Steam Laundry Mural

Steubenville, Ohio

Longer than a boxcar and three stories tall, this mural shows the hardworking women of the Steubenville Steam Laundry and their less-hardworking male bosses. The laundry was a prequel to modern dry cleaners, laundering the delicate linens, laces, and curtains of Steubenville in the late 19th century. The mural was painted by Robert Dafford, who went on to paint big murals in other cities.

Steubenville was a Rust Belt town fallen on hard times when it reinvented itself as "The City of Murals" beginning in 1987. Eventually 25 giant murals by various artists covered walls throughout town, but some have since been torn down and the colors on others are fading. A steam cleaning might also help, but not by the Steubenville Steam Laundry, which was destroyed by fire a century ago.