Phoenixville force

Barbara Cohen, all 5 feet of her, stood tall at the front of the charter bus, the teacher who would educate a fresh crop of teachers about the history of Phoenixville.

Over there, that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, she told them, and those were the homes of former mayors, and that once was the 130-acre tract that housed the steel behemoth that defined the borough.

The 74-year-old Cohen was in her wheelhouse: The history buff had helped leverage the Chester County borough's historic district a generation ago and raised millions of dollars to spur a local renaissance and one of the region's economic success stories.

For her role she will be honored Wednesday in Coatesville with the Rebecca Lukens Award, named for the woman many call the nation's first female industrialist, and given annually to those who exhibit leadership and other qualities. It is given by the National Iron and Steel Heritage Museum.

"She knew everything about everything," said Kelly Goodwin, one of about 20 teachers who participated in the annual tour for new teachers in the Phoenixville Area School District, which takes place right before the start of the school year, adding she wished she had taken notes.

As the bus rolled along Bridge Street, Cohen, a leader in the Phoenixville Area Economic Development Corp. for two decades, also showed off some of the modern fruits of the revival: the Colonial Theater, Bistro on Bridge, Steel City Coffee House, and the other businesses that have sprouted among new housing developments.

"I feel humbled and honored to be receiving this award, but it wasn't just me," said Cohen, who lives in Valley Forge. "All the ideas you may have will come to nothing without community consensus and a team effort to make it happen."

Phoenixville has experienced the kind of rebirth that other aging small towns aiming to reinvent themselves dream about. From 2002 to 2014, aggregate estimated market value for real estate in the borough more than doubled, according to state figures.

Cohen believes the creation of the historic district in 1989, led by former Lukens award winner Jane L.S. Davidson and the Phoenixville Area Economic Development Corp., was the catalyst.

"There was a time Phoenixville was thought of by neighboring communities as 'that dirty, grungy old steel town,' " she said. The closing of the Phoenix Iron & Steel plant in the 1980s was a brutal blow to the town's economy.

Cohen, who is apt to use "sugar muffin" in lieu of an expletive, has brought diverse and perhaps surprising experience to her work. The former teacher and grandmother of two teenagers has master's degrees in international relations and interior design, and has her own design company. She went to car-racing school in the late 1980s, and likes going to the track when she gets free time.

The Philadelphia native has always loved history and led historical tours of the city for nearly 30 years, even after relocating. She moved to Phoenixville after her husband, Allan, became a doctor at Phoenixville Hospital in 1972.

She was the executive director of Phoenixville's chamber of commerce for 12 years and is a member of multiple community organizations. She unsuccessfully ran for the state House in the early 1990s. In 2007, she became a supervisor in Schuylkill Township, where she and her husband live.

"She's managed to somehow get 30 hours in a day," said William Vogt, director of curriculum for the Phoenixville Area School District.

One of her latest crusades is to rebuild and erect in the borough one of the world's oldest Ferris wheels, made by Phoenix Iron & Steel in 1895. The town has all the pieces of the 72-foot-high apparatus; it just needs the funds and permission of a landowner to install it.

She also wants to restore a mural, which had to be removed for structural reasons, celebrating the borough.

One of Cohen's crowning achievements is the preservation of a more than 130-year-old factory building where Phoenix Iron & Steel poured iron castings. Phoenixville Foundry is now a wedding and banquet venue. It also hosts the Schuylkill River Heritage Center, a nonprofit museum Cohen heads that honors the industrial legacy of Phoenixville and the river.

The borough has come a long way in the last 20 years, said Patrick Bokovitz, director of Chester County's Department of Community Development.

"I say it is people like Barbara and other key people in the community that have really been the reason for it," he said.

In the 1990s, there were few reasons to go downtown, said Mary Foote, executive director of the Colonial Theater, which hosted its first stage show in 1903 and has a cameo appearance in the 1958 movie The Blob.

Under Cohen's leadership, the economic development group helped save the movie house in the late 1990s when it went up for sale. The Colonial, which broke ground in early April on an expansion, is one of the anchors that spurred development.

Cohen "definitely has her heart with Phoenixville," Foote said. "We're all the better for it."

mbond@philly.com

610-313-8207@MichaelleBond