Ohio

Spring Grove Cemetery beautifully expresses a lawn plan cemetery design that integrates bucolic natural landscape with classical architecture. The first rural cemetery beyond the eastern states featured natural topography and a picturesque wooded setting with the winding road plan by Cincinnati architect Howard Daniels, Spring Grove’s first superintendent. Adolph Strauch, landscape gardener, was appointed superintendent in 1855.

Located in southwestern Ohio in rural Adams County, Serpent Mound encompasses the monumental eponymous mound as well as three smaller mounds, archaeological remains of ancient villages, and landscape features associated with the use and symbolism of the site. Serpent Mound was likely built by the Fort Ancient culture circa 1120 CE and is the largest documented surviving example of a prehistoric effigy mound in the world. Representing the Great Serpent of the Beneath World, the animal effigy is a sinuous earthen embankment more than a quarter mile in length.

Though Ohio’s industrial prominence, beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing until after World War II, is generally associated with major urban centers like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Akron, Youngstown, and Toledo, it also had an unusual number of small-to-medium sized cities where industry prospered, including Lima, which was founded in 1831 in the northwestern part of the state.

Cutler Hall, also called Manassah Cutler Hall after one of Ohio University’s founders, is located on the Ohio University campus green in Athens. The first college founded in the state, Ohio University reflected the educational values established in the Northwest Territory. The Northwest Ordinance recognized that as the new territory opened, it would attract many people, including those who were unschooled and uneducated. It was a territorial priority to establish schools to educate these settlers.

This large complex of brick buildings dominates the hill on Athen’s southwest side, looking out over the Hocking River, Ohio University, and the city as a whole. These institutional buildings once housed the Athens State Hospital, also called the Athens Lunatic Asylum, one of many such large-scale state-funded institutions built in the nineteenth century that reflect changing approaches to the treatment of mental illness.

The Belmont County Courthouse and Jail in St. Clairsville, Ohio, is an example of the spatial layout found in many mid-nineteenth-century courthouses and jail complexes not only in Ohio, but throughout the Midwest. The layout was based on the pragmatic relationship of three distinct programs: a jail connected to a sheriff’s residence, which was, in turn, situated in close proximity to a county courthouse, thus intended to facilitate the swift execution of local justice.

The Mast House, the home of Phineas and Anna Mast, is an example of the architectural eclecticism that defined the Aesthetic movement, replete with carved stone and wood ornamentation, decorative metalwork, stained glass, and exotic woods. At the time of the house’s completion, the Springfield Republic described it as an “exquisite combination” of the Queen Anne and Eastlake styles of architecture, and later studies also noted its Romanesque, Renaissance Revival, and Néo-Grec influences. Still, the house’s Queen Anne elements prevail.

The Asa S. Bushnell House is a testament to Springfield’s heyday as an industrial center at a time when the state of Ohio played an important role in the country’s industrial growth after the Civil War. If the scale of the house, built by an important industrialist who was later governor of Ohio, demonstrates accumulated wealth, its unified design, rich textures, and contrasting materials illustrates the architectural influence and legacy of Henry Hobson Richardson.

First Presbyterian Church, also known as Old Stone Church, is the oldest surviving building in Public Square. Designed by Heard and Porter, the Romanesque Revival sandstone structure features square towers flanking a gable-roofed central section dominated by a triple arch window. Gutted by fire in 1884, the church was rebuilt within the original walls by Charles Schweinfurth. The key interior motif of his design, a semicircular arch with wooden tie beams at the base, resting on a pair of arched braces, recalls H.H.

The imposing Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument (1894), a Civil War memorial designed by Cleveland architect and Civil War officer Levi Scofield, occupies the entire southeast quadrant of Public Square. The monument base is a sandstone platform 100 feet square with a flight of curving steps situated at each corner. Larger-than-life bronze sculpture groups on the sides represent battle scenes of the Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, and Navy.