The Shawshank Experience_ History of the World’s Favorite Movie

Over the course of Labor Day weekend, August 29–31, 2014, the community
of Mansfi eld, Ohio, commemorated the twenty-year theatrical
release of The Shawshank Redemption , a fi lm that was shot in and around
the city. Local events were planned to coincide with this tribute, including
lectures about the fi lm’s making and meaning; tours of the Ohio State
Reformatory (OSR), the retired former prison at the center of the movie;
and a theatrical screening of Shawshank on Friday night in downtown
Mansfi eld’s Renaissance Theatre, the venue where the movie premiered
on Tuesday, September 13, 1994, almost exactly twenty years earlier.
Fans of the fi lm, both local and those traveling from out of town and
state, were encouraged to indulge in a wide range of movie-related memorabilia.
As an aid, they made use of the Shawshank Trail, a guide and roadmap
to visiting fourteen of the actual shooting locations and major attractions
associated with the fi lm’s production in Mansfi eld and its surrounding
communities. Shawshank afi cionados toured the Brewer Hotel (also known
as the haunted Bissman Building) in downtown Mansfi eld where Brooks
Hatlen and Red share the same apartment and the prison woodworking
shop where Red and Tommy are employed, located in neighboring Upper
Sandusky; drove out to the intersection of Snyder Road and Hagerman
Road in Bellville, Ohio, where Red walked the highway to the hayfi eld in
Buxton; met and took photographs with Renee Blaine (Linda Dufresne)
and Scott Mann (Glenn Quentin) at the Pugh Cabin at Malabar State Farm,
the log cabin where Mrs. Dufresne and her “golf pro lover” open the fi lm;
and paid homage to the famous oak tree.............