Building Ohio: A Traveler's Guide to Ohio's Urban Architecture (An Orange Frazer Roadbook)

The first of two volumes Orange Frazer has released another roadbook —the first architectural guide ever for Ohio—and the first book at all on Ohio buildings in almost 30 years. Writer Jane Ware spent years tracking down over 600 buildings chosen from a statewide perspective. Two centuries of Ohio courthouses, skyscrapers, museums, houses, churches, barns, factories—all appear with 300 photos, drawings, floorplans and directions on exactly how to find them. Here are the famous architects who came from other places to design buildings in Ohio, as well as the now largely forgotten local architects who built beautiful places. Here are the New England builders, who brought elegance to the frontier, and Tet Woods of West Union, who designed herself a splendid store. Here are the tycoons who wanted the best house in town and the fortunes that built museums and concert halls and churches—and, in Warren, the fortune that didn’t. And too, here are the people who today are rediscovering Ohio architecture. In the first of two volumes, the first for cities, the second for towns and rural areas, Building Ohio includes itineraries for tours of round barns in Perry County, of banking halls in Cleveland, of churches in northwest Ohio, of still rural corners in the Western Reserve. It explains what makes Cincinnati architecture great, starting with houses, schools, and fire stations. It finds the best man-made landscapes, Ohio’s places of perfect beauty. Jane Ware talked to experts from around the state in assembling this record of the collusion of money and art, ambition and characters, that we know as Ohio architecture. She wore out a set of tires and two cameras. She is a Columbus-based writer and the author of two previous books, and has been developing an Ohio point-of-view on architecture since the mid 1990s. Over 200 photographs, illustrations, and architectural drawings.