History and Heritage

The Canal Market District was built along the former site of the Ohio Canal, which used to pass through Newark connecting the city with Dover, Ohio and Chillicothe, Ohio, through a collaborative effort by local community leader J. Gilbert “Gib” Reese and the Thomas J. Evans Foundation. The goal of this project is to maintain the tradition of bringing people together from all over the state. 

Funded by the Gilbert Reese Family Foundation, the Canal Market Mural was created by artist Curtis Goldstein and his assistant Lenise Alexandra Sunnenberg in the summer of 2016. The mural can be divided into four different details depicting three storefronts that were located in Newark in the 1800s and early 1900s, and a barbershop. The three historic storefronts from left to right are: (1) Evans Drugs Store, (2) The Crane, Krieg, Flory Hardware Company, (3) Fleek and Son Wholesale Grocers. The owners of these stores are revered as the founding fathers of Newark. The final business is a barbershop of Goldstein’s creation belonging to Edward James Roye. Roye, a Newark native, never owned a barber shop in his hometown, though he did later open one in Terre Haute, Indiana. During his life, Roye would serve as the fifth president of Liberia.