and captains were hired in New York and were brought to Columbus in chartered railroad cars, and the 525 guests were entertained by opera stars and an international dance team. The hotel was leased to Ohioans and New York hoteliers Lew and Adrian Wallick and advertised for years as “the most beautifully equipped in America.” Whether it was or wasn’t, there was no denying its elegance. The lobby ffloor was decorated by a mammoth Oriental rug that cost $15,000 in 1927. The Wallicks added 600 rooms in the new AIU building—known today as the LeVeque Tower—next door, which was reached via a “Venetian bridge” at the second-story level. The hotel was renamed the Deshler-Wallick. New York mayor Jimmy Walker came for the opening and tried to have a ceremonial sip of wine in each of the 600 hotel rooms; legend says he almost did it. President Harry S. Truman spoke here in 1946 at a conference of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ. After his presidency, he and his wife, Bess, stayed here on July 6–7, 1953, during a three-week road trip from Missouri to the East Coast and back in a 1953 Chrysler. The hotel was sold in 1947 to Chicagoan Julius Epstein, who sold it five years later to the Hilton hotel chain, and it was renamed the Deshler-Hilton. In 1964 a company headed by Charles Cole bought and renamed it the Deshler-Cole. Cole eliminated the 600 rooms in the LeVeque Tower and remodeled the hotel, but its decline was under way. It was sold one last time to Fred Beasley in 1966 and became the Beasley-Deshler. But it was closed in 1968 and was razed in September 1969.
17. Northeast corner of Broad and High Streets—This spot and the lots to the immediate north were still unoccupied in 1820, eight years after the city was formed. Rufus Main’s grocery store was located here in the period before the Civil War. The animals of Dan Rice’s circus supposedly “wintered” in the upper floors of the building one year. Rice started as a clown and became a household name in America in the middle of the nineteenth century; he became so popular that he ran for president of the United States in 1868. He changed the circus into what it is today by mixing animals, acrobats, and clowns. Roy’s Jewelers was at this site from 1920 to 1985. After the building that housed the jewelry store was declared unsafe during a redesign of the corner, it was torn down in 2005 and replaced by a building that resembles the old structure.
19. 20 East Broad Street—The first Trinity Church, built in the style of a Greek Revival temple, was erected on this site in 1833. It was made of limestone with a plastered exterior and featured ffluted Ionic columns fflanking the steps. With a new church under construction at the corner of Third and Broad, the site was sold to Peter Hayden in the 1860s; he tore the old church down and put up the current four-story structure in 1869. It was built to house his wholesale and retail saddlery and hardware business, and he moved his bank (Hayden Bank) there in 1876. The building is faced with hand-tooled sandstone blocks quarried near Waverly, Ohio. It was designed by Columbus architect Nathan B. Kelley, who served as the third architect for the current Ohio Statehouse. This is the oldest remaining commercial structure on Statehouse Square.
20. 30 East Broad Street—The Buckeye House, an early hotel and tavern, stood on this site, possibly as early as 1816. Methodist circuit rider Uriah Heath, who preached in Worthington in 1838–39 and Columbus in 1852–54, once stayed there and wrote in his journal, “Here we saw sin all around us though the land lord treated us with kindness.” In 1888, architect Elah Terrell designed for this spot an arched, six-story building with a Richardson-Romanesque front for the Columbus Board of Trade, which adopted the more modern Columbus Chamber of Commerce name in 1910. The structure included a 2,000-seat auditorium at the north end. Two workmen were killed when an arch fell on them during construction. The building was closed in 1964 and razed in 1969 to make way for the construction of the Rhodes State Office Tower.
21. 50–52 East Broad Street—Joseph Ridgway, whose plow factory and foundry was the city’s first successful manufacturing establishment in 1822, had a home at 50 East Broad. Attorney George T. Spahr erected the nine-story Spahr Building on this site in 1897 for use by Spahr and Glenn, the Ohio State Journal, and the Columbus Savings Association, later called Columbus Trust Company. The Ohio State Journal remained here until 1920, when it moved to 62 East Broad.
22. 60 East Broad Street—One of the city’s first double houses was constructed on this site by the Gregory family, with addresses of 60 and 62 East Broad, in the early days of the city. Later, the houses reputedly became meeting places for politicians, including antiwar newspaper editor Samuel Medary, in the period prior to the Civil War. Early in 1876, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes rented the furnished house here from Dr. W. B. Hawkes. (Hawkes donated four lots and $10,000 in 1882 for the construction of Hawkes Hospital at Mount Carmel, the beginnings of Mount Carmel Hospital.) Hayes moved here with his wife, Lucy, his daughter, Fanny, and his son, Scott. In his diary on May 26, 1876, he described his life here: “I rise between five and seven, write letters until breakfast at 8:30; am at my office until about 1 P.M., from 9 A.M.; dine about 2 P.M.; at office again until after 5 P.M.; and evenings for calls and callers.” The family was living here when the Republican Party nominated him for president in June 1876 and left from this house for Washington in 1877 for his inauguration as president. The house was torn down prior to the construction of the current building in 1918.
23. 62 East Broad Street—The Ohio State Journal moved here from 50 East Broad when the current building opened in 1920. It remained here until the Journal merged with the Citizen in 1959 and moved into the Dispatch building at 34 South Third Street.
24. 68 East Broad Street—The house of Colonel William Doherty originally occupied this site. Built in 1829, it was said to be the first home in the city to have stone front steps; the date of its erection was carved above the front door. The original house had two stories, but a third was added later. Doherty, a prominent local attorney, was a North Carolina native who earned his military stripes during the War of 1812 and was a close friend of Henry Clay. Mrs. Eliza Doherty’s currant and gooseberry bushes grew where skyscrapers now stand, and at the back of the house near Gay Street a building apparently housed the family’s black servants, a homesick remembrance of Southern customs. The couple had eight children, and they attended school in a little frame building in the side yard to the east. Doherty joined Lyne Starling in the real estate business and at one point owned a large tract of land that he deeded to the town for the North Graveyard, where the North Market now stands.
25. 74 East Broad Street—Dr. Washington Gladden, probably the most celebrated minister the city ever had, was the pastor of the
