Columbus

City · Franklin County · 906,920 residents · 2.5% municipal income tax

Franklin County

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  1. FotoFocus: Haunting

    Sep 3 to Nov 7 · Beeler Gallery · From Columbus College of Art & Design

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How Columbus began

Columbus began as two towns facing each other across the Scioto. Lucas Sullivant, a Virginia surveyor paid in land for laying out the Virginia Military District, platted Franklinton on the west bank in August 1797, watched a flood carry off the first plat in 1798, and rebuilt on higher ground; Franklinton was the seat of Franklin County from 1803 to 1824. On February 14, 1812 the General Assembly accepted an offer from four landowners - Lyne Starling, John Kerr, Alexander McLaughlin and James Johnston - to build a statehouse and a penitentiary on the wooded high bank opposite Franklinton at the forks of the Scioto, and six days later gave the town that did not yet exist the name Columbus. It was a borough in 1816, a chartered city in 1834, a canal and National Road town in the 1830s, a railroad and buggy-making city by the 1880s, and after 1950 it grew by requiring any neighborhood that wanted its water and sewers to be annexed first. That policy made it 223 square miles and 905,748 people at the 2020 census, the largest city in Ohio and the fourteenth largest in the country.

Settled 1797 (Franklinton, west bank of the Scioto, laid out by Lucas Sullivant in August; first family, Joseph Dixon, autumn 1797), platted 1812 (Columbus, east bank; surveyed by state Director Joel Wright with Joseph Vance; first public sale of lots June 18, 1812), incorporated borough February 10, 1816; chartered as a city March 3, 1834, by Lucas Sullivant founded Franklinton; the four proprietors of Columbus were Lyne Starling of Franklin County, John Kerr of Ross County, Alexander McLaughlin of Muskingum County and James Johnston of Washington County.

Where the name comes from

The town was named for Christopher Columbus by a joint resolution of the Ohio General Assembly passed February 20, 1812, six days after the act fixing the capital on the east bank of the Scioto. Alfred E. Lee, writing the city's history in 1892 with the legislative record in front of him, called the christening unceremonious and recorded no debate about the name; modern accounts agree that no reliable explanation survives for why an explorer with no connection to Ohio was chosen, beyond a tradition that a legislator who admired him talked his colleagues into it. Franklinton across the river had been named in 1797 for the recently dead Benjamin Franklin, whom Sullivant admired. The older names on the ground were Native: the Scioto, whose meaning John Brickell could not give even after four years among the Lenape, and the Whetstone, the Lenape keenhongsheconsepung or sharp-tool river, which the General Assembly renamed Olentangy in 1833 by attaching to it a name that actually belonged to Big Darby Creek.

Before the town

The forks of the Scioto and the Olentangy were Native ground for at least three thousand years before Lucas Sullivant put a compass on them. James Linn Rodgers, who surveyed what was left of the earthworks for Alfred Lee's 1892 city history, wrote that Franklin County had once held nearly a hundred distinct mounds and enclosures and that by his day only a handful survived the plow, the road engineer and the gravel pit. The builders were the Adena of the late Archaic and Early Woodland periods, roughly 800 BC to AD 100, followed by Hopewell and then Fort Ancient peoples; the Ohio historical marker at Campbell Memorial Park describes them as hunters, gatherers, traders and farmers who raised burial mounds of earth, stone, human remains and grave goods on uplands above major waterways. One such mound survives inside the city: Shrum Mound, about 20 feet high and 100 feet across, on the high west bluff of the Scioto at 3141 McKinley Avenue, deeded to the Ohio Historical Society in 1928 by the educator Minnie R. Shrum and never excavated. The greatest of the local mounds did not survive. It stood at the crest of the east bluff at High and Mound Streets, was reckoned at forty feet high with a base perhaps three hundred feet across, carried oak trees three feet through and a large double frame house on its flat summit, and was cut in two by excavators working from north and south until High Street ran straight through it. Its clay went into the bricks of the town: Lee records that the clay for the bricks of Ohio's first statehouse at Columbus, built in 1814 on the corner of State and High, was obtained in part from that mound. Joseph Sullivant, the founder's son, told the Franklin County Pioneer Society in 1871 that other mounds had stood on the bottom land near the junction of the rivers, one in the middle of Franklinton and one where the Ohio Penitentiary was later built, and that parallel lines of embankment had run near the old Franklinton site; nothing of any of them remains. Charles Whittlesey mapped circular works of about 800 and 500 feet diameter on the Harrisburg Road three miles southwest of town, and a fifteen-foot mound stood on the east terrace of Alum Creek about two hundred yards south of the Broad Street extension until it was quarried for gravel in the 1880s. In the historic period the forks were a crossing point rather than a boundary. A Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) town stood at the forks with Shawnee villages to the south and Wyandot and Lenape (Delaware) villages to the north, and the Scioto Trail - the great north-south path from the mouth of the Scioto at Portsmouth to Sandusky Bay, which connected Shawnee hunting grounds in Kentucky with Lake Erie - ran past them. Joseph Sullivant, working from what three former captives told him, placed three encampments in the immediate neighborhood: one on the high bank near the old Morrill House a mile and a half below the city, one at the west end of the Harrisburg bridge, and the principal one on the river below the mouth of the Whetstone near the site of the Ohio Penitentiary. In the autumn of 1774, during Dunmore's War, Colonel William Crawford was sent from Dunmore's camp with 240 men against Mingo towns up the Scioto; Sullivant and Lee identified the target as the towns at the forks, and Sullivant recorded from Jonathan Alder the account of a woman shot down crossing to the wooded island opposite while her child hid two days in a hollow sycamore. Lee's account of the raid rests on Sullivant's identification rather than on a document naming the forks, and the location of Crawford's 'Salt Lick town' is not certain. John Brickell, taken from the Allegheny on February 9, 1791 at the age of nine and raised by the Lenape man Whingwy Pooshies, was released at Fort Defiance about June 1, 1795 under the peace that produced the Treaty of Greenville, came to the forks in 1797, and lived the rest of his life in a cabin on ten acres where the Ohio Penitentiary later fronted. He left the Lenape names of the local streams: Alum Creek was Seckle Sepung, Saltlick Creek, and Big Walnut was Whingwy Mahoni Sepung, Big Lick Creek. The Treaty of Greenville, signed August 3, 1795 after Fallen Timbers, extinguished Native title here and opened the ground to survey; Congress had already set aside the Refugee Tract, 103,527 acres running 42 miles east from the Scioto, for Canadians and Nova Scotians who had helped the Revolution, and the Columbus plateau itself was patented in 1802 to five of those refugees - John Halstead, Martha Walker, Benjamin Thompson, Seth Harding and James Price - whose titles passed to the four proprietors. Native residence did not end with the treaty. Kihue, known as Bill Moose, born in Ohio in 1837 and a Wyandot whose family was among the dozen that refused to remove to Kansas in the 1840s, joined the Sells Brothers Circus in 1878, came back to central Ohio in 1915, lived first in a cave in the Overbrook (Adena) Ravine and then in a cabin neighbors built him at Indianola and Morse Roads, told stories to the children of the north side, and died on July 12, 1937 a few months short of a hundred. Tens of thousands are said to have followed his funeral. Bill Moose Run, one of the six glacial ravines that cut through Clintonville to the Olentangy, carries his name; his grave is on the Scioto bluff a little north and west of the city line, under a stone tepee.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Miami, Adena culture, Hopewell culture, Fort Ancient culture.

  • Shrum Mound (Campbell Mound) (mound) — Campbell Memorial Park, 3141 McKinley Avenue, on the high west bluff of the Scioto in the West Scioto neighborhood, half a mile south of Trabue Road, Adena, c. 800 BC to AD 100 (en.wikipedia.org)
  • Shrum Mound as recorded in 1892 (mound) — then described as on the Shrum farm near the Dublin Pike, a quarter mile from Marble Cliff, about 15 feet high and 80 feet at the base, overgrown and unexplored, prehistoric; Adena (archive.org)
  • The High and Mound Street mound (mound) — the crest of the east bluff at the southeast corner of High and Mound Streets, downtown, where St. Paul's Lutheran Church later stood; destroyed when High Street was cut through, its clay used in part for the bricks of the first statehouse, prehistoric; moundbuilder (archive.org)
  • Mingo town at the forks of the Scioto (village) — at the junction of the Scioto and the Whetstone (Olentangy); burned by colonial militia in 1774, 18th century (en.wikipedia.org)
  • The principal village below the mouth of the Whetstone (village) — on the river below the confluence, near the site of the Ohio Penitentiary where John Brickell's cabin later stood; located by Joseph Sullivant from the testimony of Brickell, Jeremiah Armstrong and Jonathan Alder, 18th century (archive.org)
  • Village near the old Morrill House (village) — on the high bank a mile and a half below the city; the party that captured Lucas Sullivant's surveying company on Deer Creek in 1795 was said to have come from here, 18th century (archive.org)
  • Village at the west end of the Harrisburg bridge (village) — south-west of the forks on the Scioto, 18th century (archive.org)
  • The Scioto Trail (trail) — ran along the Scioto through the forks; U.S. Route 33 follows its route north from the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy. The trail ran from the mouth of the Scioto at Portsmouth to Sandusky Bay and connected Shawnee hunting grounds in Kentucky with Lake Erie, pre-contact into the 18th century (hmdb.org)
  • Mounds on the bottom land at the forks (mound) — one in the central part of Franklinton, one where the Ohio Penitentiary was built, and several smaller ones south of these on the west side of the river; all quarried away by settlers for earth and gravel, prehistoric (archive.org)
  • Parallel embankments at old Franklinton (earthwork) — near the original Franklinton site, reported by Joseph Sullivant; gone before 1892, prehistoric (archive.org)
  • The Pope Mound (mound) — on the Scioto terrace about two and a half miles north-west of the Statehouse, 21 feet high, 111 feet at the base and 50 feet across the flat summit; the best preserved in the county in 1892, with stone curbing and burned clay found at its east side, prehistoric (archive.org)
  • Alum Creek terrace mound (mound) — on the crest of the east terrace of Alum Creek about two hundred yards south of the Broad Street extension; 15 feet high and 75 feet at the base until it was opened as a gravel bed in the late 1880s, prehistoric (archive.org)
  • Harrisburg Road circles (earthwork) — about three miles south-west of Columbus on a low clayey plain, two near-circular ditched enclosures of roughly 800 and 500 feet diameter surveyed by Colonel Charles Whittlesey for the Smithsonian; barely traceable by 1892, prehistoric (archive.org)
  • Treaty of Greenville cession (treaty) — the whole of the Scioto forks lay south and east of the Greenville line drawn on August 3, 1795 after the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and so passed out of Native title before Sullivant returned to plat Franklinton, 1795 (en.wikipedia.org)
  • Bill Moose (Kihue) cabin and grave (other) — his cabin stood at Indianola and Morse Roads on the north side; earlier he lived in a cave in the Overbrook (Adena) Ravine. Bill Moose Run in Clintonville is named for him. He is buried under a stone tepee on the Scioto bluff on Riverside Drive north-west of the city, 1837-1937 (hmdb.org)

