Artist, plaza mural get a new lift

Staff photo by Doug Page Hasenbalg hopes to have the 14-by-70-foot mural complete by August, working weekends as the weather allows.

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Toledo-based artist Keith Hasenbalg is spending his weekends painting a new mural at Rapp Plaza at the corner of Main Street and National Road in downtown Englewood. The mural will be an 1800s street scene.

Staff photo by Doug Page Toledo-based artist Keith Hasenbalg is spending his weekends painting a new mural at Rapp Plaza at the corner of Main Street and National Road in downtown Englewood. The mural will be an 1800s street scene.

Equipment problems with a city lift prevented artist Keith Hasenbalg from working on a mural on Joe Rapp plaza; but a rental now has him busy with his brush.

By Doug Page, Staff Writer Updated 8:39 PM Wednesday, June 10, 2009

ENGLEWOOD — There was but a tiny swatch of yellow paint last week on the wall of the city’s Joe Rapp downtown plaza.

Never fear.

Toledo artist Keith Hasenbalg was on the job Saturday, June 6, laying the base for dramatic highlights to what will be a late afternoon sky.

“There was a problem with the lift the city had,” Hasenbalg said last Friday. “That was the only part of the wall I could reach.”

City Manager Eric Smith said the city rented a new lift that was delivered in time for Hasenbalg to continue painting last weekend.

With a 45-foot lift, Hasenbalg was adding the dark yellows and deep blues that will form a backdrop for an 1800s street scene. The original mural was a black-and-white representation of what then-Harrisburg looked like in the 1800s before it was renamed Englewood.

“It was done in black and white to give the feel of a tintype,” Smith said.

Since it first went up in the early 1980s, the mural has been redone twice to refresh the images. Water damage to the wall during the 2007-08 winter got city leaders thinking about replacing the mural. Last fall, City Council approved a $20,000 contract with Hasenbalg to bring a fresh, colorful look to the plaza wall at the corner of Main Street and National Road.

“Basically, I’ll be expanding on what they had,” Hasenbalg said. After public comment on his first proposal unveiled in the Dayton Daily News, Hasenbalg when back to the drawing board.

“It will be more like the original mural,” he said. “My first drawings looked more present tense. This is more of a past-tense feel.”

Hasenbalg hopes to have the 14-by-70-foot wall complete by August.

In addition to a new mural, the plaza will have a historical plaque explaining the history of the National Road, one of the first major roads built by the federal government.

Started in 1811, the road eventually reached from Maryland to Vandalia, Ill., when money ran out before the road reached St. Louis.

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