups.
Every few years, a politician promises to help reopen the steel mills — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Donald J. Trump among them. And while nostalgia can be appealing, over many decades and through much pain, residents of the Rust Belt city determined that the only way forward was through change.
In 2020, Phelps Street was converted into a pedestrian-only corridor downtown.
As a result of state and local initiatives, businesses are reopening and enrollment at Youngstown State University is increasing. After decades of steep population decline, the rate of contraction has slowed in the city and metro area, and crime has fallen too, the homicide rate down 58 percent from 2021 to 2025.
Now, Youngstown is becoming an easier place to call home. The cost of living is low, even for the Midwest. Turn-of-the-century estates with massive lawns are available on the city’s north side, and industrial-chic apartments above renovated store fronts downtown are listed below national averages. And while the city is not known for good weather, it avoids most natural disasters.
Italian immigrants in the 20th century created Youngstown’s idiosyncratic Brier Hill pizza, which features Parmesan instead of mozzarella.
It’s also overwhelmingly friendly. Strangers smile at each other. People chat.
Its new mayor, Derrick McDowell, knows the city’s historic challenges firsthand. His older brother was murdered when Mr. McDowell was just 14.
“This city’s been rough on the spirit and tough on the soul,” he said. Still, he has not given up on his hometown.
Like his predecessor, Mr. McDowell has focused on public safety. A previous program increasing police patrols has been reinstated, and his administration hosted a job fair in early September in partnership with the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, a municipal program that partners law enforcement agencies and social service providers.
The city has also been able to diminish the amount of vacant buildings since the 2009 debut of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation.
To read the full article from The New York Times, click here.
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