German Village

At a glance

Overview

German Village is a 233-acre historic district of brick cottages and brick streets just south of downtown Columbus. It began as John McGowan's addition, laid out in 1814 on Refugee Tract land he had claimed, and filled after 1830 with German immigrants until, by 1865, about one-third of the city's people were German. World War I hostility, the closing of the breweries under Prohibition, 1923 industrial zoning and the loss of the northern third to the interstate highway in the 1950s left the South End a candidate for clearance. From 1959 Frank Fetch and the German Village Society restored it house by house, the city created a German Village Commission with design-review power, and the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 30, 1974. More than 1,600 buildings have been restored since 1960, without government subsidy, according to the Society.

The name

The area was long called the South End of Columbus, in German 'die alte Sud Ende' (the old south end), after the German immigrants who settled it. The City of Columbus officially renamed it German Village in July 1960, recognizing the preservation work that had begun there. (source)

Native American history

No Native village, mound or camp is recorded within the district's own boundaries. The nearest recorded ancient work stood just to the north: a large mound, reported as about 40 feet high and shaped like a truncated cone, on the east bank highland of the Scioto at the southeast corner of High and Mound streets, which gave Mound Street its name. Alfred Lee's 1892 city history says John McGowan's pioneer farm lay just south of it. The mound was cut through from north and south when High Street was graded, and workers unearthed human bones, and by various later accounts utensils and trinkets, none of which survived; it was entirely gone by 1892. Lee also records an old Indian campground near the later Ohio Penitentiary site, known to the former captive John Brickell. Which nation, if any, used the Mound Street mound in historic times is not recorded; Lee attributed it to the 'moundbuilding race' and the bones to later Indian burials, a guess rather than a finding.

• Mound at High and Mound streets: mound, Southeast corner of High and Mound streets, Columbus, just north of the district; site later occupied by St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Ancient (culture not identified); demolished during 19th-century street grading
• Indian campground near the later penitentiary: camp, East bank of the Scioto near the later Ohio Penitentiary, north of downtown Columbus, 18th century, described by John Brickell

Stories

McGowan's gate

In 1813 the baker Christian Heyl approached the new capital from the south with two heavily loaded wagons. At McGowan's Run, in what was then called South Columbus, he found the road fenced and John McGowan unwilling to open his gates. Heyl learned that the old man was fond of good whiskey and promised him some, and the gates opened at once. Heyl reached his new hotel that afternoon and ate supper off a dough-tray lid laid across flour barrels. McGowan, Heyl recalled, did not forget to call the next day for his prize. The following year McGowan laid out the same farm as McGowan's addition, the beginning of German Village. (source)

A newspaper named from a hat

In the summer of 1842 Jacob Reinhard, an engineer on the National Road, went to Cincinnati to persuade the editor Fieser to start a German paper in Columbus. The two agreed, bought new type in Philadelphia, and could not settle on a name. They wrote the candidates on slips of paper and put them in a hat, and Stephen Molitor's daughter drew out Der Westbote. The first number appeared on October 2, 1843, when, Fieser remembered, you could count the city's German businessmen on your fingers. It became the most influential of Columbus's German-language papers and was still publishing when Alfred Lee wrote his city history in 1892. (source)

The war against the South End

As Germans became Americanized they depended less on the old community, and World War I stirred strong anti-German feeling in Columbus's largely American-born population. Teaching German in the public schools was banned and German textbooks were burned. German books were burned, German newspapers closed, and speaking German was forbidden. Schiller, Germania, Kaiser and Bismarck streets became Whittier, Stewart, Lear and Lansing streets, and Schiller Park became Washington Park. Then Prohibition (1920-33) closed the South End breweries, their German workers had to find work elsewhere, and a trickle of families began moving to the new suburbs: the neighborhood's long decline was under way. (source)

Frank Fetch and the rescue of the South End

By the 1950s the South End was called a slum, its northern third had been bulldozed for the interstate, and the rest looked like the next candidate for clearance. Frank Fetch bet the other way: he and his father-in-law bought a small brick cottage on Wall Street and restored it. In 1960 he and like-minded neighbors formed the German Village Society to promote the preservation and rehabilitation of the Old South End. The Society won rezoning from manufacturing to residential use and, in 1963, a historic-district ordinance with design review. The Society notes that the same small lots and narrow streets that planners had called blight are what buyers came back for. Sources differ on when Fetch bought: the Society's 2004 timeline gives both 1949 and 1959, and its current history says 1959 (the 2004 timeline is at https://web.archive.org/web/20041217211128/http://www.germanvillage.com/timeline/1920_1960.htm). (source)

Schiller comes to City Park

The park at the center of the village was land once owned by Francis Stewart and known as Stewart's Grove, the scene of the 1830 Independence Day celebration and the Ohio State Fairs of 1864 and 1865. By 1866 David W. Deshler, his son William G. Deshler and Allen G. Thurman had bought it to keep it for public use, and in April 1867 the city bought it from them for $15,000 and called it City Park. On July 4, 1891, German-born residents dedicated a bronze statue of the poet Friedrich Schiller there, a second cast of Max von Widnmann's statue unveiled in Munich on May 9, 1863. The city council formally renamed City Park as Schiller Park by an ordinance of April 3, 1905; the German Village Society gives the renaming as 1891. (source)