Timeline

  1. — The Treaty of Greenville, signed August 3, extinguishes Native title in most of Ohio, and Lucas Sullivant is employed by Virginia to survey the central Ohio portion of the Virginia Military District, taking 6,000 acres in payment.
  2. — In August, Lucas Sullivant lays out Franklinton on the west bank opposite the forks, 220 lots in a grove of walnut trees beside bottom land the Native women of the neighborhood had planted with corn for decades; Joseph Dixon brings the first family that autumn.
  3. — A great flood submerges the first Franklinton plat before the lots can be sold; Sullivant replats the town on higher ground inland and gives away lots on Gift Street to anyone who will build.
  4. — The plateau on the east bank is patented to five Refugee Tract claimants - John Halstead, Martha Walker, Benjamin Thompson, Seth Harding and James Price - whose titles pass by sale to the men who will offer the ground to the state ten years later.
  5. — Franklin County is struck off Ross County and Franklinton becomes its seat of justice, which it remains until the seat crosses the river to Columbus in 1824 and Franklinton begins its long decline into a village on the wrong side of the water.
  6. — On February 14 the General Assembly, sitting at Zanesville, accepts the proposal of Lyne Starling, John Kerr, Alexander McLaughlin and James Johnston to lay out a town on the east bank opposite Franklinton and to build a statehouse, offices and a penitentiary there for $50,000.
  7. — On February 20 a joint resolution names the unbuilt town Columbus and appoints Joel Wright of Warren County as state Director to survey it; the streets are laid twelve degrees west of north, High Street 100 feet wide and Broad Street 120, and the first public sale of lots opens on the premises on Thursday, June 18, in what was still dense forest used as a hunting ground.
  8. — Franklinton becomes the staging ground for General William Henry Harrison's Army of the Northwest; one to three thousand troops are quartered there at a time, and the Harrison House at 570 West Broad Street, built in 1807, shelters his officers.
  9. — General Harrison and the Wyandot chief Tarhe meet at Franklinton on June 21 under an elm near the later site of Mount Carmel hospital and agree to end the fighting between their peoples.
  10. — Ohio's first statehouse at Columbus, a plain two-story brick building 75 feet by 50, is finished on the corner of State and High; the clay for its bricks comes in part from the great mound at High and Mound Streets, and the freestone trim is hauled twelve miles from Black Lick through the swamps.
  11. — Columbus is incorporated as a borough on February 10; the General Assembly meets in the town for the first time and Jarvis W. Pike, who had cleared and farmed Capitol Square for its timber, serves as the first appointed mayor.
  12. — Water is let into the Columbus Feeder of the Ohio and Erie Canal on Tuesday, September 13; at eight in the evening on Friday the 23rd cannon announce the arrival of the canalboat Governor Brown from Circleville, and the first mile of the feeder had been dug by forty-five penitentiary convicts who took the work in exchange for commuted punishment.
  13. — The National Road reaches Columbus from Baltimore; contracts had been let the year before for grading twenty-six miles east of town from the canal and fourteen miles west toward the Big Darby, and by 1831 seventy stagecoaches a week were arriving in the borough.
  14. — Cholera reaches Columbus. Josiah Stagg dies on July 14, deaths are reported almost daily until the end of September, and the Board of Health's final list on November 2 counts a hundred dead in a town of about three thousand; the outbreak produces the city's first Board of Health.
  15. — Columbus is chartered as a city on March 3 with a population of 3,500; John Brooks is elected the first popularly chosen mayor in April.
  16. — The new Ohio Penitentiary opens on the ten-acre plot the 1812 proprietors had deeded the state on Scioto Lane, replacing the thirteen-cell prison finished in 1815 whose first inmates, the brothers John and David Evans, had arrived on August 15 of that year; a separate women's prison is built inside its walls in 1837.
  17. — The cornerstone of the present Ohio Statehouse is laid on July 4 with no final design agreed; Capitol Square's picket fence is replaced by a high board fence built to screen the convicts working on the building.
  18. — The landscape architect Howard Daniels designs the original portion of Green Lawn Cemetery, which grows to more than 360 acres and holds Lucas Sullivant, Simon Lazarus, James Poindexter, Eddie Rickenbacker and James Thurber; the cholera of the following year begins filling it.
  19. — The worst cholera summer in the city's history: 162 deaths reported in town from June to September 12, and 116 more in the Penitentiary, where 22 men died on July 10 alone and the prison physicians Doctor Gard and Doctor Horace Lathrop both died of the disease.
  20. — The Columbus and Xenia Railroad becomes the first railroad into the city; the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati follows in 1851 and the two build a joint station north of Naghten Street, the first union station in the world.
  21. — Simon Lazarus opens a one-room men's clothing store downtown; his sons build it into the department store that will dominate central Ohio retail for a century and a half.
  22. — The Ohio Statehouse opens to the public on January 7 after eighteen years of construction, five years after fire destroyed the old two-story statehouse and scattered the state offices around town; the rotunda is still unfinished, Isaiah Rogers is brought in to complete it, and Capitol Square is not finished until 1861, twenty-two years and about $1.3 million after the cornerstone was laid.
  23. — Franklinton is absorbed into Columbus. The date is disputed: the city's own article gives 1837, the Franklinton neighborhood history gives 1859, and the 1947 sesquicentennial marker on West Broad Street says 1870.
  24. — Camp Chase is established in May 1861 on leased land on the National Road four miles west of downtown, on ground now bounded by Broad Street, Hague Avenue, Sullivant Avenue and Westgate Avenue in the Hilltop; Columbus houses 26,000 Union troops, and as many as 150,000 Union soldiers and 25,000 Confederate prisoners pass through the camp, which held over 9,400 men by February 1865.
  25. — The Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College is founded under the Morrill Act on the former estate of William and Hannah Neil north of town; it opens to twenty-four students on September 17, 1873 and is renamed the Ohio State University in 1878.
  26. — Clinton D. Firestone and the brothers George and Oscar Peters form the Columbus Buggy Company with $20,000 at Wall and Locust Streets; in its first year it draws $50,000 in revenue, and by 1878 it has 250 employees making a hundred buggies a week.
  27. — Joseph A. Jeffrey and F. C. Sessions buy Francis Lechner's coal-cutting patent and found the Lechner Mining Machine Company; renamed the Jeffrey Manufacturing Company in 1880 and moved to Milo-Grogan, it becomes the largest maker of mining locomotives and coal cutters in the world.
  28. — Samuel Gompers founds the American Federation of Labor in Druid's Hall on South Fourth Street in 1886, and the United Mine Workers of America is founded at the old City Hall in 1890.
  29. — Daniel Burnham's Union Station opens, its Beaux-Arts arcade of shops and offices facing High Street from a viaduct that finally lifts the road over the thirteen tracks; the arcade is completed in 1899.
  30. — Griggs Dam is completed on the Scioto at a cost of $700,000, named for the city's chief engineer Julian Griggs; for twenty years it is the only reservoir supplying Columbus.
  31. — The Columbus Experiment: the brothers Clarence and Charles Hoover design the first water plant in the world to combine filtration with softening, cutting typhoid deaths sharply; Jeremiah O'Shaughnessy, superintendent of the Division of Water, is among those who built it.
  32. — The streetcar strike: 600 union men walk out at 4 a.m. on July 24 against nineteen-cent hours and sixty-five-hour weeks; crowds barricade tracks and dynamite empty cars, Mayor George Marshall calls in 5,000 Ohio National Guard, and the union concedes defeat on October 18.
  33. — The Great Flood. About five inches of rain falls in twenty-four hours from late on March 24; at 10 a.m. on March 25 the earthen State Levee opposite the Ohio Penitentiary gives way, putting 7 to 17 feet of water over Franklinton, killing at least 93 people and destroying every downtown bridge but the condemned Rich Street span.
  34. — The wooden arches that had spanned High Street and earned Columbus the name Arch City are torn down and replaced with cluster lights; metal arches are raised again over the Short North in 2002 for their historical interest.
  35. — Anti-German feeling peaks in the old South End: German is banned in the public schools, German books are burned on Broad Street and at the foot of the Schiller statue, Germania Street becomes Stewart Avenue and Schiller Park is renamed Washington Park.
  36. — Ohio Stadium opens on the Olentangy; the first game, against Ohio Wesleyan on October 7, draws about 25,000 into a horseshoe that looks half empty, and the formal dedication against Michigan two weeks later draws a reported 72,000.
  37. — On April 21 a fire started by a candle among oily rags on the roof of the six-story West Block kills 322 inmates of the Ohio Penitentiary and hospitalizes 230 more, one of the deadliest prison fires in North American history; guards who refused to unlock cells were blamed, and 500 soldiers from Fort Hayes ringed the walls with machine guns.
  38. — Poindexter Village opens on the near East Side on October 12 with President Franklin Roosevelt at the ceremony: 400 units in 35 buildings on 27 acres, the first public housing in Columbus and among the first in the country, named for the abolitionist minister James Preston Poindexter. Thirty-three of its buildings are demolished around 2013; the last two are bought by the Ohio History Connection in 2017 and made a state historic site in July 2021.
  39. — B & T Metals in East Franklinton is contracted to extrude about fifty tons of uranium for the Hanford reactor between March and August; the workers are given weekly physicals and no radiation protection. The site is remediated in 2001.
  40. — The Park of Roses is laid out on 13.5 acres of Whetstone Park in Clintonville, established April 19, 1952 and opened June 6, 1953 with 20,000 plants; the American Rose Society moves its headquarters and the world's largest rose library from Hartford to Columbus.
  41. — Hoover Dam is built on Big Walnut Creek in Blendon Township for the water demand of postwar Columbus - begun 1953, dedicated 1955, opened 1958 - and named for the brothers Charles P. and Clarence B. Hoover of the Columbus waterworks.
  42. — Jack Sensenbrenner takes office as mayor after an upset win, and makes annexation the price of a city water tap; the policy runs through his terms of 1954-1960 and 1964-1972 and adds more than a hundred square miles to Columbus.
  43. — The last major Franklinton flood: the Scioto crests 27.22 feet above flood stage at Frank Road on January 22 over frozen ground. The Franklinton branch library on Sullivant Avenue is closed for weeks by flood and fire damage while the furnace is rewired.
  44. — German Village becomes a city historic district in 1960 and Frank Fetch's German Village Society holds the first Haus und Garten Tour that June, showing eight restored houses and two gardens in a neighborhood the city had lately proposed to demolish by the third; it is listed on the National Register in 1974 as the largest privately funded preservation district on it, and more than 1,600 buildings are restored.
  45. — Construction of Interstate 71 cuts through Bronzeville on the near East Side; the highway becomes the neighborhood's western boundary and begins the decline of what had been the city's largest and most self-contained Black community.
  46. — The Martin Luther King Jr. branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library is dedicated on East Long Street in November, the first public library in the United States named for King, dedicated by his father months after the assassination and designed by Leon Ransom Jr. of the city's first Black-led architecture firm.
  47. — On the evening of Friday, October 22, wreckers hired by the Battelle Memorial Institute take down almost the whole Union Station arcade overnight; a restraining order won by the Ohio Historical Society stops the machines the next day with one arch standing.
  48. — The last train leaves Columbus Union Station on the morning of April 28, a westbound National Limited for Kansas City at 9:17; the station itself is demolished in September 1979 and the National Limited is cut a month later, ending about 130 years of intercity rail service to the city.
  49. — The Short North Tavern opens on High Street, the first business to use a name that police and taxi drivers had coined for the stretch that fell just short of downtown; galleries follow, and two of them begin the monthly Gallery Hop in 1984.
  50. — The last inmate leaves the Ohio Penitentiary in August after 150 years; the buildings stand empty for more than a decade and are demolished in 1997, and Nationwide redevelops the site as the Arena District.
  51. — AmeriFlora '92 marks the Columbus quincentennial; Native leaders hold a day of mourning and fasts at City Hall, and their protests stop the planned replica Native village from being exhibited. Annual fasts continue until 1997.
  52. — Michael B. Coleman is elected the city's first African American mayor; he serves sixteen years, longer than anyone else, and pushes redevelopment of the riverfront, the Arena District and Franklinton.
  53. — Easton Town Center opens in north-east Columbus in the summer of 1999, one of the first lifestyle centers in the country, built by Les Wexner's Limited Brands with the Georgetown Company on a mock town grid; Polaris Fashion Place follows in November 2001 on the Delaware County side of the northern city limit, and Northland Mall, whose three anchors moved there, closes on October 31, 2002 and is demolished in February 2004.
  54. — The Franklinton floodwall is dedicated in March, eleven years after the Columbus Day groundbreaking of 1993 and eighteen after the Army Corps first recommended it: 7.2 miles long, $134 million, able to hold a Scioto crest of 30.9 feet. It lifts the floodplain designation from most of the neighborhood and building resumes for the first time since 1983.
  55. — The Lazarus name disappears from central Ohio storefronts when Federated completes the conversion of the chain to Macy's, 154 years after Simon Lazarus opened his one-room shop.
  56. — The Ohio EPA and the city begin taking out the lowhead dams: the Fifth Avenue Dam on the Olentangy in 2012, which narrows that river to about half its impounded width, and in 2013 the Main Street Dam on the Scioto, built in 1918 to hold back floods and to widen the river downtown, whose removal gives the city back a long strip of shoreline that had been under water since before the First World War and becomes the Scioto Mile.
  57. — The census counts 905,748 people in Columbus, the fourteenth largest city in the United States and by far the largest in Ohio; the city covers 223.11 square miles, of which 217.17 are land, and the Census Bureau's 2025 estimate of 938,396 is still rising.
  58. — The COVID-19 pandemic reaches Columbus in February and March and the city declares a state of emergency; protests over the murder of George Floyd run from May 28 into August, and in 2021 the 22-foot Christopher Columbus statue is removed from the south side of City Hall.
  59. — Intel announces in January that it will build semiconductor fabrication plants on 926 acres annexed into New Albany at the north-east edge of the metropolitan area; construction begins in September 2022.
  60. — A ransomware attack on the City of Columbus in July 2024 is claimed by the group Rhysida; in January 2025 Anduril announces Arsenal-1, a weapons manufacturing plant in the Columbus area, part of a wave of advanced-manufacturing investment that also brought Honda and LG Energy Solution battery work to the region.

