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During some research in to cinema chains, we came across information about various venues. One that seemed to have a lot of our focus (purely coincidentally) was the 'pullman square marquee cinema'. There was no reason that we could tell for this, however this got us looking at information about Huntington, located in West Virginia, USA. We may have began with the 'pullman square marquee cinema' but we soon discovered a lot more interesting bits of information about the area.
Huntington is a city located in the State of West Virginia along the Ohio River. Most of the city is in Cabell County, and is the county seat of government. A small portion of the city, mainly the neighborhood of Westmoreland, is in Wayne County. As of 2007, current data shows a city population of 48,982. Huntington is a part of the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). As of current 2005 data, the MSA's population was 286,012. Huntington is the largest city within the MSA and the second largest city in West Virginia, behind Charleston.
The city was named for Collis P. Huntington, who founded Huntington in 1870 as the western terminus for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) on the land west of the mouth of the Guyandotte River at the Ohio River. It was created as a railroad town for the C&O, when it initially stretched from Richmond, Virginia to the Ohio River. The city house numerous railroad shops which expanded east to Newport News (and coal piers) and west to eventually reach Cincinnati and Chicago in the years after its founding.
Huntington was incorporated in 1871, but was really a massive addition to Guyandotte, an earlier city that is now a neighborhood of Huntington, was first built upon in 1799. The land that is now part of both Guyandotte and Huntington was originally part of the 28,628 acre French and Indian War veteran's Savage Grant.
Historically, the old Federal Era town of Guyandotte has homes dating back to 1820 and a graveyard containing 18th century French and Colonial-era settlers, including surnames such as LeTulle, Holderby, and Buffington. Huntington was known as Holderby's Landing prior to 1871 and the Buffington family held the tracts of land that became the Huntington Land Company. The Buffingtons were the only revolutionary-era Savage Grant claimants to continuously reside within the area, and later generations of Buffingtons were associated with Marshall College (later a university) were business partners of Collis P. Huntington. Albert Gallatin Jenkins, a Confederate Army General, had his plantation home in nearby Lesage, which has since become a historical landmark.
At the time of Huntington's founding, Holderby's Landing was already the home of Marshall College, a normal school that had been founded in 1837 as Marshall Academy. Originally, Marshall Academy was essentially a boarding school, under the control of the Southern Methodist Church, for wealthy high school students. In 1857, the school became Marshall College, which in turn became a public institution in 1867. The college later became Marshall University in 1961 and now occupies a large portion of the city to the immediate east of the downtown CBD.
Huntington grew to nearly 100,000 in population by the 1950s thanks to a successful coal and chemical industry. However, due to coal losing some of its prominence as a fuel, the city has lost much of its industrial base including several factories in industries such as glassworks, steel, and locomotive parts. Huntington is now effectively a regional medical community - the two hospitals, St. Mary's and Cabell-Huntington, are the largest employers - and a university town, thanks to the presence of Marshall University, which has an enrollment of approximately 16,000 students.
Despite being located to the south of the area traditionally defined as the Rust belt, the city suffered from the trend of heavy de-industrialization experienced in cities of the Upper Midwest during the 1970s. This trend has been one of the factors that has resulted Huntington's population decline over the last several decades.
In the 1970s, federal urban renewal programs destroyed part of the downtown, but in 2005 the Pullman Square retail and entertainment center, aided by the Tri-State Transit Authority, revived the downtown "Superblock" area, leading to rising downtown usage. The Harris Riverfront Park promenade is now well-attended along the Ohio River downtown. Victorian architecture downtown is growing in popularity among new residents.
An interesting place we think and all thanks to our finding of the 'pullman square marquee cinema'.
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