Ohio Architecture

Collections in the Scrapbook

The majority of items in this category are photographs of buildings showing exterior views. Residential structures are most numerous, but schools, courthouses, hospitals, churches, museums, jails, courthouses, offices, stores, hotels, and barns are also represented. More than one hundred buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places are included. In the online scrapbook are photographs documenting the birthplaces of many famous Ohioans, among which are Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Edison, Ulysses S. Grant, John Glenn, William McKinley. Architectural icons such as Cincinnati Union Terminal, the LeVeque Tower in Columbus, Terminal Tower in Cleveland can also be found.

The oldest building in Ohio Memory is Newcom Tavern, built in 1796 in Dayton. Other noteworthy items in this category include a detailed model of the St. Ursula Literary Institute in Brown County, photographs of Louis Bromfield's Malabar Farm (one of which is a wedding portrait of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, an octagon-shaped barn in Amherst, and before and after images of a house in Xenia damaged by the 1974 tornado.

Introduction

Throughout Ohio, a rich and diverse architectural history can be discerned from the landscape. This history reflects the many cultural traditions people who migrated to the state and adapted to its varying environments. From Ohio's southern hill country hamlets to the northern lakefront communities and all settlements in-between, the region's early settlers brought their building traditions with them. Initially, these traditions were Prehistoric Algonquin or Iroquoian from north and east of Ohio. Noticeably influenced by the building practices of New England, the South and Europe, white settlers continued their traditional building techniques, styles, and types of structures, but with minor changes to adapt to their new environments. The combination of building traditions, the materials at hand, and the climate in greatly determined the architecture of the region. This diversity of building traditions is the defining element of Ohio's architecture.

American Indian Architecture

Ohio's ancient peoples built a variety of large earthen mounds and enclosures. Simple conical mounds were used as cemeteries whereas geometric enclosures and effigy mounds (earthworks built in the shape of animals) are believed to have been used for ceremonial and religious purposes. The ancient culture named Hopewell built a series of mounds near present-day Ross County, Ohio now known as Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. They also built the elaborate Newark Earthworks in Licking County. The Hopewell culture lived in Ohio between 100 BC and AD 400. These people lived in small villages, or hamlets, consisting of a few rectangular houses framed by wooden posts and roofed with bark or grass matting.