Murals in Downtown Mount Vernon
The Landmarks Foundation is excited to bring the following murals to downtown Mount Vernon!
Completed in the fall of 2016 by Mount Vernon Nazarene art professor, John Donnelly, this mural celebrates the history of theater from outdoor Greek theater to the dazzling lights of Broadway. This mural also celebrates Knox County's rich history of performance with a theater similar to Mount Vernon's Woodward Opera House (center). It is also painted on side of local theater troupe MTV Arts' newly remodeled practice and storage facility on East Ohio Avenue.
Representing a look down South Main Street from Public Square, this mural depicts Mount Vernon's downtown around 1910. In the foreground is the Hotel Curtis and the Knox National Bank. The Woodward Opera House is visible halfway down on the right side and the Landmarks Foundation former home, the IOOF Hall, can be seen on the left with the tall obelisks sticking up from the cornice. This trompe l'oeil painting is designed to represent the buildings in a three dimensional way and to draw the eye toward the center of the painting and to the Kokosing River in the background. Completed in 2015, this mural was painted by former Knox County resident David Stowell and can be found on the east side of the Flowers-4-You Building at the corner of East Gambier and South Gay Streets.
Completed by former Knox County resident David Stowell in 2014, downtown's first mural is easy to miss as it blends in with the second floors of businesses on South Main Street. It is meant to recreate the storefront as it looked in 1910. The best place to this mural is stand in front of the Alcove Restaurant and look up across the street.
This mural on the north side of the former Masonic Lodge on the east side of the Public Square completed by John Donnelly in 2017 depicts the scenes and events that took place inside the building before the Masonic Lodge moved to its new location on St. Rt. 229. He was asked to create a cutaway suggesting the interior of the building starting with the full theater on the top floor. The building was a lodge for years, then changed to a men's club, then to a mixed social club hence images of men playing pool and a bar to mixed social dances. Other moments hint at the history of Mount Vernon, such as Johnny Appleseed on the ground floor.
After duplicating windows and stonework on the main section he recreated the windows to the right to fool the eye. The people were copied from pictures from the historical society. Tom Fish stands next to the Model T.
It is best viewed from the parking lot of the Grand Hotel.
The Industry Mural theme was completed in 2018 by John Donnelly. He was asked to create a representation of significant historical but not to be all-inclusive of industries that contributed to Mount Vernon's growth. Industries depicted are Cooper Bessemer, Continental Can, Oil and Gas drilling, PPG, Mount Vernon Bridge Works Co., Lamb Glass Co., and the B&O Railroad. All of these companies are no longer in Mount Vernon but employed hundreds of workers for nearly 200 years.
