East side of High Street, 325 to 375 feet north of State Street—The US Court House, a plain, two-story brick building about 45 or 46 feet square, was erected here in 1820. It had a false façade and a roof that rose on all four sides to a small circular dome in the center. The courtroom and one jury room were located on the second ffloor. Offices for the clerk of court and marshal and a jury room were located on the first ffloor. Henry Clay was among the famous lawyers who argued cases here. Behind the US Court House, a long, one-story brick building was erected by the county in 1828 or 1829 for county offices. It was divided into four sections: the north room for the clerk of courts, the next for the recorder, the next for the treasurer, and the southernmost one for the county auditor. County offices were located here until 1840, when the new Franklin County Courthouse was erected at Mound and High. The back building was razed in 1857 prior to the grading of the Statehouse grounds. The US Court House was torn down in 1855.
6. 73 South High Street—The well-known Eagle Cofee House, the most popular and convivial drinking house and gambling establishment in town during the city’s early years, was a plain, two-story brick building that stood where the center of the main building of Rife Center is today. Its complete story is told in the introduction to this chapter.
7. 69 South High Street—The Goodale House was at this address between the American House and the Neil House for many years. Author William Dean Howells and his father stayed at this small hotel while Howells’s father was covering the Statehouse as a newspaper correspondent during the winter of 1856.
9. 63 South High Street—Max Stearn built the Majestic Theater here in 1919. It was the first large Columbus theater designed expressly for showing moving pictures. It stood adjacent to the south end of the third (and final) Neil House hotel. Its Morgan pipe organ was one of its features. As interest in “talkies” grew, the Majestic resisted the innovation, advertising itself as the “Shrine of the Silent Art.” Eventually management gave in, though, and for a while it was advertised as an RKO theater. In February 1950, it was torn down to make way for an H. L. Green variety store.
10. West side of High Street, north of State Street—Odeon Hall, owned by William Neil, adjoined the original Neil House hotel and was the site of many early shows, meetings, and concerts. The Ohio House met there from February 1, 1852 (after the old Statehouse burned to the ground), to 1857. Jenny Lind, an opera singer known as the “Swedish Nightingale” who was one of the most famous singers in the world in the nineteenth century, performed there November 4 and 5, 1851, during a tour of America that was originally promoted by P. T. Barnum. When tickets went on sale for the hefty price of $2 to $4, people rushed to buy them, and the performances sold out. More than a thousand men and women crowded the streets around the hall in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.
11. 41 South High Street—William Neil opened a tavern on this site directly across the street from Statehouse Square shortly after his arrival in Columbus in 1818. He also bought a stagecoach line. In 1832, John Noble took over Neil’s tavern, remodeled and elegantly furnished the two-story, green-painted building, and called it the National Hotel. Neil’s Ohio Stage Company had an office attached to it. Noble’s tavern-keeping career began in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, although he had helped supply the army in Franklinton during the War of 1812. Neil’s stagecoach business grew rapidly, and after the old building was torn down, Neil opened the first of three Neil House hotels on this site in 1839 at a cost of $100,000. In 1842, author Charles Dickens, his wife, Catherine, and his secretary, George Washington Putnam, stayed here; Dickens praised the hotel in his writing, saying he was impressed by “the polished woods of black walnut” and the hotel’s “handsome portico and stone verandah.” When William Henry Harrison was running for president in 1840, he gave an hour-long speech in front of the Neil House. When former president John Quincy Adams visited Columbus on November 4, 1843, he also stayed here. The old hotel was destroyed by fire in 1860 on the night of Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency; it was rebuilt and reopened in 1862. The second hotel contained approximately 150 rooms. Lots of famous people stayed in this building, including Mark Twain, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Jenny Lind, Orville Wright, Warren G. Harding, and Oscar Wilde. The press noted that when Wilde stayed there in 1882, he was served his dinner in Beck’s, a restaurant associated with the hotel that was run by Lawrence Beck. In 1922, that building was torn down for the construction of a third Neil House, which would continue the hotel’s tradition of serving many of the rich and famous until it was demolished in 1981 to clear the site for the construction of the Huntington Center.
12. South High Street, west side of Statehouse grounds—A crowd of fifty thousand attended the September 14, 1906, dedication of the statue of William McKinley, a former Ohio governor (1892–96) who rose to the presidency and was assassinated in 1901. The sculpture by Herman A. McNeil portrays McKinley speaking at the Pan-American Exposition (in Bufalo, New York) just moments before he was shot. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt (who had been McKinley’s vice president) and the wife of an Ohio congressman, was the guest of honor at the unveiling. The statue’s location pays tribute to the devotion that McKinley had for his wife. It gazes across High to the spot once occupied by the Neil House, where the McKinleys lived during his time as governor. Ida McKinley was frail and often bedridden, and every morning as the governor walked to work across High, he would pause near this spot and wave to his wife as she gazed out the second-story window.
13. 21 South High Street—The twelve-story Harrison Building was erected here in 1903 and acquired by Huntington Bank in 1915. The bank’s offices moved there from the southwest corner of Broad and High in 1916, and in 1925 the bank incorporated this building into the much-larger building that still stands on this site today.
14. Southwest corner of Broad and High Streets—In 1820, “a small frame dwelling, then the residence of Mrs. Nashee” occupied this spot, according to historian Alfred Emory Lee. It was later used as a school for the hearing-impaired, referred to then as “deaf-mutes.” In 1878, a Gothic-style, four-story Huntington Bank building rose on this site. In 1916, the bank moved to the new, twelve-story Harrison Building south of here and immediately north of the Neil House. A succession of businesses and restaurants have occupied the single-story building that occupies this site today.
15. Southeast corner of Broad and High Streets—The World War I Commemorative Arch was dedicated on September 18, 1918, with a speech by former president Theodore Roosevelt and music by John Philip Sousa’s orchestra. Roosevelt’s speech promoted the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive.
16. Northwest corner of Broad and High Streets—David Deshler bought this lot in 1817 for the then-exorbitant price of $1,000 (other lots in the new city were going for $100 or $200), and the young carpenter built a wooden house and shop on the site that stood for years. In 1878, David’s son, William Deshler, built the Deshler Block, a four-story brick building that housed the Deshler Bank, storerooms, and offices. In 1912, William’s son, John Deshler, announced plans for a 400-room hotel—269 with baths—that would rival the finest in the world at the time. The Deshler Hotel’s
