Next week, folks who want to put their mark on Butler City's history can help paint a mural that will eventually grace the West Wayne Street facade of the Butler County Ford annex building.

From noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday and next Thursday, the public is invited to stop by The Arts Center at 344 S. Main St. in Butler and paint one of several cloth panels that will be glued to the bricked up windows and doorways on the outside of the annex, said Kristy Nyland, one of two summer interns working on the project.

Ms. Nyland, a recent Edinboro University graduate from Ebensburg, and fellow intern Amy Chow, a New Hampshire native who will be a senior at Messiah College near Harrisburg, arrived in Butler on June 1 as part of the Pennsylvania Downtown Center internship program.

According to its Web site, the center's mission is "to advance the sense of place, quality of life and economic vitality of Pennsylvania's downtowns, traditional neighborhood business districts and nearby residential areas."

Downtown Butler's Mainstreet Manager Becky Smith said her agency applied to the center for the mural and summer interns in December.

"I was driving up the street one day and thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to make [the annex building] look like a real store is in there,'" she said.

The brick annex is part of an adjoining Ford dealership and is used as office space, Ms. Smith said.

Upon their arrival, Ms. Nyland and Ms. Chow began researching Butler's history and chose a transportation theme for the mural.

The painting will include a Bantam Jeep, a Pullman Standard trolley, a Taylorcraft airplane and an Austin car. All the vehicles' origins can be traced back to the city.

Once the design was approved by the city, the interns transferred the images onto several 5-foot-by-5-foot pieces of parachute cloth.

The colors in the images are numbered, like a paint-by-numbers picture, so anyone who can stay within the lines can help paint the mural, Ms. Nyland said.

She and Ms. Chow have taken the panels out into the community -- to playgrounds, youth groups and churches -- so community members can participate.

Ms. Smith said the city and the mural's local sponsors have embraced the project for several reasons.

"It will help beautify the downtown," she said. "And this really gets the whole community involved."