Ohio history - All Columbus Data

Downtown, more than any other neighborhood, has seen major changes over the years. This edition of Before and After Downtown looks at just a few locations around the neighborhood that have seen massive transformation over the years. Some of these photos come from the Historic Building Database.

Before: The Central German School at 400 S. 4th Street in 1916

After: 2017

The school was originally opened in December, 1863. In 1920, the school began an expansion and opened as an institution for physically challenged children in March, 1922. The building met its demise in December, 1967 to clear the right of way for I-70/I-71. The highway split the northern sections of German Village off from the rest of the neighborhood. Eventually, almost every historic building left to the north of the highway was demolished. One of the few still remaining is the nearby Trinity Lutheran Church at the corner of S. 3rd and E. Fulton Street, which was dedicated on December 20, 1857.

Before: Southern Theater in 1905

After: 2018

The Southern Theater came about out of the ashes of it’s predecessors. Fires had destroyed 5 separate Columbus theaters between 1889 and 1893, and with the sudden absence of major city theaters, the concept of the Southern Theater was born. The theater opened on September 21, 1896 and has changed very little over the years. Today, it is one of the oldest surviving theaters in Ohio. Very few other buildings can be seen in the old photo, but the 1895 building next door on High and Noble also survives.

Before: The Columbus Auditorium at 570 N. Front Street in 1901

After: 2018

Opened on March 17, 1885, the Park Roller Skating Rink was a large, beautiful building across from where Nationwide Arena sits today. Originally for amusement, the rink only lasted a bit over a decade before being bought and remodeled to become the Columbus Auditorium in 1897. It’s large expanse of flat roof doomed the building however. After more than 15″ of snow fell on the city from February 16-18, 1910, the roof simply could not handle the load, and collapsed on the 18th. The building was deemed a total loss and was torn down not long after.

Before: The Ohio State Arsenal building at 139 W. Main Street in 1898

After: 2017

The Ohio State Arsenal building at 139 W. Main Street, seems to have a bit of disagreement as to when it was actually built (1861 vs. 1863), but regardless, it was a Civil War era arsenal that was used for this purpose for well over 100 years. It was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and became a cultural arts center in 1978, which it remains so to this day.

Not long after the firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861, the act that would begin the Civil War, President Lincoln called on the North to supply tens of thousands of volunteers to fight. Ohio stepped up, and eventually would have nearly 320,000 soldiers, the 3rd highest total in the North. However, it would have the highest % of enlisted men of any state in the North. And of course, the state would supply some of the war’s most famous generals, including Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and the infamous George Armstrong Custer, who would die along with all of his men at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.

After Lincoln’s call to arms, Camp Jackson was established in Columbus for training and organization of these new recruits. I haven’t been able to find exactly where this was in Columbus, but it proved too small to handle the tasks it was supposed to, so the following month Camp Chase was commissioned, and on June 21, 1861 it was officially dedicated. Named after then Secretary of the Treasury Salman P. Chase, the borders of the camp were W. Broad Street, Westgate Avenue, Hague Avenue and Sullivant Avenue, so it encompassed a fairly large chunk of what would later become the Hilltop and eventually the Westgate neighborhood.

Over the next 4 years as the war raged on, over 150,000 Union soldiers came through Camp Chase, but so did 25,000 Confederate prisoners of war, with a peak of 9,423 of them held on the grounds by 1865. Conditions for them, of course, were not particularly great, nor was medical care. Food and clothing rations were too few, and there were so many POWs that overcrowding was a constant problem. Over the years, well over 2,000 of them died from disease, malnutrition, wounds or for attempts at escape. On the southern border near the intersection of Hague and Sullivant, a cemetery was established in 1863 for the detained Confederates who did not survive their imprisonment. By the time Camp Chase closed in July of 1865, 2,260 Confederates had been buried there.

Columbus history Camp Chase cemetery Columbus, Ohio

A large rock within the cemetery marking the graves.

Today, the cemetery is all that remains visible of the camp. After the war, the buildings were gradually dismantled until little trace remained of the land’s former use. Still, the site remained largely empty of development until the first decades of the 20th century when the Westgate residential neighborhood was constructed. The only other visible signs besides the cemetery today can be seen by aerial pictures. While Hilltop is a dense, residential area with hardly an empty lot to be found, the land within the former boundaries of the camp contain several school lots containing ball diamonds. When the Westgate neighborhood was built, the schools took advantage of the empty land for this purpose. Besides Westgate Park, which exists just outside of the former boundaries, there are very few other empty parcels of land in Hilltop.

Columbus history Camp Chase boundary Columbus, Ohio

The approximate location of Camp Chase between West Broad Street and Sullivant in Hilltop.

The History Links takes a look back at all sorts of other history for the Columbus area.

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