Stories

Franklinton, and the flood that came the first year

Lucas Sullivant came into central Ohio in 1795 with about twenty men and a compass, employed by Virginia to survey the Military District, and paid for it in land. He took the best of what he measured - so much of it that he was known as monarch of all he surveyed - and he kept coming back to the forks of the Scioto because the bottom there was rich, the river was navigable, and the Native people had already chosen it, their women having planted the bend just below the forks with corn for as long as anyone could remember. In August 1797, in a grove of walnut trees skirting those cornfields, he laid out 220 lots and named the town Franklinton for Benjamin Franklin, lately dead. The lots were to be sold on a fixed day. Before the day came, in 1798, the whole lowland went under water and the plat with it. Sullivant moved the town back onto higher ground, redrew it in blocks of four lots each ninety-nine feet wide and a hundred and fifteen deep, and, to get anyone at all to live in a place that had just drowned, gave away the lots along one street to whoever would build a house on them. It is still called Gift Street. He built the county's first brick house there, hauling brick and glass from Philadelphia, and a courthouse, a church and the first bridge over the Scioto; he lived in Franklinton until he died in 1823, and his grave was in the churchyard before it was moved to Green Lawn. The river came back in 1832, 1834, 1847, 1852, 1859, 1860, 1862, 1866, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1875, 1881 and 1883.

Why the capital came to a cornfield

Ohio could not settle on a capital. The 1802 constitution put the government at Chillicothe until 1808 and forbade spending on legislative buildings until 1809; the legislature moved to Zanesville in 1810 and quarreled about where to go next. A five-man commission toured the state in 1810, visited Franklinton, and threw it out for its low situation and the unsuitableness of its plan, then recommended the Sells brothers' farm on the west bank near present-day Dublin, chiefly because it sat near the geographical center of the state. That rejection is what produced Columbus. Franklinton's landowners looked across the river at the empty plateau on the east bank - high, wooded, unbuilt, with no existing streets to argue about - and four men who between them held title to it made the legislature an offer no rival town could match: give us the capital and we will lay out a town, deed you ten acres for a statehouse and ten for a penitentiary, and build both at our own expense for fifty thousand dollars. Lyne Starling, John Kerr, Alexander McLaughlin and James Johnston signed a hundred-thousand-dollar bond on February 10, 1812 to guarantee it. Worthington fought hard and was said to have had a majority, but in the closing hours of the session Joseph Foos, Sullivant and other Franklinton men swung it, and on February 14 the General Assembly fixed the seat of government on the high banks opposite Franklinton at the forks of the Scioto - a place Lee describes as dense forestland used only as a hunting ground. Six days later a joint resolution gave it the name Columbus. Lots went on sale on the premises on June 18, 1812, in the woods.

The mound at High and Mound

The largest ancient work in Franklin County stood at the crest of the east bluff where High Street crosses Mound Street. James Linn Rodgers, who wrote the earthworks chapter of Alfred Lee's 1892 history, reckoned it at fully forty feet above the natural terrace, a truncated cone perhaps three hundred feet across the base with a level top a hundred feet wide - so large that a Doctor Young built a big double frame house on the summit and later families lived in it, and oak trees three feet through grew on its slopes. When the first settlers came it was regarded as a wonder. It was not spared. Two gangs of excavators cut into it from the north and the south until they met and High Street ran straight through. The outer clay and the gravel and sand beneath went into the beds of the neighboring streets; human bones came up and crumbled in the air, and a silver buckle was turned by somebody's spade, which Rodgers thought had belonged to a historic-period Indian who had traded with the French or English. Some of the mound's clay went into brick: Lee records that the bricks of Ohio's first statehouse at Columbus, the plain two-story building finished in 1814 at State and High, were made in part from clay taken out of that mound. The city's capitol, in other words, was built partly out of a Native burial place, three blocks away. Nothing of the mound remains but the terraces of the church that replaced it and the name of the street.

The Statehouse and the men who built it behind a fence

Ohio held a design competition for its capitol in 1838 and could not decide: first prize went to Henry Walter of Cincinnati, second to Martin Thompson of New York, third to the painter Thomas Cole, and the commission then failed to agree on any of them. The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1839 with no final design in hand. Almost at once the law making Columbus the capital came up for renewal, work stopped while the legislature argued about moving again, the open excavations were filled back in, and Capitol Square went back to being pasture for livestock. In 1834 the square had been fenced presentably with cedar posts and white palings and planted with elms brought in from the forest; in 1839 that fence was replaced with a higher one of rough boards, built for one purpose - to screen the convicts at work on the Capitol from the town. Prisoners sentenced to hard labor dug and laid the foundations, which go down thirteen feet. Work resumed in May 1848 under William Russell West and J. O. Sawyer, paused for a cholera epidemic that emptied the town, and paused again each hard winter. When fire took the old statehouse in 1852 the state offices scattered across town and the pressure told. The building opened to the public on January 7, 1857, eighteen years after the cornerstone, and the whole of Capitol Square was not finished until 1861, twenty-two years and about $1.3 million in. Isaiah Rogers, brought in at the end, declined to put a dome on it; critics called the low conical roof a Chinese hat, and it is still there.

Camp Chase and the Confederate cemetery in the Hilltop

In May 1861 the government leased ground on the National Road four miles west of downtown and named the camp for Salmon P. Chase, the former Ohio governor then serving as Lincoln's Treasury Secretary. Its boundaries were roughly what are now Broad Street on the north, Hague Avenue on the east, Sullivant Avenue on the south and Westgate Avenue on the west. It was a training camp, a parole camp, a mustering point and, increasingly, a prison. As many as 150,000 Union soldiers passed through, along with 25,000 Confederate prisoners. By February 1865 more than 9,400 prisoners were held there. Prisoners were not deliberately starved, but the army fed its own first, and crowding produced a smallpox outbreak that killed hundreds in the winter of 1863-64. The camp closed in 1865 and was pulled down; its usable buildings went to Dayton in 1867 to help build the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. What is left above ground is two acres of cemetery holding 2,260 Confederate graves, one of the largest Confederate burial grounds in the North. A former Union soldier, William H. Knauss, organized the first memorial service there in 1895 and published a history of the camp in 1906. The memorial arch went up in 1902; the United Daughters of the Confederacy held annual services from 1912 to 1994 and the Hilltop Historical Society sponsors them now. On August 22, 2017 vandals pushed the soldier statue off the arch and broke off its head, taking the head and leaving the hat; it was repaired and reinstalled in May 2019. The rest of the camp is a 1920s and 1930s subdivision called Westgate.

March 25, 1913: the levee goes at ten in the morning

Beginning late on March 24, about five inches of rain fell in twenty-four hours on ground that had never fully thawed after a cold winter. The newspapers on the 24th had printed a forecast saying there was no danger of damaging storms in this vicinity. By two in the morning it was clear a major flood was coming; by dawn police and firemen were pulling people out in water to the knee. At ten o'clock the earthen State Levee, across the river from the Ohio Penitentiary, gave way under the pressure, and most of Franklinton went under seven to seventeen feet of water within minutes. Houses came off their foundations. People climbed into attics and then into trees, and when the temperature dropped that night, some of the exhausted let go and fell into the water. Robert F. Wolfe, publisher of the Columbus Evening Dispatch, watched the river rise from his office, remembered that his boats were in winter storage at Buckeye Lake, chartered an interurban train and brought back nine motorboats and twenty rowboats to the water's edge at Rich and Scioto. The current was too fast to launch rescue boats at all until Thursday. An estimated 93 people died; every bridge downtown went out except the Rich Street bridge, which had already been condemned. The city shut down for five days and the west side for six weeks. Columbus historian Ed Lentz calls it the worst catastrophe in the city's history.

Ninety-one years to build a wall

The 1913 flood produced the answer that shaped downtown: in 1916 voters approved a $3.5 million plan, the Scioto through the center of the city was doubled in width and its channel deepened, new bridges went up and the civic center was built behind a retaining wall on the east bank. Franklinton, on the low side, got levees and not much else. Business and people moved uphill to the Hilltop, property values on the west side fell by half, and the neighborhood never got them back. The river came again in January 1959, cresting 27.22 feet above flood stage at Frank Road over frozen ground, closing the Franklinton branch library on Sullivant Avenue for weeks while its furnace was rewired and its structure repaired. Columbus joined the federal flood insurance program in 1971, and in 1983 FEMA drew nearly all of Franklinton inside the hundred-year floodplain; city council then restricted new construction, which froze the neighborhood in place for twenty years. The Army Corps recommended a floodwall in 1986 at an estimated $30.9 million, design money came in 1988, the first contract was let in 1993, and politicians broke ground on Columbus Day that year. Federal funding was cut and restored more than once through the 1990s. The finished wall was dedicated in March 2004: 7.2 miles, $134 million, rated for a crest of 30.9 feet. About 700 of the 2,800 acres behind it are still at risk from poor drainage and still carry building restrictions and insurance requirements.

Arthur Boke Jr.

In 1803 Sarah Sullivant had just given birth to a son in Franklinton when, a few days later, an abandoned baby - the child of an enslaved woman - was left at her door. She took him in and nursed both children. The Sullivants named him Arthur Boke Jr. and raised him as a son and a brother; he lived in the household until his death in 1841, and Lucas and Sarah's children, particularly Joseph, made sure he was buried in the family plot, which in that time and place was a public statement about who counted as family. The story is the reason Franklinton claims the first African American resident of what became Columbus. It has been retold enough to have acquired the smoothness of legend, and the version on the monument is a piece of civic commemoration rather than a document, but the burial in the Sullivant plot is the part that is hard to invent. In 2004 the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and sculptor Alfred Tibor donated a bronze group called Celebration of Life, put up at Broad Street and Washington Boulevard near the west bank of the Scioto by the Franklinton Historical Society, the Hilltop Historical Society and the Greater Hilltop Community Development Corporation, with a poem by the Columbus poet Buelina Murphy on its base. Tibor's dedication reads that he gained freedom when he came to the United States and that he gave the work to tell coming generations to celebrate life.

Buggy Capital of the World

In 1870 two brothers from the leather trade, George and Oscar Peters, had worked out how to build a serviceable buggy for about $150, sold a hundred of them at auction, and been abandoned by their backers. Clinton D. Firestone of Canton put up $5,000, and the three of them started in a shanty on North High Street that cost a hundred dollars to build. They sold 237 buggies the first year. In 1875 they formed the Columbus Buggy Company with $20,000 at Wall and Locust Streets, next door to the Ohio Penitentiary and Union Station, and the thing took off: 250 employees and a hundred buggies a week by 1878, a thousand employees and 25,000 buggies a year by 1883, and at its height in 1892 twelve hundred people making a hundred vehicles and fifteen hundred dashboards a day, $2 million a year in revenue and a payroll of $300,000 a month. By 1900 about two dozen buggy makers were working day and night in Columbus and an estimated one buggy in six anywhere in the world was built here. Two of the men who passed through the works changed the century: Harvey S. Firestone, a salesman and Clinton's cousin, noticed what thick rubber tires did for a carriage and left in 1900 to found the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, and a seventeen-year-old troubleshooter named Eddie Rickenbacker learned to drive fast testing the company's cars. The firm went electric in 1903 and gasoline in 1909 with the Firestone-Columbus, entered the Indianapolis 500 in 1911 and 1912, and then the Scioto came over the Dublin Road plant in March 1913. It filed for bankruptcy $624,000 in debt, was reorganized, and closed in 1915 with thirty-five unsold electric cars in stock.

The Lazarus store

Simon Lazarus opened a one-room men's clothing shop in downtown Columbus in 1851. Civil War contracts for uniforms taught American factories to make clothing in standard sizes, and by 1870 the family was selling ready-made civilian clothes; from there it became a full department store. His sons Fred Sr. and Ralph brought in the marketing that made the name: one price, no haggling; the first department store escalators in the country; the first air-conditioned store in the country. Fred Lazarus Jr. went further than retail - he lobbied Franklin Roosevelt to fix Thanksgiving permanently on the fourth Thursday in November so the Christmas shopping season would start on a predictable date, and won. The company bought Cincinnati's John Shillito Company in 1928 and in 1929 was one of four founders of Federated Department Stores, alongside Filene's and Abraham & Straus. In central Ohio Lazarus was not simply dominant; by 1982 it had outlasted the last of its traditional local rivals. In 1989 the sprawling downtown flagship became an anchor of the Columbus City Center mall, reached by a skywalk over South High Street. Then the consolidation reversed: Lazarus was folded into an Atlanta division in 1995, rebranded Lazarus-Macy's in 2003 and simply Macy's in 2005. Its people had never been called employees. They were called associates.

