MANSFIELD - Kingwood Center Gardens was packed Friday night for the opening of the Ohio Brass exhibit in the Kingwood Hall

Opened to the public in 1953, Kingwood Center Gardens originally was the estate of Charles Kelley King, president of Ohio Brass.

King came to Mansfield in 1893 when he was offered a job by The Ohio Brass Company. 

Addressing the crowd from the top of the third-floor staircase landing, Waymon Goch, who was an engineer at Ohio Brass from 1960 to 2004, said the exhibit is just the beginning.

"What I hope is collectors, and former Ohio Brass employees who have collected products over the years, become aware of its existence and they'll be inclined to donate their material as well."

Goch recalled how the second floor of the Ohio Brass main office at 380 N. Main St. once had a collection of historical products, but they were unfortunately tossed out when new management transferred the headquarters from Mansfield to Wadsworth. 

Goch recalled how all the doorknobs at the main Ohio Brass office building were solid, cast bronze, made in the foundry. They all had an 'OB' monogram in the base.

"A lot of the transit products that you see in the (Kingwood) display were formerly made by Ohio Brass in Mansfield and are still being made in Mansfield by Goyal Industries which is owned by Paki Goyal, who is another Ohio Brass engineer," Goch said. 

Goyal Industries on Park Avenue East also has many old artifacts from Ohio Brass, including product catalogs that go back to the 1890s and insulators made with ash from Mt. Saint Helen, according to News Journal archives.

Ohio Brass produced an assortment of products, including roof supports for the mining industry, mining line wire, overhead transit equipment, electric utility line hardware, transit car couplers and transit electrification lines.

The company included a high-pressure valve line, aluminum, brass and cast iron foundries.

Chuck Gleaves, executive director of Kingwood, said officials hope to show off the Ohio Brass materials at the nearly 15,000-square-foot Garden Gateway Visitors Center to be built in 2019 between the Draffan Fountain and the parking lot off the Trimble Road entrance.

"The most common question I get from people who come to Kingwood is, 'Whose place is this?' ... Charles Kelly King ... and then we get to Ohio Brass," Gleaves said. 

"The legacy of Charles Kelley King is key to our vision. ... And this vision is all about manufacturing, the money that came from manufacturing and the country place here and the very specific period of time when industrialists were building places like this," Gleaves said.

King and his first wife Edith purchased the 47-acre property in 1912. King died in 1952. According to his will, a private trust was created from his fortune to open a public garden on the estate. In 1953, Kingwood Center was dedicated and officially opened to the public. Since 1976, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places.

"One of the things we want to do is to tie in with the rest of the community. For example we recently put an exhibit in at the Little Buckeye Childrens Museum so that kids playing at the Little Buckeye display can also know there is another place, Kingwood, that they can go see," he said.

 "It will tell the story of Ohio Brass, but it will also hint at the story of Mansfield manufacturing and it will tell them about this museum, the museum Jerry (Miller) is working on (the North Central Ohio Manufacturing Museum)," Gleaves said.

Gleaves said the Ohio Brass exhibit plays into the expansion and re-invention of Kingwood Center "with new, more complex interests and activities for members and visitors. It started as a concept a long time ago, but as we developed our master plan and strategic plan it fit like a hand into a glove into our overall efforts."