Posted on May - 13 - 2010
PNC Center in Cleveland features exhibit honoring former National City Corp.
In the atrium of the PNC Center in downtown Cleveland, there is a new exhibit about the days of yore.
The tribute to the former National City Corp. features oral histories, documents and images about the Cleveland bank’s 163-year history. This is the fourth time PNC Financial Services Group has created such an exhibit to honor a bank it has acquired.
PNC would not disclose the cost of the project, calling it “proprietary information.” In addition to telling the story of National City, the exhibit also tells of the role commercial banks played in Cleveland’s history, said Paul Clark, PNC regional president in Northern Ohio.
Mr. Clark noted that the exhibit includes a picture of Rohr’s, a former restaurant on East 12th and Chester that was owned by the parents of PNC chairman and CEO James E. Rohr. The young Mr. Rohr worked there as a dishwasher and bus boy when he was a kid.
Planning for the project began in earnest a year ago, said Mary Beth Corrigan, curator of the PNC Legacy Project. The end result includes photographs, newspapers, playbills, billboards, ads and internal newsletters from over the years. National City Bank was even able to print its own currency on occasion, exhibited in one of the displays.
Virginia Dawson, a local historian who created oral histories for the project, said many people she interviewed “expressed regret” that the bank — which PNC bought in October 2008 — was no longer National City.
“There was a wistfulness,” she said. “I thought it was very honest.”
The atrium exhibit, at 1900 E. Ninth St., is open to the public. It is free, and available for self-guided tours. For more information, and to watch the oral histories, go here.
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