How Was Columbus Built

Columbus was platted rather than grown, and the plan is still legible.

The 1812 plat

A grid laid out on empty ground with two public squares reserved — one for the capitol and one for the penitentiary — and High Street and Broad Street crossing at the centre. That crossing is still the city’s reference point, and addresses run from it.

The Statehouse

A Greek Revival capitol begun in 1839 and finished in 1861, built partly with convict labour from local limestone. It is deliberately austere: Doric columns, a low cupola rather than a dome, and none of the ornament that most American statehouses acquired. Several architects worked on it and the result is unusually pure.

German Village brick

German settlers from the 1840s built small brick cottages close to the pavement on narrow lots, with slate roofs, wrought iron and brick-paved streets. The scale is domestic and uniform, and the preservation from the 1960s kept the streets, the trees and the materials as well as the buildings.

The arches

High Street was lit by metal arches from the 1880s, making Columbus one of the first electrically lit cities; they were removed in 1914 and reinstated in the Short North in 2002.

Topiary and oddities

Columbus has a taste for the unexpected in public art: a park laid out as a topiary reproduction of a Seurat painting, a giant pair of reading glasses, and the university’s deconstructivist arts centre. They are not accidents — the city has a percent-for-art programme and has used it on things other cities would not commission.

Modern sprawl

Flat land and annexation produced low-density suburbs and ring roads.