Art Work of Columbus

I’m not a native of Columbus. In fact, I’m not a native Ohioan, either. I was born in California and only moved to Ohio in 2004. But I work in Columbus, and Ohio is my home, and I love them both, and so I enjoy learning about my adopted home every chance I get.

It thrills me when I can walk to our rare book room, pull a book off the shelf, and see images of Columbus from a hundred years ago. I can look at familiar places and compare them to what I know of them now. In fact, it’s something I do quite frequently; see here and here for examples.

 

Art Work of Columbus offers another opportunity to see Columbus as it was more than one hundred years ago. Though it begins with a brief history of the city, the bulk of the book features images of architecture, of parks, of statuary, and of street scenes from 1897, including a shot of Fourth Street on Market Day (seen above). By the way, if any reader recognizes this section of Fourth Street, let us know! In fact, if you visit any of the locations you find in Art Work of Columbus, take a picture and send it to [email protected]. We’ll share it, alongside the image from our book, in a future blog post.

We hope you enjoy skimming through this copy of Art Work of Columbus!

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Thank you to Shannon Kupfer, Digital/Tangible Media Cataloger at the State Library of Ohio, for this week’s post!