Riverfront Renaissance

Despite all the natural assets that Toledo, Ohio, enjoys because of its location at the place where the gaping mouth of the Maumee River empties into an eponymous bay, something man-made is making waves in western Lake Erie’s predominant port city. The largest mural in the United States — the Glass City River Wall (GCRW) — measures 170,000 square feet and covers 28 silos at an ADM grain terminal. Stretching for about 900 feet along the river’s east side, the 135-foot-tall silos form a colossal concrete canvas for larger-than-life images of flamboyant sunflowers, stunning blue skies and Native American likenesses that honor the indigenous people who first farmed the land in what is now Ohio’s northwest corner.

Although GCRW is, well, elevating Toledo tourism, its earliest fans were boaters who loved circling in front of the silos to honk their horns and shout encouragement to the painters working in boom man lifts high above the water. In fact, GCRW is such a monumental attraction that even before it was finished, J&M Cruise Lines, which also operates downtown Toledo’s water taxi, began offering excursions to the mural on its sightseeing vessel, The Sandpiper.

History abounds

Long before tour boats plied the Maumee, of course, the area was populated by Native Americans who built villages, planted crops and traversed its waters in birch bark canoes. After the Revolutionary War, Americans’ growing hunger for native lands in the Ohio Territory triggered bloodshed and atrocities that culminated in 1794 on a battlefield, Fallen Timbers, that is now preserved as a Metroparks Toledo site. Commanded by General Anthony Wayne, the fledgling Legion of the United States decisively defeated a British-backed coalition of tribal warriors. In the subsequent peace treaty, which was signed in modern-day Greenville, Ohio, the Indians effectively relinquished the Ohio Territory, instigating a flood of settlers who spawned the Great Lakes states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

To stem the tide of America’s westward expansion, the Ohio-born Shawnee chief Tecumseh joined forces with the British during the War of 1812. When the U.S. Navy trounced a British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie, the victory gave America control of Lake Erie and led to another British defeat — as well as Tecumseh’s death — at the Battle of the Thames in Canada. The war ended in a stalemate for Britain and the United States, but Native Americans lost any hope of retaining their homelands in the Great Lakes region, whose rich resources, farms and factories would stoke America’s transformation from upstart nation to economic powerhouse.

In 1833, two villages on the Maumee merged to form a town that its citizens christened Toledo, supposedly because the name was easy to pronounce and rarely used in the United States. Toledo was tiny but had enormous potential for growth, thanks to its favorable geography and the new Miami and Erie Canal, an artificial waterway that once transported goods and people from Cincinnati to Toledo. The “Toledo Strip,” which included the budding city and hundreds of square miles of fertile farmland, was considered such prime real estate that both Ohio and the Michigan Territory claimed it.

Their border dispute came to a head in 1835, when Ohio and Michigan launched the Toledo War by sending its militias to the contested area. Congress ended the largely bloodless conflict by awarding the “Toledo Strip” to Ohio. In compensation, Michigan got its Upper Peninsula and statehood two years later. The two states then continued to spar over their Lake Erie boundary until 1973, when the Supreme Court finally decided the matter. As a result, many contend that the intense college football rivalry between Ohio State’s Buckeyes and Michigan’s Wolverines originated with the Toledo War.

Holy Toledo!

Today, Toledo is a city of about 270,000 that seems to effortlessly combine a certain small-town friendliness with big-city attractions born out of its strong manufacturing heritage. At the turn of the last century, pioneering glassmaker Edward Libbey and his inventive protégé Michael Owens turned Toledo into the “Glass Capital of the World.” During World War II, the city also became the home of the Jeep, the iconic “GP” (general purpose) military vehicle and symbol of American ingenuity. Toledo now produces the Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Gladiator, and every August, the city celebrates its incomparable connection to the brand with Jeep Fest, a three-day event that attracts Jeep aficionados from around the world and features an all-Jeep parade through downtown Toledo.

Libbey Glass still has its headquarters and tabletop glassware plant in Toledo, and the Libbey Factory Outlet in the city’s historic Erie Street Market is a mecca for bargain hunters. Edward Libbey’s greatest Toledo legacy, however, is the world-class art museum that he and his wife, Florence, founded to benefit the city. “The Toledo Museum of Art,” notes veteran tour guide Mary Galvin, “is truly the gem of Toledo, and because of the Libbeys’ philanthropy, it’s free to the public.” The Libbeys personally acquired the museum’s first work of art — a 3,500-year-old mummy’s coffin — during a 1906 trip to Egypt, and Galvin delights in showing visitors the exhibit’s photo of Edward and Florence riding on camels.

Its encyclopedic collections also include a portrait of the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie — Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry — by Gilbert Stuart, an artist whose work Americans see every day because he also painted the picture of George Washington that appears on the dollar bill. Since Stuart habitually left paintings unfinished, his daughter Jane completed the Perry portrait after his death. Not surprisingly the museum’s glass collection is dazzling, and its Art Glass Pavilion contains a hot shop where you can watch glass blowers at work.

The art museum’s campus anchors Toledo’s Old West End, where wealthy Toledoans built so many elaborate homes that it now constitutes one of the nation’s largest Victorian and Edwardian neighborhoods. According to legend, the Old West End churches congregated on Collingwood Avenue also inspired the expression, “Holy Toledo!” Arguably the most impressive of those churches is Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral, whose grand — and rare — Spanish Plateresque architecture gives a nod to Toledo’s sister city, Toledo, Spain. Remarkably enough, the cathedral was constructed during the Depression, and if you schedule a guided tour of the interior, you’ll learn that its exquisite Rose Window was financed with pennies donated by children.