A Historical Guidebook to Old Columbus. Bob Hunter
Princess Amelia zu Lynar. A contingent from the Prussian Legation in Washington escorted the prince. The streets around the church were crowded with gawkers.
28. East side of the Statehouse, South Third Street—Abraham Lincoln spoke from the esplanade on the east side of the Statehouse twice. He first spoke to a group of about fifty people standing outside on the east steps on the topic of slavery for more than two hours on September 16, 1859. At the time, Lincoln was not well known and was still a lanky, clean-shaven man not yet wearing his trademark stovepipe hat. He won the Republican nomination for president the following May. He spoke there again on February 13, 1861, while on his way to Washington for his inauguration. The crowd was much larger this time. That day he also spoke to a joint session of the Ohio legislature in the House Chamber. While visiting with then-Governor Dennison in his office, still in ceremonial use by today’s governor, Lincoln received a telegram telling him that the election had been certified and he was officially the president-elect. Because of the later construction of the Statehouse Annex, the spot where Lincoln spoke cannot be seen from Third Street today. A bronze marker is attached to one of the massive columns next to where he spoke, although today all are enclosed in the Atrium. Four years and two months after his second speaking appearance, Lincoln’s body lay in the Statehouse en route to Springfield, Illinois, following his assassination.
29. 12 South Third Street—The three-story home of Civil War general Samuel Thomas stood here, next door to Trinity Church. During the war, Thomas organized the Sixty-Third and Sixty-Fourth US Colored Infantry, troops that served in the protection of Mississippi River ports. He joined a syndicate of Columbus capitalists engaged in railroad building in the South and West and was one of the originators of the Nickel Plate Road and several other railroads. In 1881 his business interests caused him to move to New York, where he eventually died. The house was torn down in 1926 prior to the construction of the Lanman building, which was razed in 1974. The Galleria stands on the site today.
30. 34 South Third Street—Prominent attorney Phineas B. Wilcox had a home on this spot in the city’s early days. Wilcox had been born in Westfield, Connecticut, graduated from Yale, and married Sarah Andrews in 1821; the couple came to Columbus in 1824. She was the older sister of John W. Andrews, who would live next door to them at 36 South Third. Their son, James Andrews Wilcox, graduated from Kenyon and Yale and rose to the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. He practiced law with his father, who was said to have one of the finest law libraries in the West. Phineas died in 1863. James married Lucy Sullivant, daughter of Joseph Sullivant and granddaughter of Franklinton founder Lucas Sullivant; James died in 1891.The five-story Columbus YMCA building, designed by well-known Columbus architects Joseph Warren Yost and Frank L. Packard, stood here from 1893 to 1923, when it was demolished to make way for the construction of the Columbus Dispatch building that occupies this spot today. In 1893, fourteen-year-old Mel Karshner saw an exhibition of the new game of basketball here (the sport had been founded in December 1891 at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts), and he and his brother, Malcolm, soon were part of a formidable “Y” team reputed to be the best in Ohio. Based on this experience, Mel started the Ohio State basketball team as a sophomore in the fall of 1897.
31. 36 South Third Street—A small, two-story brick Greek Revival–style house that stood next door to the Columbus Dispatch building dated to the early years of the city. From the late 1840s on, John W. Andrews, a prominent local attorney, lived in this house with his wife, Lavina (Gwynne), and two children. The couple was still living there at the time of his death in 1893. He gave an important speech in the First Presbyterian Church on February 14, 1854, against the Nebraska Bill, which would repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allow new states to vote on whether to allow slavery. Opposition to the bill, which became law as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, led to the formation of the Republican Party. Andrews’s speech was reprinted in book form by BiblioLife in 2009. Andrews’s house was still standing in 1924 when the Dispatch building was completed; a 1925 photo shows a gasoline pump in front of the house and several auto-related signs affixed to the exterior, including one for Chevrolet. A picture of the gutted house and story about its razing appeared in the Dispatch on January 7, 1927.
32. 60 South Third Street—John Noble, a hotel manager and local politician who served on the city council and also in the Ohio Senate, had a home here and enlarged it into the Vendome Hotel in 1898. The five-story building was operated as a hotel until 1918, when the YWCA purchased it. The structure was demolished in 1932.
33. 66 South Third Street—A two-story stone house was built here by Isaac N. Whiting in 1841. He came to Ohio from Massachusetts to study for the Episcopal ministry with Philander Chase at Kenyon College in Worthington in 1825, but changed his plans and became a bookstore owner and publisher. His first home in Columbus was at South High and Chapel Streets. One of the first booksellers in the state, Whiting opened a store on the northeast corner of South High and Town Streets in Columbus in 1829 and by the following year seems to have moved his shop across the street to the west side of High Street. Whiting dominated the book market in the city into the 1840s. He began to publish books in 1831 and would continue to do so into the 1870s. Possibly his first book, Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie Du Chien Thence to Washington City in 1829, by Circleville, Ohio, pioneer and author Caleb Atwater, was ofered neatly bound for one dollar. In 1841, one of Whiting’s early clerks, Henry W. Derby, purchased part of his stock and established his own bookstore in Columbus, then moved to Cincinnati and established a firm that became the dominant bookseller in that city. (Derby later served as a mentor to D. B. Cooke, who founded the Keen and Cooke book-publishing firm in Chicago.) While still a student at Kenyon, Whiting established a Sunday school with 170 students at St. John’s Episcopal Church in 1826. The following year he did the same at Trinity Episcopal Church (of which he became a prominent member) for 139 students. His son, Augustus Newton Whiting, founded St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church, the first Episcopal church for African Americans in the city, in 1894. Isaac N. Whiting died in 1880. August Whiting’s widow, Ellen, was still living in his Third Street house in 1919, but she later leased the house to two doctors. It was torn down in March 1930.
34. Southeast corner of State and Third Streets—The northern third of this building was constructed between 1884 and 1887 to serve as the US post office and also to house all federal offices in the city, including the district and circuit courts. The lack of space quickly became obvious, and the building was closed in 1907 so that it could be substantially enlarged. The new building opened on January 31, 1912, three times larger than the original; the appearance of the building had also changed considerably. President William Howard Taft came to Columbus to dedicate it. The city’s main post office moved out in 1934, but a post office branch was still located in the building until 1975. The Bricker and Eckler law offices occupy the building today.
35. Southwest corner of State and Third Streets—The First Presbyterian Church, organized in Franklinton in 1806, was erected on this site in 1830. Rev. James Hoge was the pastor. The building was the site of many important meetings in early Columbus. When former president John Quincy Adams visited Columbus on November 4, 1843, there was a public reception for him here that evening. In 1854, attorney John W. Andrews gave an important speech advocating the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 here. The Columbus YMCA was founded in a lecture room here on January 15, 1855. The building was abandoned on April 8, 1900, and demolished on August 11, 1910. The congregation moved to Bryden Road in 1904. In 1911, the Hartman Building, a ten-story office building with Renaissance Revival styling, was built for Dr. Samuel B. Hartman on the site of the old church. The building stood until 1980, when it was razed to make way for a Hyatt hotel, now called the Sheraton Columbus Hotel at Capitol Square.
36. North side of State Street between High and Third Streets—A sixty-foot-long log cabin was erected here