One cottage, five owners

German Village Society plaques trace ordinary houses owner by owner. In 1868 Charles Minister sold a lot to the broom maker Emil Vogler, who built a story-and-a-half cottage there in 1871 and lived in it with his wife Christina and son Henry. In 1886 Henry and his wife sold it to Gottlieb Odenwaeler, a brewery worker, who lived there with his wife Barbara and three children. After Gottlieb died in 1891, Barbara rented the house out until 1914. Mary Sain and then Anna Kaiser owned it as a rental from 1924 to 1951, the long stretch when the South End's families were leaving. (source)

Timeline

• 1796: Congress set aside the Refugee Lands for people who had supported the colonial cause in the American Revolution; most of the future German Village lay in them. (source)
• 1802: Revolutionary War veteran John McGowan claimed 328 acres, most of what would become German Village. (source)
• 1813: Arriving from the south, Christian Heyl found the only road into Columbus blocked by John McGowan's private gate at McGowan's Run and paid his way through with a promise of whiskey. (source)
• 1814: McGowan laid out his farm as McGowan's addition to Columbus, the root of today's German Village. (source)
• 1831: The feeder canal linked Columbus to the Ohio Canal, letting German immigrants arrive in far greater numbers. (source)
• 1843: The first issue of Der Westbote, which Lee in 1892 called the oldest living and most successful German paper in Columbus, appeared on October 2. (source)
• 1848: The Columbus Maennerchor singing society was formed; it is still active. (source)
• 1852: Columbus's German singing societies hosted the city's first Saengerfest. (source)
• 1865: St. Mary's first parish building, a schoolhouse that served as a temporary church, was built under Rev. Francis X. Specht; by this year Columbus was about one-third German. (source)
• 1867: The City of Columbus bought 23 acres of Stewart's Grove from the Deshlers and Allen G. Thurman for $15,000 and named it City Park. (source)
• 1868: The Gothic St. Mary Church was dedicated for the South Side's German Catholics. (source)
• 1871: After German unification, local German-Americans planted a peace oak in City Park in a public ceremony. (source)
• 1872: Growth south of Kossuth Street, then the city's southern boundary, forced Columbus to extend its limits. (source)
• 1890: Eddie Rickenbacker, later America's leading World War I air ace, was born on Pearl Alley. (source)
• 1890: Ohio State played its first home football game on November 1 at Recreation Park, just east of today's German Village, losing to Wooster 64-0. (source)
• 1891: On July 4 German-born residents dedicated a bronze statue of the poet Friedrich Schiller in City Park. The German Village Society dates the park's renaming as Schiller Park to this year; the city ordinance renaming it is recorded as No. 22,233 of April 3, 1905. (source)
• 1891: George J. Karb, born in Columbus to German immigrant parents, began the first of his two terms as mayor (1891-1895 and 1911-1919). (source)
• 1893: St. Mary Church's 197-foot spire was added. (source)
• 1918: German books were collected and publicly burned on Broad Street and at the foot of the Schiller statue; in the same wartime years German street names were changed and Schiller Park became Washington Park. (source)
• 1920: Prohibition (1920-1933) closed the South End breweries, sending their workers to look for jobs and homes elsewhere. (source)
• 1923: Columbus's first zoning ordinance zoned the South End for manufacturing and commercial use. (source)
• 1932: Washington Park went back to its name of Schiller Park. (source)
• 1950s: The city demolished the northern third of the South End, between Main Street and Livingston Avenue, for the interstate highway. (source)
• 1959: Frank Fetch and his father-in-law bought and restored a small cottage on Wall Street. (source)
• 1960: The German Village Society was formed; its first Haus und Garten Tour in June drew hundreds of visitors to eight restored homes and two gardens. (source)
• 1962: Building permit records show owners and investors made more than $1 million in improvements, while some buildings still sold for under $5,000. (source)
• 1963: City Council passed Chapter 3325 of the zoning code, creating the German Village Historic District and giving the German Village Commission design-review authority. (source)
• 1974: German Village was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 30. (source)
• 1980: The National Register boundary was expanded on November 28 to the present 233 acres. (source)
• 1991: The Schiller statue was rededicated on July 4 by the United German Singing Societies of Central Ohio and the Friends of Schiller Park. (source)

Sources

• germanvillage.com: history
• en.wikipedia.org: index
• en.wikipedia.org: index
• en.wikipedia.org: index
• archive.org: historyofcityofc01leea djvu.txt
• germanvillage.com:80: 1814 1865
• germanvillage.com:80: 1865 1914
• germanvillage.com:80: 1914 1920
• germanvillage.com: 1960 1990
• germanvillage.com: 1920 1960
• npgallery.nps.gov
• hmdb.org: m
• hmdb.org: m
• hmdb.org: m
• hmdb.org: m
• commons.wikimedia.org: Category:German Village (Columbus, Ohio)