A Historical Guidebook to Old Columbus. Bob Hunter
The precise location of the church was later determined by radar; it was on the east side of the cemetery near the current center, which at the time was the south border of the graveyard. During the War of 1812, the US government took the church for the storage of grain; in March 1813, heavy rains reached the grain, causing it to swell and burst the brick walls. A second church was subsequently built to replace the first. After having preached both here and in Columbus, Rev. James Hoge merged the two congregations into one, which became the First Presbyterian Church of Columbus. Less than ten years later, it built an impressive church at the southwest corner of State and Third Streets.
20. South Souder Avenue between West Capital and West State Streets—This is the approximate location of the Harrison elm described in the introduction of this chapter. During the War of 1812, a council between General William Henry Harrison and four Indian tribes that were allies of the British—the Wyandots, Shawnees, Senecas, and Delawares—was held under an elm tree on June 21, 1813, on Lucas Sullivant’s property near here.
21. Intersection of West State Street and Martin Avenue—On June 28, 1904, the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution presented the Peace Memorial, a huge boulder adorned by a plaque commemorating General William Henry Harrison’s council with Indian tribes in 1813, to the city in a ceremony at this location. The actual location of the council was described as being two blocks away. A large speaker’s stand, draped with bunting, was erected in the intersection, and the boulder was unveiled near the north end of the small parklike median that divides Martin. The houses on Martin were decorated with American fflags to mark the occasion. Mrs. Edward Orton Jr., regent of the Columbus chapter, made the presentation, Mayor Robert Jefrey accepted on behalf of the city, the Columbus Riffles military band played, and General Benjamin R. Cowen, former Ohio secretary of state and candidate for governor, gave the keynote address.
22. 969 West Broad Street—This empty building once housed the Maggie Fager Library, a free neighborhood library started in 1918 in a building that formerly housed Frank and Maggie Fager’s neighborhood grocery. Frank decided he wanted to create a memorial to his wife when she died in 1912. His lawyer, John M. Lewis, came up with the library idea and set the plan in motion before Frank died in 1916. There were only fifty books in the beginning, but the library’s collection grew to more than thirteen thousand volumes. John’s sister, Sarah Lewis, served as librarian for almost half a century.
23. 1160 West Broad Street—The Howe Motor Company, a Ford dealer, occupied this building from 1919 to 1931, when it was replaced by the Hornbeck Motor Company. J. A. Howe and K. J. Miller had opened the Howe-Miller Company at 99 East Main Street in 1918, but the partnership lasted only a year before Howe moved here. Rodenfels Chevrolet took over this spot in 1933 and remained here until 1950, when it moved to 535 West Broad Street.
24. 120 South Central Avenue—This building, today occupied by Starling Middle School, was the original West High School until 1929. It opened September 8, 1908.
2 Statehouse Square
When Henry Clay was called to President John Quincy Adams’s cabinet in the 1820s, he was reputedly in the Eagle Coffee House. He probably wasn’t drinking cofee; few who frequented the place did.
Although possibly the most fascinating place in the city’s history, the Eagle Cofee House wasn’t much to look at, particularly by modern standards. In a city where a luxurious new casino costing millions of dollars just opened on the city’s West Side, its forerunner was a gambling house that occupied a plain, brick, two-story building with the image of a large American eagle painted above its main door.
It stood on the west side of High Street, a few doors north of State Street, near the middle of the main building of Rife Center. The hundreds of state workers who pass through those doors don’t know it, but every time they make that mundane trek, they are walking through the pages of history.
The Eagle Coffee House was reputed to be the finest facility of its kind in the western country, and that may have been no exaggeration. When a handsome, elegantly dressed stranger from the East named John Young landed in the city in the early 1820s and opened what was first described as a “bakehouse and grocery,” the “West” was thousands of miles from those mining towns that became famous for their excesses. Las Vegas wouldn’t even be settled until 1905, and gambling there was still over a century away.
Young soon identified himself as a professional gambler, and the Eagle quickly became the most popular stop in town. Its location directly across High from the old US Court House, state office building, and old Statehouse made it a natural stop for lawyers and lawmakers. It became famous for its aged bourbon, sour mash, and Kentucky rye, and served the finest wild game in its dining rooms. Young was said to make some of the most delicious mint juleps in the world, and on any given day, some of the city’s most respectable citizens could be seen sitting on the benches in front of the Eagle, sipping mint juleps and discussing the news of the day. Lyne Starling, an eccentric old bachelor and city pioneer who owned the building and had set Young up in the business, was one of these idlers.
In the 1820s and 1830s, the Eagle was the social center of a budding frontier city with few amusements. The famous and not so famous came here for food, drink, song, shows, and gambling, and the stories of wild nights, drunkenness, and lost fortunes were legendary. Roulette and faro were the favorite forms of amusement—faro being a card game that became the most popular and widespread in gambling halls in the West. Some of the most famous gamblers in the country frequented the Eagle at the time.
Henry Stanbery, a longtime member of the legislature and future US attorney general who would one day defend President Andrew Johnson against the articles of impeachment, was a regular here. So were Thomas Ewing, a future US senator, secretary of the Treasury, and secretary of the Interior, and Orris Parrish, one the city’s most distinguished attorneys.
Jerry Finney, a powerfully built black man who had escaped slavery, was the establishment’s most popular waiter and a well-known figure in town. When he was lured to a place in Franklinton one night in 1846 and kidnapped and returned to slavery in Kentucky, several of the city’s leading citizens raised $500 to buy his freedom.
A public bathhouse, probably the only one in town, stood in the rear. The water for it was pumped by a black bear chained to a treadmill in the backyard. One day when an actor named Trowbridge was teasing the animal, it broke free of its chains and frightened patrons, who scampered in all directions trying to find safety. But the bear was soon secured, and, as city historian Alfred E. Lee described it, “the loungers resumed their juleps and jollity.”
Singing was as much a part of the Eagle as was the gambling. An old citizen told the story of passing the Eagle on his way home from his place of business one evening when he saw a man named Tom West lying drunk on the bar. Next to him were revelers singing Old Rosin the Bow at the top of their lungs, closing each stanza of the verse with this refrain:
Now I’m dead, and laid on the counter,
A voice shall be heard from below,
A little more whisky and water
To cheer up Old Rosin the Bow.
After each chorus, another dram of whisky was given to poor Tom.
Although many a fortune was lost in the Eagle, one positive story involved a prominent local gambler named Major Barker, who was known to take pity on some of his victims. A local farmer’s son who idolized him showed up in the cofeehouse one day and told Barker that he wanted to become a professional gambler. Barker described the miserable life of a gambler in graphic terms, sent him home, and told him to think about what he had said. A week later, the young man showed up and said he was still determined to gamble for a living.