Bronzeville, and the road that cut it

Black families had been in Columbus since before the Civil War - Second Baptist Church, the first Black Baptist church in the city, dates to 1824, and its pastor from 1858, James Preston Poindexter, was a barber, a minister, a conductor on the Underground Railroad and later the first African American elected to the city council and the first on the board of education. The neighborhood that residents called Bronzeville, east of downtown along Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue, filled after the First World War with people coming north in the Great Migration and was hemmed in by restrictive covenants elsewhere in the city, so it built its own everything. By the 1930s it had four theaters - the Lincoln, the Empress, the Cameo and the Pythian - jazz clubs, hospitals, schools, churches and a commercial street of Black-owned businesses; it was where civil rights organizers, including Martin Luther King Jr., gathered when they came to Columbus. The Ogden Theatre had opened at 769 East Long Street on November 26, 1928, built by the local entrepreneur Al Jackson in Egyptian Revival by the architect Carl Anderson, and was renamed the Lincoln in 1939. Poindexter Village opened a few blocks away in 1940 with Roosevelt in attendance. What ended it was not one thing but two arriving together: Interstate 71, built through the district from 1962 and now its western boundary, and the lifting of the covenants, which let the middle class leave. In 2001 the city launched the King-Lincoln District Plan, restoring the Lincoln Theatre and the Pythian as the King Arts Complex and bridging the highway with a Long Street cultural wall of sixty panels and 139 images. In 2009 the neighborhood association asked that the district simply be called Bronzeville again.

How German Village survived

The land south of downtown was claimed by a Revolutionary veteran named John McGowan by 1802 and sold off in tracts to German immigrants as they arrived; by 1814 it was a settlement they called Das Alte Suedende, the Old South End. Cheap land drew more, and by 1865 a third of Columbus was German. They built breweries along South Front Street - twenty-nine over the years, among them Louis Hoster's City Brewery from the 1830s, Schlegel's Bavarian, Conrad Born's Capital, and August Wagner's Gambrinus - and schools so good that English-speaking families sent their children to them, and Schiller Park with a Munich casting of the Schiller statue, given by residents in 1891. Then it was dismantled twice. The First World War brought a ban on teaching German in the schools, book burnings on Broad Street and at the foot of the Schiller statue in 1918, Germania Street renamed Stewart Avenue, Schiller Park renamed Washington Park, and dachshunds killed and thrown into a pit in the park. Prohibition closed the breweries. The area was rezoned for manufacturing, the streetcar tracks and wrought-iron fences went for scrap in the Second World War, and by the 1950s the city had declared it a slum and decided to demolish a third of it - the third that is now the interstate junction called the Split. Frank Fetch bought a house on South Wall Street anyway, founded the German Village Society, and in June 1960 put eight restored houses and two gardens on a tour. The neighborhood became a city historic district that year, won a commission with power over exterior changes, and was listed on the National Register in 1974 as the largest privately funded preservation district on it. More than sixteen hundred buildings have been restored since.

Water for annexation

Columbus is 223 square miles because of a plumbing decision. After the Second World War the interstates and cheap mortgages pulled people out to the townships, and every other big Ohio city watched its tax base leave and its boundary freeze. Columbus had one asset the townships could not build for themselves: it held the regional water and sewer rights over a large part of central Ohio, anchored on Griggs Dam of 1905, the O'Shaughnessy upstream, the Hoover reservoir on Big Walnut begun in 1953 and opened in 1958, and the treatment technique the Hoover brothers had invented here in 1908. Jack Sensenbrenner, a former Fuller Brush salesman who won the mayoralty in an upset in 1954, made the rule plain: if a neighborhood wanted a city water tap, it had to be annexed first. He was mayor from 1954 to 1960 and again from 1964 to 1972, and the city grew by more than a hundred square miles under him. The policy is why Columbus is almost entirely ringed by suburbs and also why several suburbs are entirely landlocked inside it, why the city reaches north across the Franklin County line into Delaware County at Polaris, and why by the early 1990s Columbus was the largest city in Ohio in both area and population.

Taking the dams out

For most of the twentieth century the rivers through Columbus were held behind lowhead dams and were wider, slower and muddier for it. The Main Street Dam went into the Scioto downtown in 1918, part of the post-1913 flood works, and it doubled the width of the river through the center of the city; the water behind it was stagnant. The Fifth Avenue Dam did the same to the Olentangy. Starting in 2012 the Ohio EPA and the city began taking them out - the Fifth Avenue Dam first, which cut the Olentangy to about half its impounded width and exposed banks that could be replanted - and in 2013 the Main Street Dam and the sediment behind it were removed. The Scioto downtown narrowed, and the city recovered a long strip of shoreline that had been underwater since before the First World War. That new bank is what the Scioto Mile is built on. The park chain had started slowly: Bicentennial Park in 1976, Battelle Riverfront Park in 1983, both cut off from downtown by a five-lane Civic Center Drive, and a replica of the Santa Maria moored at Battelle in 1992 to draw people to a riverfront that had nothing else to offer. Michael Coleman made the riverfront his project after becoming mayor in 2000; Civic Center Drive lost two lanes, and the parks were built out between 2011 and 2015 into nine connected spaces from Genoa Park and Dorrian Green on the Franklinton side to North Bank Park and the Scioto Audubon. A pillar on the Scioto Mile Promenade marks the 1913 high water.

The night they took down Union Station

Daniel Burnham designed the third Columbus Union Station in 1893, fresh from the Chicago World's Fair, and it opened in 1897 with an arcade of shops and offices along High Street finished in 1899 - the solution to a crossing where trains had been blocking the road up to seven hours a day. In 1893 the old station had handled 112 passenger trains daily. Then the traffic went: 42 trains a day by 1956, the fewest since 1875; 21 by 1962; ten by 1970; and after Amtrak took over in 1971, one. The station's fate was decided by a lawsuit. Battelle Memorial Institute, sued between 1969 and 1975 over its use of nonprofit profits, agreed to fund public causes and put $36.5 million toward a convention center on the Union Station site. A federal transit hub was planned inside the restored arcade, with $6.24 million promised by the Urban Mass Transit Administration. On October 19, 1976 Battelle's trustees decided instead to demolish, telling no one - not the State Historic Preservation Office, not the transit authority, not the city. At six in the evening on Friday, October 22, the wreckers went in, and by six the next evening almost the entire arcade was gone; a restraining order won by the Ohio Historical Society stopped them with a single arch standing. The arcade had been on the National Register since 1974, listed as an emergency precisely because demolition was feared. UMTA withdrew all $6.24 million. The last train, a westbound National Limited, left at 9:17 a.m. on April 28, 1977; the station came down in September 1979. The one surviving arch stands in McFerson Commons in the Arena District.

The Hilltop: Sullivant's Hill, a camp, an asylum and the refugees of 1913

The high ground west of Franklinton was named for its first deeded owner - Sullivant's Hill, which wore down over generations into the Hilltop. Lucas Sullivant kept his own house in the bottom and gave about 1,600 acres up the hill to his sons, and the land stayed in the family for a century, farmed in corn, clover seed and hay. The National Road came through in the 1830s and made West Broad Street, and with it the Four-Mile House and the Jaybird Hotel. Camp Chase took a square mile of it from 1861 to 1865. In 1870 the state built the Columbus State Hospital for the Insane there, a vast Kirkbride-plan building on Broad Street designed on the theory that air and sunlight were treatment; with the adjoining state institution it employed nearly 450 people, most of whom lived on the Hilltop, and a streetcar line was run out High Street to reach it. By 1900 the neighborhood had over 2,000 residents. Then the levee broke in 1913 and the police in horse-drawn carriages went through Franklinton shouting at people to get to the Hilltop, and they came - so many that the population reached 15,000 by 1924, with its own schools, employers and shops. In the mid-century General Motors' Fisher Body and Delphi plants were the wage. The hospital closed in the 1980s and was demolished in 1997; the state's Department of Public Safety and Department of Transportation offices stand on the site. The Camp Chase cemetery is still there, two acres in the middle of a 1920s subdivision.

Clintonville, Whetstone and eleven thousand roses

Clintonville is named for Clinton Township, which is named for George Clinton, Jefferson's vice-president, and it sits on United States Military Lands granted to Continental Army soldiers in lieu of pensions - ground that Clintonville's own history describes as former Wyandot territory. A New Yorker named John Rathbone owned a quarter section of it without ever setting foot in Ohio. In 1813 the Methodist minister Thomas Bull bought 600 acres of it along the Columbus-Worthington Pike, and found the trouble with 600 acres was that there was nobody within reach to make shoes or shoe a horse. So the Bulls put up buildings in the middle of the township along the plank toll road that became North High Street and offered to give them away to any skilled tradesman who would stay. A post office called Clintonville opened in the middle of that little district on September 13, 1847, and residents still keep that date as the neighborhood's birthday. Clinton Chapel, built in 1838 and now a funeral home, was a stop on the Underground Railroad for the next two decades. The streetcar arrived, professors and downtown families built summer houses in the ravines, and by the 1950s Columbus had annexed most of the township. In 1944 the city bought 106 acres of the E. A. Fuller farm for Whetstone Park, used it for victory gardens, and opened it as a park in 1950; in 1951 the Columbus Rose Club and the Central Ohio Rose Society formed a committee, and on April 19, 1952 the Park of Roses was established on 13.5 acres of it. Two thousand hybrid teas went in that autumn and the rest the following spring; it opened on June 6, 1953 with 20,000 plants and hosted the American Rose Society's national convention in September. The Society moved its headquarters and the largest rose library in the world from Hartford to Columbus. It has about 11,000 roses now, in 350 varieties, and it is free.

Bexley, Alum Creek, and the island that Columbus did not swallow

Alum Creek - Seckle Sepung, Saltlick Creek, in the Lenape that John Brickell learned in captivity - runs south past the east side of Columbus, and for a long time it was the edge of the city's reach. Bullitt Park was platted on its far bank in 1889 by Logan M. Bullitt of Philadelphia, and wealthy Columbus families built country houses out along Broad Street and Bryden Road toward it; one of those houses became the first campus of the Columbus School for Girls. What made the ground buildable was a war. In 1898 Governor Asa Bushnell chose a cluster of unsold lots around Broad and Drexel as the assembly camp for Ohio's Spanish-American War volunteers, and Camp Bushnell held 8,000 recruits for three weeks - long enough that water and sewer lines had to be run out there, which is exactly what the subdivisions needed. In 1908 the residents of Bullitt Park north of Main Street and the Lutheran community of Pleasant Ridge to the south, gathered around Capital University and the seminary that had moved out from the German South End, agreed to merge and incorporated as the village of Bexley, named at Colonel Lincoln Kilbourne's suggestion for his family's roots in Bexley, London. It passed 5,000 people in 1928 and became a city on January 1, 1932. Because it incorporated before the water-for-annexation era, Bexley is one of the places Columbus grew around rather than through: today it is surrounded on three sides by the city, with Alum Creek and Franklin Park on its west. In 2013 it became the first city in the United States accredited as an arboretum.

Bill Moose, who stayed

The Wyandot were, as Alfred Lee put it in 1892, the immediate predecessors of the white men in this part of the Scioto Valley. Most of them left: the Ohio reservations were sold, and on July 12, 1843 the last Wyandot settlement near Upper Sandusky went west in 120 wagons toward Kansas and eventually Oklahoma. About a dozen families refused to go, and one of them was the family of Kihue, born in Ohio in 1837, known to everyone in Columbus as Bill Moose. They kept to the old ways as far as they could, traveling the state by its rivers. In 1878 he joined the Sells Brothers Circus, which was headquartered on the north-west side of Columbus, and spent nine years on the road across America, into Canada and as far as Australia, playing an Indian for audiences. In 1915 he came back to central Ohio and made his home in a cave in the Overbrook Ravine in Clintonville; when the cave collapsed, neighbors built him a cabin at the corner of Indianola and Morse Roads, and he lived in it for years, showing the local children how to make a bow and telling them stories. He ended in the Franklin County Home for the Aged and died on July 12, 1937, a few months short of a hundred. Tens of thousands are said to have come to the funeral. He was buried on the Scioto bluff under a stone tepee, and Bill Moose Run, one of the six glacial ravines that cut down through Clintonville to the Olentangy, carries his name.

