Glenwillow, OH

Glenwillow is a Cuyahoga County village whose history begins with Austin Powder Company. The company moved from Cleveland and built a company town here in the 1890s, placing worker homes, farmland, and industrial buildings around its mining-tool and blasting-powder operation. Tinker’s Creek and the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad ran through the old industrial side of town. When Austin closed and moved in 1972, Glenwillow had to find a new use for that built inheritance; the Village Center opened in 2005 through adaptive reuse of 18 former company-town buildings. Glenwillow is an Ohio village where a factory town became a mixed civic and commercial center.