It started with plans for a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution on women inventors.

“Alyssa Jones, our president, had the idea to look at really leveraging some of our relationships with the Heinz History Center and their affiliation with the Smithsonian,” said Jenny Wood, secretary of the Historical Society of Mount Lebanon’s board of trustees. When the posters arrived for Picturing Women Inventors and board members started looking through them, “We realized that we have a lot of really interesting women who have contributed to Mt. Lebanon and beyond,” Wood said.

“So we started writing names on a list and our board was all involved in that, and then it grew from there.”

Barrier-Breaking Women is a tribute to the women of Mt. Lebanon who were standouts in a number of fields. Mary Larsen, Mt. Lebanon’s first female commissioner; FBI agent Martha Dixon, one of the first female FBI SWAT team members, killed in the line of duty at age 35; Ruth Reidbord, Mt. Lebanon’s first female city planner; Virginia Phillips, who founded Mt. Lebanon Magazine; and the list goes on.

“It was a really wonderful collaboration of selection, and after that individual volunteers got really excited about the opportunity,” Jones said.

Historical society members, including retired KDKA political reporter Jon Delano, whose mother, Jane Delano, was one of Mt. Lebanon’s first female commissioners, and Susan Fleming Morgans, retired Mt. Lebanon Public Information Officer, contributed their time in researching and writing the descriptions for the posters.

Ellie Pastino is the exhibit’s designer. The Mt. Lebanon native, who lives in Chicago, worked remotely and saw her work for the first time when she visited last weekend.

“It’s been so much fun to bring it to life visually,” she said. “I knew that we were going to be having the Smithsonian posters as part of this, and so I wanted to capture that format, because it was really effective, and use it to build on the story of women in Mt. Lebanon.

“Once the information was compiled on each woman, I was able to kind of lay it out and help tell the story, starting with a brief overview of who the woman is and then go more in depth into their history and their legacy. It’s been fun to go into the photo archives we have online, and look back in time,” she added. “I love being a part of the historical society. It just keeps me so connected to my roots and [I get] to learn about these women, many of whom I had never heard about before.”

The exhibit is constantly evolving, so it’s worthwhile to stop in a few times before it comes down in July.  

“As we’re doing research, we’re adding on more and we’ve had such great support from the community and from our volunteers and board,” Wood said.

Jones was pleasantly surprised by the collaborative effort.

“This model of developing an exhibit worked so well and it engaged so many members of the community,” she said. “We are looking so forward to continuing to work with the community, to not only learn about everyone’s history, but to make history together.” 

The Barrier-Breaking Women exhibit will be on display at the history center, 794 Washington Road, through July. Hours are 9-3 on Saturday, 6-8 on Thursday evening and other hours by appointment. Call 412-329-8595 and leave a message with the date and time you’d like to visit.