Culture
The city was the site of an important development in the history of Warner Bros. studios, given that the first Warner Bros. theater, the Cascade, opened there in 1907. (The Warners, most of whom were Polish Jewish immigrants, resided in Youngstown.) The theater was restored and reopened in 2006. The building was nearly condemned ten years earlier after a wall fell on the sidewalk near East Washington Street (one of the city's main thoroughfares) before its historical significance was discovered, saving the building. Municipal officials have planned recent revitalization efforts around the former theater, which is now known as Cascade Center. The facility currently features two restaurants and a local stage theater, and plans are in progress to turn the complex into New Castle's version of Station Square in Pittsburgh. This revitalization plan, however, will focus on motion pictures rather than trains.
The Cascade Center itself is named after Cascade Park, located on the outskirts of the city's East Side in Shenango Township along Pennsylvania Route 65. A former trolley park, it was restored and converted into a regular outdoor park in the 1980s with a few historical buildings as well as the park's entrance sign restored, avoiding the fate of nearby Idora Park in Youngstown. The park hosts the annual Back to the 50s Weekend classic car show, and previously hosted the similarly themed Thunder in the Cascades motorcycle show until concerns about nudity and alcohol use at the event as opposed to the more family-friendly Back to the 50's Weekend had the event moved to the Lawrence County Fairgrounds in nearby Hickory Township in the early 21st century.
The New Castle Playhouse, a community theatre, is located along Long Avenue and puts on several shows a year, and is one of the only such theatres between Youngstown and theatre-rich Pittsburgh.
The Old Princeton School, located nearby, has been the venue for rock concerts.
New Castle is also a short drive from McConnells Mill State Park in Slippery Rock Township and neighboring Moraine State Park in Muddy Creek Township in Butler County.
In the 2011 movie, Super 8, New Castle, Pennsylvania is referenced as the "fireworks capital of the world."
New Castle has a large Arab-American population whose culture is visible throughout the community. Large numbers of Lebanese and Syrian immigrants were attracted by the city's prosperity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their culture is especially visible in the local cuisine, which makes popular use of items such as stuffed grape leaves, lamb on the rod, kibbe, and garlic sauce. Although many other Rust Belt cities contain large Arab-American populations, New Castle is unique for its large population of Alawite Muslims from Syria. The Muslim community of the city has a mosque on the East Side of town.
Read more about this topic: New Castle, Pennsylvania
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“I know that there are many persons to whom it seems derogatory to link a body of philosophic ideas to the social life and culture of their epoch. They seem to accept a dogma of immaculate conception of philosophical systems.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
—Gerald Early (b. 1952)