The worst night in the Ohio Penitentiary

The penitentiary was in the plan of the city from the beginning: one of the two ten-acre parcels the 1812 proprietors deeded the state was for a prison, and the first one, with thirteen cells, took its first inmates - the brothers John and David Evans - on August 15, 1815. The larger prison that opened in 1834 stood on Spring Street where the Arena District is now, and it ran for 150 years. Its convicts dug the first mile of the Columbus canal feeder in 1831 in exchange for commuted sentences and laid the foundations of the Statehouse behind a board fence from 1839. Every Ohio execution from 1885 was carried out there: 28 hangings to 1896, then 315 electrocutions between 1897 and 1963, when Ohio became the second state in the country to use the chair. On the evening of April 21, 1930 a candle set light to oily rags on the roof of the six-story West Block after the men had been locked in for the night. Some guards refused to unlock the cells; some inmates overpowered a guard, took his keys and got others out. Three hundred and twenty-two men died and 230 were hospitalized, one of the deadliest prison fires in North American history. A riot followed, firefighters were stoned, and within half an hour 500 soldiers from Fort Hayes had the walls surrounded with machine guns and orders to shoot. Prison officials blamed three inmates for setting the fire in an escape attempt; historians have argued the accusation was a way of deflecting attention from how the fire was managed. The prison held 5,235 men at its 1955 peak, was rated for 700 and holding 1,990 in 1983, and the last inmate left in August 1984.

Photographs

High Street looking south from Broad Street, Columbus, drawn by Henry Howe on his 1846 tour of Ohio
High Street looking south from Broad Street, Columbus, drawn by Henry Howe on his 1846 tour of Ohio (1846)
Photo: Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio; Ohio Memory / Ohio History Connection, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Bird's-eye view of Columbus from Capital University, released May 18, 1854, with the still-unfinished Ohio Statehouse at centre
Bird's-eye view of Columbus from Capital University, released May 18, 1854, with the still-unfinished Ohio Statehouse at centre (1854)
Photo: J. T. Palmatary, printed by E. Sachse & Co.; New York Public Library, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
The first state buildings at Columbus, at State and High, as engraved in 1873; the 1814 statehouse's bricks were made partly from the clay of the High and Mound Street mound
The first state buildings at Columbus, at State and High, as engraved in 1873; the 1814 statehouse's bricks were made partly from the clay of the High and Mound Street mound (1873)
Photo: Columbus, Ohio: Its History, Resources, and Progress (1873); Columbus Metropolitan Library, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Camp Chase on the National Road west of Columbus, engraved for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, February 6, 1862
Camp Chase on the National Road west of Columbus, engraved for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, February 6, 1862 (1862)
Photo: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Bird's-eye view map of Columbus in 1872, the Scioto and Franklinton at left, Capitol Square at centre
Bird's-eye view map of Columbus in 1872, the Scioto and Franklinton at left, Capitol Square at centre (1872)
Photo: H. H. Bailey and O. H. Bailey, Fowler & Bailey; lithographed by Strobridge & Co.; Library of Congress, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Central Market, Columbus, in 1898; the market operated from 1814 until 1966
Central Market, Columbus, in 1898; the market operated from 1814 until 1966 (1898)
Photo: Baker Art Gallery; Columbus Metropolitan Library digital collections, no known copyright restrictions · Wikimedia Commons
The passenger platform, promenade and driveway ramp of Daniel Burnham's Union Station about 1898, a year after it opened
The passenger platform, promenade and driveway ramp of Daniel Burnham's Union Station about 1898, a year after it opened (c. 1898)
Photo: Baker Art Gallery, from The Story of Columbus: Past, Present and Future; Columbus Metropolitan Library, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
The Ohio Penitentiary on Spring Street, photographed by the Detroit Publishing Company between 1900 and 1906
The Ohio Penitentiary on Spring Street, photographed by the Detroit Publishing Company between 1900 and 1906 (c. 1900-1906)
Photo: Detroit Publishing Co.; Library of Congress, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
High Street at night under the wooden arches that made Columbus the Arch City, with the early Lazarus building at left; the arches came down in 1914
High Street at night under the wooden arches that made Columbus the Arch City, with the early Lazarus building at left; the arches came down in 1914 (before 1914)
Photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Panoramic view of the Scioto in flood at Columbus, March 25, 1913
Panoramic view of the Scioto in flood at Columbus, March 25, 1913 (1913)
Photo: Library of Congress, Panoramic Photographs collection, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
The North Sandusky Street levee, breached by the Scioto in the flood of March 25, 1913
The North Sandusky Street levee, breached by the Scioto in the flood of March 25, 1913 (1913)
Photo: Columbus Metropolitan Library, contributed via the Digital Public Library of America and the Ohio Digital Network, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
A bread line for flood victims in Columbus, April 4, 1913, ten days after the levee failed
A bread line for flood victims in Columbus, April 4, 1913, ten days after the levee failed (1913)
Photo: Columbus Metropolitan Library Digital Collection, public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Union Station's passenger waiting room coming down in 1979, three years after the High Street arcade was demolished overnight
Union Station's passenger waiting room coming down in 1979, three years after the High Street arcade was demolished overnight (1979)
Photo: David Lucas; Columbus Metropolitan Library, no known copyright restrictions · Wikimedia Commons
Shrum Mound, an Adena burial mound on the west bluff of the Scioto at 3141 McKinley Avenue, in 2016
Shrum Mound, an Adena burial mound on the west bluff of the Scioto at 3141 McKinley Avenue, in 2016 (2016)
Photo: Kevin Payravi, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The Franklinton floodwall, dedicated in 2004 after eleven years of construction, photographed in March 2020
The Franklinton floodwall, dedicated in 2004 after eleven years of construction, photographed in March 2020 (2020)
Photo: Wikimedia Commons user Ɱ, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · hmdb.org · dublinohiohistory.org · loc.gov · loc.gov · loc.gov · loc.gov · loc.gov · lccn.loc.gov · digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org · digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Historic places

132 places in Columbus on the National Register of Historic Places, 3 of them National Historic Landmarks. Press a pin or a name for its whole record.

