1856 across from the soon-to-be Statehouse and had houses on each side of it. The congregation had been formed years earlier by a group who had broken away from the Central Presbyterian Church (which had broken away from First Presbyterian) and had a simple, frame structure on Third before this. Gladden, the author of forty books and many hymns, came to Columbus in 1882. One of his best known hymns, “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee,” is included in the hymnals of many denominations. Gladden’s sermons were so well attended that the church was rebuilt into a much larger stone Richardson-Romanesque structure in 1914. While serving a term on the city council between 1900 and 1902, Gladden advocated municipal ownership of public works. In 1914, Gladden decided that the church would have to move eastward if it was to expand, and the new church at 444 East Broad Street was finally completed in 1931. The old building at this address was demolished in 1932.
26. Northwest corner of Broad and Third Streets—William G. Deshler built a large two-story house here in 1859 and moved from a smaller two-story house he had built at the northeast corner of Broad and Young Streets eleven years earlier. He had barns in the rear of the house, along North Third Street. His move here was indicative of his growing wealth. He planned the East Broad Street Parkway in 1857, helped secure Fort Hayes (then the Columbus Barracks) for the city, and was the founder of the Hocking Valley Railway. He endowed the Columbus Female Benevolent Society with $100,000 and contributed to the Hannah Neil Mission and Home for the Friendless. William’s son, John, built the Deshler Hotel on the site of his grandfather David’s Broad and High home site. The house at this site was torn down in 1922, six years after William G. Deshler’s death. The lot served as a parking lot before a Tom Thumb restaurant occupied another building that rose on this spot. That was torn down to clear the way for the current twenty-one-story structure.
27. Southeast corner of Broad and Third Streets—Trinity Episcopal Church opened here in 1869, moving from the smaller Greek Revival church it had occupied on Broad just east of High since 1833. In 1871, George Parsons’s daughter Amelia, who was called May by her family, married the Bavarian prince Alexander Ernst zu Lynar here in the city’s only royal wedding. The couple had met in Paris during a time when European royalty of high title and low net worth sometimes sought out the single daughters of the American rich. The bride wore a gown of heavy, white-corded silk and a necklace of diamonds and pearls. The groom wore a full-dress uniform draped with his military decorations. The bride became Her Serene Highness Princess Amelia zu Lynar. A contingent from the Prussian Legation in Washington escorted the prince. The streets around the church were crowded with gawkers.
28. East side of the Statehouse, South Third Street—Abraham Lincoln spoke from the esplanade on the east side of the Statehouse twice. He first spoke to a group of about fifty people standing outside on the east steps on the topic of slavery for more than two hours on September 16, 1859. At the time, Lincoln was not well known and was still a lanky, clean-shaven man not yet wearing his trademark stovepipe hat. He won the Republican nomination for president the following May. He spoke there again on February 13, 1861, while on his way to Washington for his inauguration. The crowd was much larger this time. That day he also spoke to a joint session of the Ohio legislature in the House Chamber. While visiting with then-Governor Dennison in his office, still in ceremonial use by today’s governor, Lincoln received a telegram telling him that the election had been certified and he was officially the president-elect. Because of the later construction of the Statehouse Annex, the spot where Lincoln spoke cannot be seen from Third Street today. A bronze marker is attached to one of the massive columns next to where he spoke, although today all are enclosed in the Atrium. Four years and two months after his second speaking appearance, Lincoln’s body lay in the Statehouse en route to Springfield, Illinois, following his assassination.
29. 12 South Third Street—The three-story home of Civil War general Samuel Thomas stood here, next door to Trinity Church. During the war, Thomas organized the Sixty-Third and Sixty-Fourth US Colored Infantry, troops that served in the protection of Mississippi River ports. He joined a syndicate of Columbus capitalists engaged in railroad building in the South and West and was one of the originators of the Nickel Plate Road and several other railroads. In 1881 his business interests caused him to move to New York, where he eventually died. The house was torn down in 1926 prior to the construction of the Lanman building, which was razed in 1974. The Galleria stands on the site today.
30. 34 South Third Street—Prominent attorney Phineas B. Wilcox had a home on this spot in the city’s early days. Wilcox had been born in Westfield, Connecticut, graduated from Yale, and married Sarah Andrews in 1821; the couple came to Columbus in 1824. She was the older sister of John W. Andrews, who would live next door to them at 36 South Third. Their son, James Andrews Wilcox, graduated from Kenyon and Yale and rose to the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. He practiced law with his father, who was said to have one of the finest law libraries in the West. Phineas died in 1863. James married Lucy Sullivant, daughter of Joseph Sullivant and granddaughter of Franklinton founder Lucas Sullivant; James died in 1891.The five-story Columbus YMCA building, designed by well-known Columbus architects Joseph Warren Yost and Frank L. Packard, stood here from 1893 to 1923, when it was demolished to make way for the construction of the Columbus Dispatch building that occupies this spot today. In 1893, fourteen-year-old Mel Karshner saw an exhibition of the new game of basketball here (the sport had been founded in December 1891 at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts), and he and his brother, Malcolm, soon were part of a formidable “Y” team reputed to be the best in Ohio. Based on this experience, Mel started the Ohio State basketball team as a sophomore in the fall of 1897.
31. 36 South Third Street—A small, two-story brick Greek Revival–style house that stood next door to the Columbus Dispatch building dated to the early years of the city. From the late 1840s on, John W. Andrews, a prominent local attorney, lived in this house with his wife, Lavina (Gwynne), and two children. The couple was still living there at the time of his death in 1893. He gave an important speech in the First Presbyterian Church on February 14, 1854, against the Nebraska Bill, which would repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allow new states to vote on whether to allow slavery. Opposition to the bill, which became law as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, led to the formation of the Republican Party. Andrews’s speech was reprinted in book form by BiblioLife in 2009. Andrews’s house was still standing in 1924 when the Dispatch building was completed; a 1925 photo shows a gasoline pump in front of the house and several auto-related signs affixed to the exterior, including one for Chevrolet. A picture of the gutted house and story about its razing appeared in the Dispatch on January 7, 1927.
32. 60 South Third Street—John Noble, a hotel manager and local politician who served on the city council and also in the Ohio Senate, had a home here and enlarged it into the Vendome Hotel in 1898. The five-story building was operated as a hotel until 1918, when the YWCA purchased it. The structure was demolished in 1932.
33. 66 South Third Street—A two-story stone house was built here by Isaac N. Whiting in 1841. He came to Ohio from Massachusetts to study for the Episcopal ministry with Philander Chase at Kenyon College in Worthington in 1825, but changed his plans and became a bookstore owner and publisher. His first home in Columbus was at South High and Chapel Streets. One of the first booksellers in the state, Whiting opened a store on the northeast corner of South High and Town Streets in Columbus in 1829 and by the following year seems to have moved his shop across the street to the west side of High Street. Whiting dominated the book market in the city into the 1840s. He began to publish books in 1831 and would continue to do so into the 1870s. Possibly his first book, Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie Du Chien Thence to Washington City in 1829, by Circleville, Ohio, pioneer and author Caleb Atwater, was ofered neatly bound for one dollar. In 1841, one of Whiting’s early clerks, Henry
