school. The school closed in 1862, and the building became a military hospital that housed hundreds of wounded veterans during the Civil War. It was remodeled and opened as the Irving House family hotel after the war. It had stood empty for years when Trinity Episcopal Church bought it for use as a parish house in 1890, and Samuel B. Hartman bought it when the church’s parish house was completed. He sold it to the newly organized Athletic Club in 1913, but it was razed two years later for the construction of the new Athletic Club building, which still occupies this site. The Athletic Club’s address is listed as 140 East Broad. President Warren G. Harding was once a member, and presidents Richard M. Nixon and George H. W. Bush both visited there, as did 2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain and his running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Randy Travis, actor Anthony Quinn, and Chelsea Clinton, daughter of President Bill Clinton.
2. 137 East Broad Street—The Maramor Restaurant, one of the city’s most famous eateries, was in this location from the 1920s until it closed in 1969. The restaurant achieved a national reputation, in part because of testimonials from theatrical personalities who ate there while appearing in town. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were so impressed with the “Lamb Luntanne” that they wrote in the guest book that the Maramor was “the best restaurant in America.” Helen Hayes, who starred as a queen in Victoria Regina, called the Maramor’s vichyssoise “a soup to a queen’s taste.” Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas likely dined here during their 1934 visit to Columbus, based on the glowing description they gave the place. Duncan Hines named the restaurant as one of his favorite eating places in a 1947 interview and singled out its stewed chicken: “The chicken is so delicate in fflavor, tender, the dumplings light as thistledown, cooked in the rich, creamy gravy.” The restaurant was started by a single woman named Mary Love in 1920 in a house across Broad Street —112 East Broad—in 1920, and she ran it until it was sold to Maurice Sher in 1945. By then, Mary’s husband, Malcolm McGuckin, was president of the company, which included a candy shop; the restaurant was also known for its chocolates. The Maramor was listed in Gourmet’s Guide to Good Eating in 1948. Sher operated the restaurant until it closed. The building was torn down in 1972. The candy business survives as Maramor Chocolates at a diferent location.
3. 141 East Broad Street—Peletiah Webster Huntington, founder of the bank that still bears his name, had a home on this site that was demolished in 1926 to make room for the construction of the Maramor Restaurant. The PNC Bank building occupies this site today.
4. Southwest corner of Broad and Fourth Streets—The mansion of Baldwyn Gwynne stood on this spot, built around 1860 with an address of 151 East Broad. Lucretia Phelps and
B. H. Hall moved their Miss Phelps English and Classical School here in 1885; the school’s enrollment grew so large that a plain brick building was added in the side yard along Capitol Alley in 1890. At its height, this school for girls of wealth and social position had about one hundred students; twenty-five or so were boarding students, many from other states. Three times a year, the school held a ball on the spacious third ffloor of the mansion. Many of the boys came from Columbus Latin School, across Broad Street. Miss Phelps English and Classical School was known as a “finishing school”; the best manners were required. Graduation was held in nearby Trinity Church. The school closed in 1906 after Phelps died suddenly. The mansion was razed in 1920s for the construction of the Crotti-Buckles building. Montaldo’s, an upscale ladies fashion store, occupied this spot in that building; the company declared bankruptcy in 1995. The PNC bank building stands there today.
5. Northeast corner of Broad and Fourth Streets—Wesley Chapel, also called Central Methodist Church, stood here from 1885 to 1935. Church officials decided to build here after the original Wesley Chapel, which was located on the west side of High Street between Gay and Long Streets, was destroyed by fire on May 13, 1883. The congregation consisted of over seven hundred members at the time. In 1930, the church made tentative plans to build a Methodist temple on the site, but the temple was never built. In 1935, the church decided to raze the old church, anyway. The site was a parking lot for years until the construction of the thirty-four-ffloor Borden Building in 1973.
6. Southeast corner of Broad and Fourth Streets—The stately mansion of pressed brick that today serves as the Columbus Club was built in the 1860s for financier and railroad contractor Benjamin E. Smith. Smith’s dream was to create a rival amusement park to Coney Island in New York. He selected Rockaway Beach as his location and went to work, eventually losing most of his fortune in the process. When Smith moved to New York in 1883, the house was for rent; newly elected governor George Hoadly moved in when he took office the next year. It continued as the “governor’s mansion” when Joseph Foraker succeeded Hoadly. In the meantime, Smith was declared insane and committed to an asylum in 1885. The Columbus Club, founded by seventy-five or more men in a room on the first ffloor of City Hall in December 1886, bought his former home in 1887. The then all-male club began a custom of hosting banquets in honor of governors; all but a few have been entertained there and have been given honorary memberships. Since the time
of Grover Cleveland, many presidents have been entertained there, including Theodore Roosevelt. Warren G. Harding and William Howard Taft were members for many years. During the 1920 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Harding and Democratic candidate James M. Cox had dinner in the club on the same evening. Numerous military heroes have also been honored there, including Admiral George Dewey shortly after his victory at Manila Bay.
7. Northeast corner of Broad and Young Streets—William G. Deshler built a simple, two-story house here in 1848 on a lot that was given to him by his father, David, who was laying out a subdivision with William S. Sullivant in the area bounded by Fourth, Fifth, Broad, and Long Streets William Deshler, then twenty-one, was given the lot—the address was 198 East Broad—for doing such a good job of promoting and selling the lots. When this home was built, the brick sidewalk ended at their gate. The only house beyond it on Broad was the Greek Revival mansion of Alfred Kelley, at what today would be 282 East Broad. William’s son, John, who later built the Deshler Hotel on the site of the family’s Broad and High home site, was born in this house in 1852. In 1859, a now-wealthy William bought the lot at the northwest corner of Broad and Third and built a much larger house, and in 1866, the land to the east of this house at Fifth and Broad was purchased for a Catholic church. When the Diocese of Columbus was created under Bishop Sylvester Rosecrans, it was redesigned as a cathedral and consecrated in 1878. In 1886, Bishop Watterson bought the house from then-owner William B. Brooks and made it the Episcopal residence. It served as the home for Bishops Moeller, Hartley, and Ready. In 1948, it was torn down and the present Chancery-Cathedral Rectory was built. William Deshler’s yard remains between the rectory and the cathedral.
8. 250 East Broad Street—Columbus Lodge of Elks No. 37 dedicated an impressive three-story lodge building in 1915, behind the spot currently occupied by the Midland Mutual office tower. The lodge had over two thousand members at the time. As the Elks numbers dwindled, the lodge was eventually forced to give up its extensive home; in 1946, Midland Mutual remodeled the building and moved its offices there. The insurance company continued to grow and eventually needed an even larger building, and in 1968 plans were announced for the office building on the front part of the lot. The old lodge building was torn down in 1970, and a landscaped plaza that sits between the office tower and a parking garage has taken its place.
9. 257 East Broad Street—In the late 1960s, Dave Thomas, a local businessman who had turned around a struggling four-store Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise during the mid-1950s, regularly exercised at the Columbus Athletic Club with his friend, Len Immke, a downtown Buick dealer. They often discussed Thomas’s dream of opening a hamburger restaurant. On November 15, 1969, he opened the first Wendy’s in the west end of a building that had housed Tommy Henrich’s Steak House; the steakhouse had been co-owned by the former New York Yankees star. Immke provided the space for his friend’s new restaurant. Immke had purchased it and had been using part of it to prep new Buicks for his showroom across the street. (The site