  1. Ohio Statehouse LandmarkBuilding · Columbus · listed 1972
    Address
    SE corner of High and Broad Sts.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1972
    National Historic Landmark
    Yes
    NRIS reference number
    72001011
    Coordinates
    39.95249, -82.99864
  2. Ohio Theatre LandmarkBuilding · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    39 E. State St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    National Historic Landmark
    Yes
    NRIS reference number
    73001437
    Coordinates
    39.95987, -82.99932
  3. Rickenbacker, Capt. Edward V., House LandmarkBuilding · Columbus · listed 1976
    Address
    1334 E. Livingston Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1976
    National Historic Landmark
    Yes
    NRIS reference number
    76001426
    Coordinates
    39.94960, -82.96226
  4. American Insurance Union CitadelBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    34 W. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2017
    NRIS reference number
    75001398
    Coordinates
    39.96262, -83.00213
  5. Athletic Club of ColumbusBuilding · Columbus · listed 2011
    Address
    136 Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2011
    NRIS reference number
    11000711
    Coordinates
    39.96282, -82.99691
  6. Beatty-Moore HouseBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    41 North Monroe Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2023
    NRIS reference number
    100008631
    Coordinates
    39.96580, -82.97888
  7. Berry Brothers Bolt WorksBuilding · Columbus · listed 1988
    Address
    350 E. First Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43201
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1988
    NRIS reference number
    88000051
    Coordinates
    39.98066, -82.99495
  8. Berry, Richard Jr., HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 2005
    Address
    324 East North Broadway
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43214
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2005
    NRIS reference number
    05000754
    Coordinates
    40.03174, -83.00655
  9. Born Capital Brewery Bottling WorksBuilding · Columbus · listed 2009
    Address
    570 S. Front St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2009
    NRIS reference number
    09000442
    Coordinates
    39.95024, -82.99998
  10. Bradford Shoe Company BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1994
    Address
    232 Neilston
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1994
    NRIS reference number
    94000772
    Coordinates
    39.96797, -82.99464
  11. Broad Street ApartmentsBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    880--886 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003404
    Coordinates
    39.96511, -82.97705
  12. Broad Street Christian ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    1051 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003448
    Coordinates
    39.96519, -82.97278
  13. Broad Street United Methodist ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1980
    Address
    501 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1980
    NRIS reference number
    80002997
    Coordinates
    39.96350, -82.98742
  14. Buckeye State Building and Loan Company BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 2004
    Address
    36-42 E. Gay St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2004
    NRIS reference number
    04001145
    Coordinates
    39.95828, -82.99733
  15. Budd Dairy CompanyBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    1086 N. 4th St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43201
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2017
    NRIS reference number
    100000664
    Coordinates
    39.98327, -82.99878
  16. Cambridge ArmsBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    926 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2003
    NRIS reference number
    86003412
    Coordinates
    39.96522, -82.97606
  17. Camp Chase SiteSite · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    2900 Sullivant Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43204
    What it is
    Site
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    NRIS reference number
    73001434
    Coordinates
    39.94384, -83.07587
  18. Campbell MoundStructure · Columbus · listed 1970
    Address
    McKinley Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43204
    What it is
    Structure
    Listed on the National Register
    1970
    NRIS reference number
    70000490
    Coordinates
    39.99006, -83.08074
  19. Central Assurance CompanyBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    741 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003421
    Coordinates
    39.96424, -82.98095
  20. Central Building of the Columbus Young Men's Christian AssociationBuilding · Columbus · listed 1993
    Address
    40 W. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1993
    NRIS reference number
    93000402
    Coordinates
    39.96504, -83.00251
  21. Central Ohio Lunatic AsylumBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    1960 W. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43223
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86000851
    Coordinates
    39.95276, -83.04547
  22. Coe, Truman and Sylvia Bull, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 2006
    Address
    75 E. Lakeview Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43202
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2006
    NRIS reference number
    06000361
    Coordinates
    40.02708, -83.01197
  23. Columbia BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    161-167 N. High St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83001967
    Coordinates
    39.96586, -83.00160
  24. Columbus Gallery of Fine ArtsBuilding · Columbus · listed 1992
    Address
    480 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1992
    NRIS reference number
    92000173
    Coordinates
    39.96435, -82.98774
  25. Columbus Savings and Trust BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1977
    Address
    8 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1977
    NRIS reference number
    77001060
    Coordinates
    39.96525, -83.00065
  26. Columbus Transfer Company WarehouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    55 Nationwide Blvd.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83001966
    Coordinates
    39.96867, -83.00112
  27. Davis, Anson, HouseBuilding · Dublin · listed 1975
    Address
    4900 Hayden Run Rd.
    Where
    Dublin, Franklin County · ZIP 43016
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1975
    NRIS reference number
    75001402
    Coordinates
    40.06519, -83.12504
  28. Davis, Anson, SpringhouseBuilding · Dublin · listed 1979
    Address
    4900 Hayden Run Rd.
    Where
    Dublin, Franklin County · ZIP 43016
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1979
    NRIS reference number
    79002907
    Coordinates
    40.06519, -83.12504
  29. Del Monte ApartmentsBuilding · Columbus · listed 2016
    Address
    341--345 South Third St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2016
    NRIS reference number
    16000846
    Coordinates
    39.95535, -82.99686
  30. Drake, Elam, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1978
    Address
    2738 Ole Country Lane
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43219
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1978
    NRIS reference number
    78002064
    Coordinates
    40.00417, -82.92072
  31. East Broad Street Commercial BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    747, 749, 751 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003424
    Coordinates
    39.96429, -82.98066
  32. East Broad Street Presbyterian ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1987
    Address
    760 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1987
    NRIS reference number
    86003397
    Coordinates
    39.96489, -82.97991
  33. Edna, TheBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    877-881 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2017
    NRIS reference number
    100000665
    Coordinates
    39.96863, -82.95230
  34. Engine House No. 16Building · Columbus · listed 1995
    Address
    260 N. Fourth St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1995
    NRIS reference number
    95000580
    Coordinates
    39.96829, -82.99675
  35. Engine House No. 6Building · Columbus · listed 2016
    Address
    540 W. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2016
    NRIS reference number
    16000595
    Coordinates
    39.96074, -83.01500
  36. Felton SchoolBuilding · Columbus · listed 1984
    Address
    Leonard Ave. at N. Monroe St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1984
    NRIS reference number
    84003677
    Coordinates
    39.97554, -82.97823
  37. Ford Motor Company Columbus Branch Assembly PlantBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    427 Cleveland Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2021
    NRIS reference number
    100006229
    Coordinates
    39.97258, -82.99062
  38. Franklin Park ConservatoryBuilding · Columbus · listed 1974
    Address
    1547 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1974
    NRIS reference number
    74001489
    Coordinates
    39.96592, -82.95055
  39. Franklinton Apartments at Broad and HawkesBuilding · Columbus · listed 2005
    Address
    949-957 W. Broad St., 13-23 Hawkes Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43222
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2005
    NRIS reference number
    05000028
    Coordinates
    39.95899, -83.02603
  40. Franklinton Apartments at State and MayBuilding · Columbus · listed 2005
    Address
    494-504 State St., 74-82 S. May Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2005
    NRIS reference number
    05000027
    Coordinates
    39.95882, -83.01378
  41. Franklinton Post OfficeBuilding · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    72 S. Gift St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    NRIS reference number
    73001435
    Coordinates
    39.95959, -83.01535
  42. Gaetz Music HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 2014
    Address
    49-53 W. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2014
    NRIS reference number
    14000995
    Coordinates
    39.96273, -83.00269
  43. Garfield--Broad ApartmentsBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    775 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003427
    Coordinates
    39.96474, -82.97792
  44. Godman, H.C., Co. BuildingBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    35 N 4th St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2018
    NRIS reference number
    100002552
    Coordinates
    39.96351, -82.99690
  45. Great Southern Hotel and TheatreBuilding · Columbus · listed 1982
    Address
    S. High and E. Main Sts.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1982
    NRIS reference number
    82001458
    Coordinates
    39.95624, -82.99032
  46. Griswold Memorial Young Women's Christian AssociationBuilding · Columbus · listed 1993
    Address
    65 S. Fourth St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1993
    NRIS reference number
    93000671
    Coordinates
    39.96091, -82.99631
  47. Hamilton, Gilbert H., HouseBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    290 Cliffside Dr.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43211
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    1992
    NRIS reference number
    89000175
    Coordinates
    40.01879, -82.99389
  48. Hamlet, TheBuilding · Columbus · listed 2015
    Address
    138-166 E. 5th & 1193-1195 Hamlet Sts.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43201
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2015
    NRIS reference number
    15000040
    Coordinates
    39.98525, -83.00138
  49. Hanna HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1979
    Address
    1021 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1979
    NRIS reference number
    79001835
    Coordinates
    39.96517, -82.97372
  50. Harrison, Gen. William Henry, HeadquartersBuilding · Columbus · listed 1972
    Address
    570 W. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1972
    NRIS reference number
    72001010
    Coordinates
    39.96066, -83.01608
  51. Hartman HotelBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    275 S 4th & 150 E Main Sts.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2018
    NRIS reference number
    100002877
    Coordinates
    39.95506, -82.99549
  52. Hayden BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 2009
    Address
    20 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2009
    NRIS reference number
    09000412
    Coordinates
    39.96251, -83.00000
  53. Heyne--Zimmerman HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1987
    Address
    973 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1987
    NRIS reference number
    86003450
    Coordinates
    39.96480, -82.97441
  54. Higgins, H. A., BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1979
    Address
    129 E. Naghten St
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1979
    NRIS reference number
    79001836
    Coordinates
    39.96872, -82.99794
  55. High and Gay Streets Historic DistrictHistoric district · Columbus · listed 2014
    Address
    Bounded by Gay, Wall & High Sts., Pearl, Lynn & Elm Alleys
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Historic district
    Listed on the National Register
    2014
    NRIS reference number
    14000041
    Coordinates
    39.96450, -83.00000
  56. Holy Cross Church, Rectory and SchoolBuilding · Columbus · listed 1979
    Address
    212 S. 5th St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1979
    NRIS reference number
    79001837
    Coordinates
    39.95827, -82.99295
  57. House at 753 East Broad StreetBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    753 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003425
    Coordinates
    39.96434, -82.98037
  58. Indianola Junior High SchoolBuilding · Columbus · listed 1980
    Address
    420 E. 19th Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43211
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1980
    NRIS reference number
    80003000
    Coordinates
    40.00371, -82.99087
  59. Jacobs, Felix A., HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    1421 Hamlet St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43201
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003434
    Coordinates
    39.99462, -83.00057
  60. Jaeger Machine Company Office BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    550 W. Spring St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83001969
    Coordinates
    39.96551, -83.01705
  61. Jeffrey Manufacturing Company Office BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 2001
    Address
    224 E. First Ave., 883 and 895 N. Sixth St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43201
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2001
    NRIS reference number
    01000379
    Coordinates
    39.98079, -82.99782
  62. Johnson--Campbell HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    1203 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003414
    Coordinates
    39.96562, -82.96846
  63. Jones, W. H., MansionBuilding · Columbus · listed 1978
    Address
    731 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1978
    NRIS reference number
    78002065
    Coordinates
    39.96415, -82.98083
  64. Joseph--Cherrington HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    785 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003429
    Coordinates
    39.96435, -82.97955
  65. Kauffman, Linus B., HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    906 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003410
    Coordinates
    39.96512, -82.97652
  66. Kaufman, Frank J., HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    1231 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003420
    Coordinates
    39.96581, -82.96783
  67. Krumm HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1982
    Address
    975-979 S. High St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1982
    NRIS reference number
    82003568
    Coordinates
    39.94194, -82.99926
  68. Levy, Soloman, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    929 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003437
    Coordinates
    39.96459, -82.97592
  69. Lincoln TheatreBuilding · Columbus · listed 1992
    Address
    77 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1992
    NRIS reference number
    92001355
    Coordinates
    39.96694, -82.98108
  70. Long and Third Commercial BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1982
    Address
    104-114 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1982
    NRIS reference number
    82003569
    Coordinates
    39.96532, -82.99924
  71. Lovejoy, Carrie, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    807 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003435
    Coordinates
    39.96436, -82.97908
  72. Lubal Manufacturing and Distributing Company, TheBuilding · Columbus · listed 2016
    Address
    373-375 W. Rich St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2016
    NRIS reference number
    16000459
    Coordinates
    39.95354, -83.00992
  73. Masonic TempleBuilding · Columbus · listed 1997
    Address
    34 N. 4th St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1997
    NRIS reference number
    97000201
    Coordinates
    39.96379, -82.99651
  74. McDannald HomesteadBuilding · Columbus · listed 1978
    Address
    NE of Columbus at 5847 Sunbury Rd.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43230
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1978
    NRIS reference number
    78002066
    Coordinates
    40.07753, -82.89721
  75. Miller, Frederick A., House-Broad GablesBuilding · Columbus · listed 1985
    Address
    2065 Barton Pl. & 140 Park Dr.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43209
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1985
    NRIS reference number
    85001689
    Coordinates
    39.96539, -82.94474
  76. Miller, J.F., HouseBuilding · Marble Cliff · listed 1984
    Address
    1600 Roxbury Rd.
    Where
    Marble Cliff, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1984
    NRIS reference number
    84003682
    Coordinates
    39.97937, -83.06102
  77. Morris, C. E., HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    875 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003398
    Coordinates
    39.96466, -82.97704
  78. Municipal Light PlantBuilding · Columbus · listed 2015
    Address
    555 W. Nationwide Blvd.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2015
    NRIS reference number
    15000902
    Coordinates
    39.96495, -83.01829
  79. New Hayden BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 2009
    Address
    16 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2009
    NRIS reference number
    09000413
    Coordinates
    39.96246, -83.00023
  80. Noble, Jonathan, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1975
    Address
    5030 Westerville Rd. (SR 3)
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43231
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1975
    NRIS reference number
    75001400
    Coordinates
    40.07476, -82.92833
  81. North High SchoolBuilding · Columbus · listed 1987
    Address
    100 Arcadia Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43202
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1987
    NRIS reference number
    87000984
    Coordinates
    40.01827, -83.00840
  82. Ohio Asylum for the BlindBuilding · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    240 Parsons Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    NRIS reference number
    73001436
    Coordinates
    39.95928, -82.98092
  83. Ohio Baptist General Association HeadquartersBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    48 Parkwood Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2020
    NRIS reference number
    100005845
    Coordinates
    39.96811, -82.95956
  84. Ohio Farm Bureau Federation OfficesBuilding · Columbus · listed 1987
    Address
    620 and 630 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1987
    NRIS reference number
    87000466
    Coordinates
    39.96427, -82.98423
  85. Ohio Finance BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 2014
    Address
    39-47 W. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2014
    NRIS reference number
    14000994
    Coordinates
    39.96274, -83.00246
  86. Ohio Moline Plow Company BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1999
    Address
    343 Front St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1999
    NRIS reference number
    99000701
    Coordinates
    39.96934, -83.00400
  87. Ohio National BankBuilding · Columbus · listed 1980
    Address
    167 S. High St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1980
    NRIS reference number
    80003002
    Coordinates
    39.95851, -82.99963
  88. Ohio State ArsenalBuilding · Columbus · listed 1974
    Address
    139 W. Main St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1974
    NRIS reference number
    74001495
    Coordinates
    39.95539, -83.00305
  89. Ohio State Office BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1990
    Address
    65 S. Front St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1990
    NRIS reference number
    90001908
    Coordinates
    39.96038, -82.99840
  90. Old Governor's MansionBuilding · Columbus · listed 1972
    Address
    1234 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1972
    NRIS reference number
    72001012
    Coordinates
    39.96655, -82.95643
  91. Old Ohio UnionBuilding · Columbus · listed 1979
    Address
    154 W. 12th Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43210
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1979
    NRIS reference number
    79001838
    Coordinates
    39.99695, -83.01153
  92. Old Port Columbus Airport Control TowerBuilding · Columbus · listed 1979
    Address
    420 E. 5th Ave
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43219
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1979
    NRIS reference number
    79001839
    Coordinates
    39.98704, -82.87198
  93. Open Air SchoolBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    2571 Neil Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43202
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2019
    NRIS reference number
    100004054
    Coordinates
    40.01447, -83.01406
  94. Orton Memorial LaboratoryBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    1445 Summit St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43201
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83004292
    Coordinates
    39.99235, -83.00179
  95. Pierce, Elijah, PropertiesBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    534 E. Long St. and 142-44 N. Everett Alley
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83001971
    Coordinates
    39.96662, -82.98664
  96. Plaza HotelBuilding · Columbus · listed 1984
    Address
    736-740 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1984
    NRIS reference number
    84001041
    Coordinates
    39.96729, -82.98150
  97. Prentiss, Frederick, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    706 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003396
    Coordinates
    39.96450, -82.98142
  98. Prentiss--Tulford HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    1074 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003413
    Coordinates
    39.96565, -82.97232
  99. Pythian Temple and James Pythian TheaterBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    861-867 Mt. Vernon Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83004295
    Coordinates
    39.97112, -82.97880
  100. Rankin BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1982
    Address
    22 W. Gay St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1982
    NRIS reference number
    82003570
    Coordinates
    39.96371, -83.00130
  101. Saint Paul's Episcopal ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    787 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43224
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003430
    Coordinates
    40.05440, -82.98209
  102. Schlee-Kemmler BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1982
    Address
    328 S. High St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1982
    NRIS reference number
    82001461
    Coordinates
    39.95584, -83.00318
  103. Schueller, Erwin W., HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    904 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003406
    Coordinates
    39.96512, -82.97688
  104. Scofield--Sanor HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    1031 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003447
    Coordinates
    39.96518, -82.97301
  105. Second Presbyterian ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    132 S. Third St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83001972
    Coordinates
    39.95954, -82.99720
  106. Seneca HotelBuilding · Columbus · listed 1983
    Address
    361 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1983
    NRIS reference number
    83004300
    Coordinates
    39.96290, -82.99086
  107. Sharp--Page HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    935 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003440
    Coordinates
    39.96517, -82.97372
  108. Shedd--Dunn HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1986
    Address
    965 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43205
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1986
    NRIS reference number
    86003445
    Coordinates
    39.96498, -82.97441
  109. Shiloh Baptist ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 2004
    Address
    720 Mt. Vernon Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2004
    NRIS reference number
    04001288
    Coordinates
    39.97044, -82.98171
  110. Smith, Benjamin, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    181 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    NRIS reference number
    73001438
    Coordinates
    39.96245, -82.99588
  111. St. Clair HospitalBuilding · Columbus · listed 2001
    Address
    338-344 and 346 St. Clair Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2001
    NRIS reference number
    01000378
    Coordinates
    39.97177, -82.98060
  112. Stoddart BlockBuilding · Columbus · listed 1994
    Address
    260 S. Fourth St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1994
    NRIS reference number
    94000237
    Coordinates
    39.95760, -82.99492
  113. Sullivant, Lucas, BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    714 W. Gay St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43222
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    NRIS reference number
    73001439
    Coordinates
    39.96086, -83.01972
  114. Theresa BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 2015
    Address
    823 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43203
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2015
    NRIS reference number
    15000324
    Coordinates
    39.96528, -82.97921
  115. Thurber, James, HouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1979
    Address
    77 Jefferson Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1979
    NRIS reference number
    79001840
    Coordinates
    39.96624, -82.98487
  116. Toledo and Ohio Central Railroad StationBuilding · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    379 W. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    NRIS reference number
    73001440
    Coordinates
    39.96061, -83.01071
  117. Tosheff's Restaurant and HotelBuilding · Columbus · listed 2001
    Address
    1943-1953 Parsons Ave.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43207
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2001
    NRIS reference number
    01000197
    Coordinates
    39.92319, -82.98444
  118. Trinity Episcopal ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1976
    Address
    125 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1976
    NRIS reference number
    76001427
    Coordinates
    39.96242, -82.99764
  119. Trinity German Evangelical Lutheran ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1985
    Address
    404 S. Third St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1985
    NRIS reference number
    85003132
    Coordinates
    39.95424, -82.99623
  120. U.S. Post Office and CourthouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 1973
    Address
    121 E. State St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1973
    NRIS reference number
    73001441
    Coordinates
    39.96031, -82.99465
  121. United States Carriage CompanyBuilding · Columbus · listed 2015
    Address
    309-319 S. 4th St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2015
    NRIS reference number
    15000325
    Coordinates
    39.95412, -82.99538
  122. United States Post Office and CourthouseBuilding · Columbus · listed 2012
    Address
    85 Marconi Blvd.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2012
    NRIS reference number
    12000330
    Coordinates
    39.96385, -83.00537
  123. University, Hayes and Orton HallsBuilding · Columbus · listed 1970
    Address
    The Oval, Ohio State university
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43210
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1970
    NRIS reference number
    70000492
    Coordinates
    40.00141, -83.01447
  124. Valley Dale BallroomBuilding · Columbus · listed 1982
    Address
    1590 Sunbury Rd.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43219
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1982
    NRIS reference number
    82001462
    Coordinates
    40.00237, -82.93701
  125. Welsbach BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1984
    Address
    116-118 E. Chestnut St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1984
    NRIS reference number
    84000444
    Coordinates
    39.96835, -82.99863
  126. Welsh Presbyterian ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 1980
    Address
    315 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1980
    NRIS reference number
    80003003
    Coordinates
    39.96566, -82.99246
  127. Westminster ChurchBuilding · Columbus · listed 2001
    Address
    77 S. 6th St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2001
    NRIS reference number
    01001043
    Coordinates
    39.96137, -82.99304
  128. Winders Motor Sales CompanyBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    182 E. Long St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2019
    NRIS reference number
    100004542
    Coordinates
    39.96572, -82.99624
  129. Wyandotte BuildingBuilding · Columbus · listed 1972
    Address
    21 W. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1972
    NRIS reference number
    72001013
    Coordinates
    39.96180, -83.01284
  130. York Lodge No. 563Building · Columbus · listed 1984
    Address
    1276 N. High St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43201
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    1984
    NRIS reference number
    84003691
    Coordinates
    39.98833, -83.00507
  131. Yuster BuildingBuilding · Columbus
    Address
    150 E. Broad St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Latest NPS certification action
    2017
    NRIS reference number
    100001268
    Coordinates
    39.96098, -82.99667
  132. Zettler Grocery and HardwareBuilding · Columbus · listed 2014
    Address
    268 S. 4th St.
    Where
    Columbus, Franklin County · ZIP 43215
    What it is
    Building
    Listed on the National Register
    2014
    NRIS reference number
    14000354
    Coordinates
    39.95515, -82.99478

