122 Business View - July 2015
Warren, Ohio
A rust-belt city aims to regain its gleam
Warren, Ohio is a small city in the northeastern part
of the state – approximately 14 miles northwest of
Youngstown and 15 miles west of the Pennsylvania
border. It was founded in 1798, when the area was still
part of Connecticut’s Western Reserve territory and
named after Moses Warren, the man who surveyed
the settlement’s original 441 acres. In 1801, War-
ren was established as the seat of Trumbull County.
For the first three-plus decades of the 19th century,
Warren was the most prosperous town in the region
and the hub of the Western Reserve’s religious, social
and commercial life. For the remainder of the century,
the city remained a bucolic and non-urbanized county
seat.
It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that
Warren underwent a period of increased industrializa-
tion and rapid growth. In 1906, the Trumbull Steel fa-
cility (later Republic Steel, then WCI Steel) became the
first integrated steelworks built in the county. Immigra-
tion increased and as a result, the population grew by
144 percent between 1910 and 1920. Soon, more
steelworks were established and the city continued to
prosper and develop. The post World War II boom wit-
