A Historical Guidebook to Old Columbus. Bob Hunter
19. 20 East Broad Street—The first Trinity Church, built in the style of a Greek Revival temple, was erected on this site in 1833. It was made of limestone with a plastered exterior and featured ffluted Ionic columns fflanking the steps. With a new church under construction at the corner of Third and Broad, the site was sold to Peter Hayden in the 1860s; he tore the old church down and put up the current four-story structure in 1869. It was built to house his wholesale and retail saddlery and hardware business, and he moved his bank (Hayden Bank) there in 1876. The building is faced with hand-tooled sandstone blocks quarried near Waverly, Ohio. It was designed by Columbus architect Nathan B. Kelley, who served as the third architect for the current Ohio Statehouse. This is the oldest remaining commercial structure on Statehouse Square.
20. 30 East Broad Street—The Buckeye House, an early hotel and tavern, stood on this site, possibly as early as 1816. Methodist circuit rider Uriah Heath, who preached in Worthington in 1838–39 and Columbus in 1852–54, once stayed there and wrote in his journal, “Here we saw sin all around us though the land lord treated us with kindness.” In 1888, architect Elah Terrell designed for this spot an arched, six-story building with a Richardson-Romanesque front for the Columbus Board of Trade, which adopted the more modern Columbus Chamber of Commerce name in 1910. The structure included a 2,000-seat auditorium at the north end. Two workmen were killed when an arch fell on them during construction. The building was closed in 1964 and razed in 1969 to make way for the construction of the Rhodes State Office Tower.
21. 50–52 East Broad Street—Joseph Ridgway, whose plow factory and foundry was the city’s first successful manufacturing establishment in 1822, had a home at 50 East Broad. Attorney George T. Spahr erected the nine-story Spahr Building on this site in 1897 for use by Spahr and Glenn, the Ohio State Journal, and the Columbus Savings Association, later called Columbus Trust Company. The Ohio State Journal remained here until 1920, when it moved to 62 East Broad.
22. 60 East Broad Street—One of the city’s first double houses was constructed on this site by the Gregory family, with addresses of 60 and 62 East Broad, in the early days of the city. Later, the houses reputedly became meeting places for politicians, including antiwar newspaper editor Samuel Medary, in the period prior to the Civil War. Early in 1876, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes rented the furnished house here from Dr. W. B. Hawkes. (Hawkes donated four lots and $10,000 in 1882 for the construction of Hawkes Hospital at Mount Carmel, the beginnings of Mount Carmel Hospital.) Hayes moved here with his wife, Lucy, his daughter, Fanny, and his son, Scott. In his diary on May 26, 1876, he described his life here: “I rise between five and seven, write letters until breakfast at 8:30; am at my office until about 1 P.M., from 9 A.M.; dine about 2 P.M.; at office again until after 5 P.M.; and evenings for calls and callers.” The family was living here when the Republican Party nominated him for president in June 1876 and left from this house for Washington in 1877 for his inauguration as president. The house was torn down prior to the construction of the current building in 1918.
23. 62 East Broad Street—The Ohio State Journal moved here from 50 East Broad when the current building opened in 1920. It remained here until the Journal merged with the Citizen in 1959 and moved into the Dispatch building at 34 South Third Street.
24. 68 East Broad Street—The house of Colonel William Doherty originally occupied this site. Built in 1829, it was said to be the first home in the city to have stone front steps; the date of its erection was carved above the front door. The original house had two stories, but a third was added later. Doherty, a prominent local attorney, was a North Carolina native who earned his military stripes during the War of 1812 and was a close friend of Henry Clay. Mrs. Eliza Doherty’s currant and gooseberry bushes grew where skyscrapers now stand, and at the back of the house near Gay Street a building apparently housed the family’s black servants, a homesick remembrance of Southern customs. The couple had eight children, and they attended school in a little frame building in the side yard to the east. Doherty joined Lyne Starling in the real estate business and at one point owned a large tract of land that he deeded to the town for the North Graveyard, where the North Market now stands.
25. 74 East Broad Street—Dr. Washington Gladden, probably the most celebrated minister the city ever had, was the pastor of the First Congregational Church here. It was built in 1856 across from the soon-to-be Statehouse and had houses on each side of it. The congregation had been formed years earlier by a group who had broken away from the Central Presbyterian Church (which had broken away from First Presbyterian) and had a simple, frame structure on Third before this. Gladden, the author of forty books and many hymns, came to Columbus in 1882. One of his best known hymns, “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee,” is included in the hymnals of many denominations. Gladden’s sermons were so well attended that the church was rebuilt into a much larger stone Richardson-Romanesque structure in 1914. While serving a term on the city council between 1900 and 1902, Gladden advocated municipal ownership of public works. In 1914, Gladden decided that the church would have to move eastward if it was to expand, and the new church at 444 East Broad Street was finally completed in 1931. The old building at this address was demolished in 1932.
26. Northwest corner of Broad and Third Streets—William G. Deshler built a large two-story house here in 1859 and moved from a smaller two-story house he had built at the northeast corner of Broad and Young Streets eleven years earlier. He had barns in the rear of the house, along North Third Street. His move here was indicative of his growing wealth. He planned the East Broad Street Parkway in 1857, helped secure Fort Hayes (then the Columbus Barracks) for the city, and was the founder of the Hocking Valley Railway. He endowed the Columbus Female Benevolent Society with $100,000 and contributed to the Hannah Neil Mission and Home for the Friendless. William’s son, John, built the Deshler Hotel on the site of his grandfather David’s Broad and High home site. The house at this site was torn down in 1922, six years after William G. Deshler’s death. The lot served as a parking lot before a Tom Thumb restaurant occupied another building that rose on this spot. That was torn down to clear the way for the current twenty-one-story structure.
27. Southeast corner of Broad and Third Streets—Trinity Episcopal Church opened here in 1869, moving from the smaller Greek Revival church it had occupied on Broad just east of High since 1833. In 1871, George Parsons’s daughter Amelia, who was called May by her family, married the Bavarian prince Alexander Ernst zu Lynar here in the city’s only royal wedding. The couple had met in Paris during a time when European royalty of high title and low net worth sometimes sought out the single daughters of the American rich. The bride wore a gown of heavy, white-corded silk and a necklace of diamonds and pearls. The groom wore a full-dress uniform draped with his military