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places point file. The listing year is shown where NPS's certification date agrees with the listing's reference number. Listing recognizes significance; it does not restrict a private owner.

Every historic place in Franklin County on the full map

Water

Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff The water here

Hospitals, fire stations and more

Inside Columbus's boundary: 19 hospitals, 39 health centers, 19 dialysis centers, 30 nursing homes, 36 fire and EMS stations, 20 colleges, 4 power plants, 3 high-hazard dams, 223 public schools, 51 private schools, 13 poor-rated bridges, 19 libraries, 45 museums, 5 police stations, 195 public charging sites, 20 Superfund sites, 132 Toxics Release Inventory facilities, 67 stations and terminals, 648 spill cases and 1 mound or earthwork. Press a pin or a name for its whole record and its source.

To keep this page quick to load, the spill cases, mounds and earthworks, Toxics Release Inventory facilities, Superfund sites, poor-rated bridges, stations and terminals, public charging sites, museums, high-hazard dams, power plants, dialysis centers, private schools, colleges, health centers, police stations, libraries, nursing homes, fire and EMS stations, public schools and hospitals are pinned on the pages of its ZIP codes instead, under Spills, Local history, Toxic releases, Toxic sites, Bridges, Transit, EV chargers, Libraries, Dams, Power plants, Hospitals, Schools, Colleges, Police, Nursing homes and Fire and EMS.

Its ZIP codes

Each ZIP code that touches Columbus, with the share of its residents who live here and the same headline figures as the ZIP page.

The ZIP codes serving Columbus
ZIPShareWaterRadon Home valueSchoolsFlood
43002 Columbus and Amlin 100% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 2.7 pCi/L average radon Median year built 2006 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43201 Columbus 100% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.2 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1912 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 1.3% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43202 Columbus 100% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.1 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1925 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 2.4% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43203 Columbus 100% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.5 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1910 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43205 Columbus 100% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1910 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43206 Columbus 100% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 5.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1921 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43210 Columbus 100% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.6 pCi/L average radon No homes in the parcel records Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43222 Columbus 100% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 5.7 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1909 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43240 Columbus 100% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.0 pCi/L average radon Parcel list only Olentangy Local · 5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43215 Columbus 100% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 3.6 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1994 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43229 Columbus 100% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1969 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43219 Columbus 99% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.1 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1971 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.6% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43214 Columbus 98% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 7.4 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1948 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 1.8% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43211 Columbus 95% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.7 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1947 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43227 Columbus 94% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 6.7 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1958 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 3.5% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43204 Columbus 94% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 4.4 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1954 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 1.9% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43235 Columbus 89% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 7.1 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1986 Worthington City · 4 stars overall 0.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43224 Columbus 89% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.5 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1956 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43231 Columbus 89% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.1 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1980 Westerville City · 3.5 stars overall 2.3% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43217 Columbus 87% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 4.1 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1962 Hamilton Local · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43223 Columbus 85% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 4.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1953 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 5.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43207 Columbus 84% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 5.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1962 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 1.5% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43232 Columbus 78% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 7.4 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1971 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 18% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43228 Columbus 74% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 5.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1988 South-Western City · 3.5 stars overall 1.4% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43119 Columbus and Galloway 72% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 6.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1996 South-Western City · 3.5 stars overall 2.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43110 Columbus and Canal Winchester 61% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 7.9 pCi/L average radon Median year built 2002 Canal Winchester Local · 4 stars overall 11% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43004 Columbus and Blacklick 58% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 6.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 2003 Licking Heights Local · 4.5 stars overall 1.2% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43220 Columbus 52% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 6.1 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1970 Upper Arlington City · 5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43209 Bexley and Columbus 50% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.7 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1950 Bexley City · 5 stars overall 0.8% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43212 Columbus 49% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1942 Columbus City · 2.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43054 Columbus and New Albany 47% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.6 pCi/L average radon Median year built 2003 New Albany-Plain Local · 5 stars overall 3.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43213 Whitehall and Columbus 47% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 4.5 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1959 Whitehall City · 3 stars overall 12% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43016 Columbus and Dublin 47% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 2002 Dublin City · 4.5 stars overall 0.3% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43230 Gahanna and Columbus 41% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 8.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1989 Gahanna-Jefferson City · 4 stars overall 1.7% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43081 Westerville 41% Alum Creek, drawn just north of Main Street at the treatment plant, supplemented by 3 active groundwater wells 5.4 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1986 Westerville City · 3.5 stars overall 1.5% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43026 Hilliard 40% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 6.2 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1995 Hilliard City · 4.5 stars overall 3.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43085 Worthington and Columbus 40% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 8.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1977 Worthington City · 4 stars overall 0.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43221 Upper Arlington and Columbus 35% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 7.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1959 Upper Arlington City · 5 stars overall 1.6% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43125 Groveport 33% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 10.3 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1998 Groveport Madison Local · 3.5 stars overall 28% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43017 Dublin 28% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 6.7 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1988 Dublin City · 4.5 stars overall 1.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43068 Reynoldsburg 27% Big Walnut Creek at the plant's low-head dam and screen house on Morse Rd, below Hoover Dam 5.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1987 Reynoldsburg City · 3.5 stars overall 4.9% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43123 Grove City 24% Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff 6.9 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1995 South-Western City · 3.5 stars overall 3.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43035 Orange Township and Lewis Center 20% Del-Co's own raw-water intake on O'Shaughnessy Reservoir (Scioto River) near Rathbone, Concord Township 5.2 pCi/L average radon Parcel list only Olentangy Local · 5 stars overall 0.6% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43137 Harrison Township and Lockbourne 18% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 9.5 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1978 Teays Valley Local · 4 stars overall 9.3% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43065 Powell 16% Del-Co's own raw-water intake on O'Shaughnessy Reservoir (Scioto River) near Rathbone, Concord Township 6.2 pCi/L average radon Parcel list only Olentangy Local · 5 stars overall 0.3% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43109 Brice 12% South Well Field wells in Scioto valley sand and gravel, off Parsons Ave near Shadeville and Lockbourne 9.8 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1900 Groveport Madison Local · 3.5 stars overall 0.0% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43147 Pickerington 10% Five active wells drawing from the local buried-valley aquifer near Diley Road 7.0 pCi/L average radon Median year built 1996 Pickerington Local · 4.5 stars overall 3.1% of residents in the 1% floodplain
43082 Genoa Township and Westerville 1% Alum Creek Reservoir intake at the Scott plant, Lewis Center Rd at Africa, Orange Township 6.0 pCi/L average radon Parcel list only Westerville City · 3.5 stars overall 0.5% of residents in the 1% floodplain

Local government

Who holds office in Columbus, how its elections and ballot issues came out and the state auditor's record.

Who holds office

OfficeNamePartyTerm endsContact
MayorAndrew J. Ginther (614) 645-3111
90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council President, District 9Shannon G. Hardin 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council President Pro Tem, District 3Rob Dorans radorans@columbus.gov
90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council Member, District 5Nicholas J. Bankston 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council Member, District 8Lourdes Barroso de Padilla 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council Member, District 2Nancy Day-Achauer 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council Member, District 6Melissa Green 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council Member, District 4Emmanuel V. Remy 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council Member, District 7Tiara N. Ross 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Council Member, District 1Christopher L. Wyche 90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
City AuditorJacquelin R. Lewis (614) 645-7615 · cityauditor@columbus.gov
90 W Broad Street, Room 109, Columbus, OH 43215 · website
City AttorneyZach Klein (614) 645-3111
90 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 · website
Board President (Columbus City Schools)Dr. Antoinette Miranda 614-365-5790
270 E. State St., Columbus, OH 43215 · website
Board Vice President (Columbus City Schools)Sarah Ingles 614-365-5790
270 E. State St., Columbus, OH 43215 · website
Board Member (Columbus City Schools)Jennifer Adair 614-365-5790
270 E. State St., Columbus, OH 43215 · website
Board Member (Columbus City Schools)Patrick Katzenmeyer 614-365-5790
270 E. State St., Columbus, OH 43215 · website
Board Member (Columbus City Schools)Dr. Jermaine Kennedy 614-365-5790
270 E. State St., Columbus, OH 43215 · website
Board Member (Columbus City Schools)Dr. Tina Pierce 614-365-5790
270 E. State St., Columbus, OH 43215 · website
Board Member (Columbus City Schools)Brandon Simmons 614-365-5790
270 E. State St., Columbus, OH 43215 · website

Roster as of 2026-09-18: official county or city website.

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 20 of 20 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 20 of 20.

