100 years ago today, World War 1 came to an end. Known as the Armistice, the agreement was officially completed on November 11, 1918. As in the rest of the nation, the mood in Columbus was celebratory. In what was then said to be the “Greatest Demonstration in History”, Columbus citizens were up before dawn on that Monday morning, consumed in riotous celebration. At least 200,000 people marched through the streets of Downtown on Armistice Day, the crowd completely ignoring the ongoing Spanish Flu pandemic. An article on the event described the scene in poetic detail:
The lid that throttled pentup enthusiasm during the last few fateful days was blown off with a bang. Bellowing whistles, screeching sirens and jubilant shouts of early risers ushered in the greatest Monday in the world’s history. With each passing minute the pandemonium became greater. An expanding, bulging, distending, heaving, heightening, thrilling crowd that by mid-morning numbered itself in the thousands, swirled, swayed and twisted itself in one long line of humanity through the ins and outs of High Street. From every nook and cranny of the city’s far-lying borders came added increments of men, women and children, mad with joy, delirious with triumph, exalted as never before.
The Armistice being celebrated on High Street, November 11, 1918.
WWI had lasted from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918 and had taken about 20 million lives.
German Village dates back to the early 19th Century, when it was sometimes called called Germantown. Unsurprisingly, by the middle of the 20th Century, the neighborhood had declined significantly, yet still retained the vast majority of its historic buildings. The city of Columbus had it in mind to bulldoze a large part of the neighborhood in the 1950s for public housing, but activists organized against those plans. Instead, in what was one of the first major success stories of Columbus preservation, German Village was saved. The entire area was eventually added onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and today it is still the largest historic district on the registry anywhere in the United States. Here are just a few before and after photos around the neighborhood.
Before: Stewart Avenue Elementary School, looking northeast, in 1920. After: 2017 The school was constructed in 1873 and remains in use today, one of the oldest continuous schools remaining in the city.
Before: City Park Avenue at Lansing Street, looking south, in 1898. After: 2016
Before: The Max Neugebauer Tailor Shop at 764 Mohawk Street in 1897. After: 2016 Neugebauer arrived in Columbus in 1887, but it’s unclear when he opened this business.
Before: Beck Street and Mohawk, looking east, in 1950. After: 2017 German Village was considered a “slum” by 1950, so the before photo would’ve been around the time of the neighborhood’s low point.
Before: Third Street and Beck, looking east, in 1981. After: 2016 The photo shows a German Village “Haus and Garten Tour” through the neighborhood.
I haven’t done a Before and After installment for a while. This time around, I chose to not focus on any single neighborhood.
First up is a photo of the construction of the Columbus Interurban Terminal, looking northwest from 3rd. The photo was taken on October 5, 1911, about 3 months before the building opened. The interurban system was relatively short-lived in the city, and the terminal closed after only 26 years in 1938. The building survived as a grocery store through the mid-1960s before the building was demolished in 1967 as part of the construction of the Greyhound Bus Terminal across the street. The actual location of the building was not on the Greyhound site, but was used as an overflow parking lot. It remained a parking lot until the mid-1980s, when it became part of the City Centre Mall site. Today, plans are for the site to become the location for the 12-story, 80 on the Commons mixed-use project.
October, 1911.
Here is the same place in October, 2018.
The second historic photo is of the #57 streetcar on Kelton Avenue just south of the Oak Street intersection. The photo, which looks north, was taken on June 30, 1915 and includes 3 separate visible buildings as well. The house on the left actually survived until 1977, when it and the rest of the east half of the block was demolished. The building visible on the right is the surviving streetcar barn. Today, it is in bad shape, and while many would like to see it renovated and saved, time seems to be running out. The other surviving building, barely visible in the 1915 photo, is the tenement building on the northwest corner of Oak and Kelton. And in 2015:
Third in this list is a photo of the demolition of the old Franklin County Jail, once located at 36 E. Fulton Street in Downtown. Built in 1889, the structure survived until the fall of 1971, when the building, which by then had become outdated for its intended purpose, was torn down to make way for- what else- a parking garage. The parking garage remains to the present day. Columbus leaders at the time should’ve been flogged for such short-sighted thinking, something that was repeated over and over and over again during that era. Today, such a very cool, unique building would’ve made an excellent candidate for mixed-use conversion. And in August, 2016:
Finally, this next photo isn’t really historic. It was taken a mere 15 years ago in February, 2002, looking northwest from the corner of N. High Street and 10th Avenue. At the time, this area had been made up of low-rise historic buildings that had long held bars for OSU students. All these buildings in the photo, and many more, were demolished not long after the photo was taken in order to make room for the South Campus Gateway, now more or less just called the Gateway. Similar large-scale demolitions are taking place to the north and south as the entirety of the High Street corridor around Campus is transformed. Whether that is good or bad depends on who you ask. What can be agreed upon, however, is that the corridor will be almost unrecognizable in the end. And in October, 2016:
This Random Columbus Photos 3 edition looks at a Downtown icon, the Columbus Athletic Club..
Photo Date: November 1, 1914 Location: 136 E. Broad Street
The photo shows the ongoing excavation of the Columbus Athletic Club. It was conceived a few years prior as a social club by a group of wealthy Columbus businessmen in 1912. The organization was originally housed in the Atlas Building at Gay and High, but the club wanted their own building. Construction began in early 1914, and the 6-story building was dedicated in 1915. The 100-year-old institution, now on the National Register of Historic Places, looks pretty much the same as it did when it was first built, and it remains a private club to this day. Over the years, the club has had many prominent members, including politicians and even a president, Warren G. Harding.
Random Columbus photos 1 is the first edition in a new, very occasional series highlighting historic views in and around the city.
Photo Date: January 15, 1936 Location: Parkwood Avenue, East Linden
This random street scene photo was taken during the frigid winter of 1935-36. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the photo was taken, only that the style of homes indicates that it was taken looking north between Earl and Denune Avenues. Little has changed on Parkwood in the last 79 years. The area still looks and feels a little rural, and there are still no sidewalks. The one change, however, is that the roads are no longer dirt.
The day of the photo was fairly mild, with highs in the mid-40s. The next day, however, a snowstorm struck that dropped about 5″ of snow, and just a week later, temperatures hit 16 degrees below zero.