Ballot issues

DateIssueForAgainstResult
2025-11-04 #5: #5 Proposed Bond Issue - Safety, Health, Infrustructure City of Columbus 77,92343,818Passed (64.01% for)
2025-11-04 #6: #6 Proposed Bond Issue - Recreation and Parks City of Columbus 87,28435,048Passed (71.35% for)
2025-11-04 #7: #7 Proposed Bond Issue - Public Service City of Columbus 84,02637,848Passed (68.94% for)
2025-11-04 #8: #8 Proposed Bond Issue - Neighborhood Development City of Columbus 81,52440,280Passed (66.93% for)
2025-11-04 #9: #9 Proposed Bond Issue - Public Utilities City of Columbus 86,96534,918Passed (71.35% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Health & Safety - 1.09 mills/22 yrs - Comm 2022 1,7871,516Passed (54.1% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Recreation & Parks - .86 mill/17 yrs - Comm 2022 2,0991,213Passed (63.38% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Neighborhood Development - .78 mill/20 yrs - Comm 2022 1,9531,314Passed (59.78% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Public Service - 1.12 mills/16 yrs - Comm 2022 1,9811,271Passed (60.92% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Public Utilities - 1.85 mills/25 yrs - Comm 2022 2,0521,184Passed (63.41% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Amendment - Inititative 2,353743Passed (76.0% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Amendment - Civil Service 2,218867Passed (71.9% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: City of Columbus - Amendment - Modernization 2,382710Passed (77.04% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: Columbus City Bond Issue - Health, Safety and Infrastructure 1,2931,066Passed (54.81% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: Columbus City Bond Issue - Recreation and Parks 1,511841Passed (64.24% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: Columbus City Bond Issue - Neigborhood Development 1,470892Passed (62.24% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: Columbus City Bond Issue - Public Service 1,443897Passed (61.67% for)
2022-11-08 Issue: Columbus City Bond Issue - Public Utilities 1,415918Passed (60.65% for)
2022-11-08 No. 1: Columbus City Proposed Charter Amendement No. 1, Initiative Process 1,470653Passed (69.24% for)
2022-11-08 No. 2: Columbus City Proposed Charter Amendement No. 2, Civil Service 1,467674Passed (68.52% for)
2022-11-08 No. 3: Columbus City Proposed Charter Amendement No. 3, City Modernization 1,531613Passed (71.41% for)
2022-11-08 #14: #14 City of Columbus Bond Issue - Health and Safety 146,91389,760Passed (62.07% for)
2022-11-08 #15: #15 City of Columbus Bond Issue - Recreation and Parks 169,36567,663Passed (71.45% for)
2022-11-08 #16: #16 City of Columbus Bond Issue - Neighborhood Development 158,62874,442Passed (68.06% for)
2022-11-08 #17: #17 City of Columbus Bond Issue - Public Service 164,55671,547Passed (69.7% for)

Elections for office

DateOfficeCandidates and votes
2025-11-04 Member of Council (District 7) Jesse Vogel 53,502, 49.21%; Tiara Ross 55,218, 50.79%
2025-11-04 Member of Council (District 4) Emmanuel Remy 80,357, 100.0%
2025-11-04 Member of Council (District 3) Rob Dorans 80,386, 100.0%
2025-11-04 Member of Council (District 1) Chris Wyche 80,532, 100.0%
2025-11-04 City Attorney Zach Klein 87,923, 100.0%
2025-11-04 Auditor Megan N. Kilgore 84,573, 100.0%
2025-03-06 Member of Council (District 7) (number of seats not on file, so winners are not marked) Jesse Vogel 15,670, 39.13%; Kate Curry-Da-Souza 8,021, 20.03%; Tiara Ross 16,350, 40.83%
2023-11-07 Member of Council - District 1 Chris Wyche 2,190, 100.0%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 9) Shannon Granville Hardin 1,413, 100.0%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 8) Lourdes Barroso De Padilla 1,363, 100.0%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 7) Shayla D. Favor 1,395, 100.0%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 6) Melissa (GRN) 1,380, 100.0%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 5) Nick Bankston 1,067, 69.24%; Farxaan Jeyte 474, 30.76%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 4) Adrienne Y. Hood 870, 54.92%; Emmanuel Remy 714, 45.08%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 3) Rob Dorans 1,349, 100.0%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 2) Nancy Day-Achauer 1,091, 70.21%; Luis Gil 463, 29.79%
2023-11-07 Member of Council (District 1) Chris Wyche 1,344, 100.0%
2023-11-07 Mayor Andrew J. Ginther 1,838, 64.83%; Joe Motil 965, 34.04%; Carrie J. Griffin (WI) 5, 0.18%; Allison Willford (WI) 0; Unqualified Write-Ins (WI) 27, 0.95%
2023-11-07 Mayor Andrew J. Ginther 1,358, 68.04%; Joe Motil 629, 31.51%; Write-In: Carrie J. Griffin 7, 0.35%; Write-In: Allison Willford 2, 0.1%
2023-11-07 For Member of Council - District 9 Shannon Granville Hardin 2,033, 100.0%
2023-11-07 For Member of Council - District 8 Lourdes Barroso De Padilla 2,037, 100.0%
2023-11-07 For Member of Council - District 7 Shayla D. Favor 2,073, 100.0%
2023-11-07 For Member of Council - District 6 Melissa Green 2,079, 100.0%
2023-11-07 For Member of Council - District 5 Nick Bankston 1,434, 70.36%; Farxaan Jeyte 604, 29.64%
2023-11-07 For Member of Council - District 4 Adrienne Y. Hood 1,192, 56.2%; Emmanuel Remy 929, 43.8%

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked. The county's results on file run through 2025-11-04; later elections are not loaded yet.

Auditor of State record

  • No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
  • Financial Health Indicators (the Auditor of State's 17 measures; critical / cautionary / positive): 2020 1 / 1 / 15; 2021 1 / 3 / 13; 2022 2 / 2 / 13; 2023 1 / 3 / 13; 2024 1 / 5 / 11; 2025 2 / 3 / 12.
  • Financial Audit, 2025, released 2026-06-30
  • Financial Audit, 2024, released 2025-04-10

On the November 3, 2026 ballot

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Columbus, Franklin County and its school district:

  • Columbus City: Miscellaneous, for Charter Amendment: City Council.
  • Columbus City: Miscellaneous, for Charter Amendment: City Council - Petition.

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

The county

Franklin County: 45 ZIP codes, 42 cities, villages and townships with pages here, 1,361,536 people (Census Bureau estimate, July 2025).

Nearby places

Rain and snow

How much has actually fallen on Columbus, day by day, from 1893 to now. Daily totals, not averages.

rain, last 30 days
1.26 in
2026-10-01 to 2026-10-30
rain so far in 2026
48.7 in
12.8 in above normal for the date
snow so far in 2026
19.1 in
a normal year brings 21.1 in
a normal year
42.0 in
average of 30 years, 1991-2020
The last twelve months
MonthRain (in)Snow (in)Days counted
October 2026 1.26 — 30
September 2026 6.84 — 30
August 2026 11.02 — 31
July 2026 4.53 — 31
June 2026 3.98 — 30
May 2026 7.22 — 31
April 2026 3.60 — 30
March 2026 6.53 3.4 31
February 2026 2.20 2.9 28
January 2026 1.55 12.9 31
December 2025 2.19 9.6 31
November 2025 2.14 1.5 30
On the record, 1893–2026
Wettest year2018 — 58.6 in
Driest year1934 — 23.1 in
Snowiest year1910 — 47.9 in
Wettest day on record14 September 1979 — 4.46 in
Heaviest snowfall in a day6 January 1910 — 9.61 in
Deepest snow on the ground9 February 1896 — 20.98 in

Almost every day here is a measurement: 99% of them come from a rain gauge standing inside Columbus itself.

47,955 days of records, 1893-06-01 to 2026-10-30. Source: NOAA NCEI GHCN-Daily, 3,240 gauges in and around Ohio. A day is "gauged" when a gauge standing inside the boundary reported it, and the value is the mean of those gauges. Otherwise it is interpolated by inverse distance from every gauge reporting within 50 miles. Nothing is carried forward, back-filled or smoothed. Against NOAA nClimDiv county monthly precipitation over 136,848 complete county-months (checked 2026-11-02): correlation 0.9515, median absolute difference 0.217 in a month. Built 2026-11-02 from the Cracked Buckeye precipitation archive. Snow is the softer number — snowfall is measured by hand with a ruler, no agency publishes a gridded county snowfall series, and blowing snow defeats every observer.

Environmental permits and filings

What Ohio EPA has on file for Columbus: permits, inspections, violations, cleanups and the state loans behind sewer and water work. Every line links to the agency's own document.

facilities and sites on file
4,008
those placed on the map inside Columbus

Data centers, power and big tech here. Ohio EPA files that name a data-center company, a power plant or substation, or a large technology firm:

  • OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MCCRACKEN POWER PLANT (air pollution, latest Sep 25, 2026)
  • COLOGIX (air pollution, latest Sep 8, 2026)
  • DREW SUBSTATION CONDUIT & MANHOLE INSTALLATION (wastewater and stormwater discharge, latest Feb 20, 2026)
  • AMAZON SERVICES - SOH3 (wastewater and stormwater discharge, latest Mar 4, 2025)
  • COLOGIX COL4 (wastewater and stormwater discharge, latest Feb 28, 2024)
  • AMAZON DATA SERVICES, INC-CC-19363 (sewer and water-line construction, latest Oct 13, 2023)
  • AMAZON DATA CENTER CAMPUS (sewer and water-line construction, latest Oct 10, 2023)
  • MCCRACKEN POWER PLANT (wastewater and stormwater discharge, latest Sep 6, 2022)
  • AMAZON.COM SERVICES LLC - DCN2 (wastewater and stormwater discharge, latest Aug 15, 2022)
  • AMAZON.COM SERVICES LLC - DCM1 (hazardous waste, latest Feb 4, 2020)
  • MCCRACKEN POWER PLANT, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY (hazardous waste, latest Jul 19, 2017)
What kind of permits
ProgramFacilities and sites
Wastewater and stormwater discharge1,162
Sewer and water-line construction666
Hazardous waste552
Voluntary cleanup387
Air pollution369
State sewer loans185
Wetland and stream fill167
Contaminated-site cleanup139
State water loans109
Site assessment98
Medical waste39
Public drinking water35
15 smaller programs
The latest filings
DateFacility or siteWhat
STRAWSER MATERIALS - HARMON PLANT Air pollution violation resolved
PLASKOLITE LLC Air pollution inspection
COLUMBUS AUTO PARTS/ALDI Voluntary cleanup inspection
FORGE WERKS DBA ACTION GROUP LLC Wastewater and stormwater discharge permit
ANN STREET PROJECT AREA Wastewater and stormwater discharge permit
ODOT PARCEL MARYLAND AVE COLUMBUS Voluntary cleanup covenant
COLUMBUS AUTO PARTS Voluntary cleanup inspection
RUSSIAN BAPTIST CHURCH PWS Public drinking water inspection
QUARRY TRAILS PROPERTY Voluntary cleanup inspection
GEORGESVILLE ROAD TRANSFER FACILITY Scrap tires cleanup response
ALKIRE WEST PROPERTY Wetland and stream fill permit
BACHMAN FARMS TOWNHOMES Wastewater and stormwater discharge permit
BRITTANY PLACE Sewer and water-line construction permit
BRITTANY PLACE Sewer and water-line construction permit
ALKIRE WEST PROPERTY Wetland and stream fill permit
LSS HEALTH CENTER Sewer and water-line construction permit
COLUMBUS PUBLIC WATER SYSTEM PWS Public drinking water plan
GEORGESVILLE ROAD TRANSFER FACILITY Scrap tires cleanup response
ENCHANTED ACRES MHP PWS Public drinking water compliance letter
JACKSON PIKE LANDFILL Landfills report
MAR-ZANE INC PLANT 26 Air pollution permit
RAP MANAGEMENT LLC Air pollution permit
OEC EXPO ARMORY SITE Wastewater and stormwater discharge permit
COLUMBUS AUTO PARTS Voluntary cleanup inspection
COMPLETE RESOURCES PLT 3 Air pollution report

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

Quick answers

What county is Columbus, Ohio in?

Columbus is a city in Franklin County, Ohio, with 906,920 residents.

When was Columbus, Ohio founded?

Columbus was settled 1797 (Franklinton, west bank of the Scioto, laid out by Lucas Sullivant in August; first family, Joseph Dixon, autumn 1797); laid out 1812 (Columbus, east bank; surveyed by state Director Joel Wright with Joseph Vance; first public sale of lots June 18, 1812); incorporated borough February 10, 1816; chartered as a city March 3, 1834. Founders on record: Lucas Sullivant founded Franklinton; the four proprietors of Columbus were Lyne Starling of Franklin County, John Kerr of Ross County, Alexander McLaughlin of Muskingum County and James Johnston of Washington County. Source

How did Columbus, Ohio get its name?

The town was named for Christopher Columbus by a joint resolution of the Ohio General Assembly passed February 20, 1812, six days after the act fixing the capital on the east bank of the Scioto. Source

What ZIP code is Columbus, Ohio?

Columbus is served by ZIP codes 43002, 43201, 43202, 43203, 43205, 43206, 43210, 43222, 43240, 43215, 43229, 43219, 43214, 43211, 43227, 43204, 43235, 43224, 43231, 43217, 43223, 43207, 43232, 43228, 43119, 43110, 43004, 43220, 43209, 43212, 43054, 43213, 43016, 43230, 43081, 43026, 43085, 43221, 43125, 43017, 43068, 43123, 43035, 43137, 43065, 43109 and 43147; 43002 holds the largest share of its residents.

Where does Columbus, Ohio get its water?

The main water source for Columbus (Columbus Public Water System): Scioto River intake at the plant on Dublin Rd, a few miles below Griggs Dam, opposite Marble Cliff.

Cite this page

Cite this page as:

Cracked Buckeye, "Columbus, Franklin County", https://crackedbuckeye.com/place/columbus/, built 2026-11-02, accessed [date].

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