13. Southeast corner of Broad and Sixth Streets—The city’s only high school moved here from State Street, later the site of Sullivant School, in 1862. The city purchased the lot from Trinity Church, which owned the property and had installed a foundation for a church but later decided to build the church at Broad and Third, where it still stands. The new high school, which became Central when other schools were built, was constructed on the existing church foundation. The original building was 60 by 100 feet and was buttressed by an imposing 150-foot tower; a 100-foot addition to the south in 1866 doubled the school’s capacity. Artist George Bellows graduated from this school in 1901. The school’s name was changed to High School of Commerce in 1911, and it remained so until it closed in 1924, when a new Central High School on the west side of the Scioto River took its place. The former high school building was used for city offices until it was demolished in December 1928. The offices of the Columbus Mutual Life Insurance Company later rose on this site. Bricks from the old school building were used in the construction of the former Players’ Theatre building on Franklin Avenue.
14. Southwest corner of Broad Street and Grant Avenue—The Samuel Strasser Rickly House stood on the site of this parking lot until the building was razed in 1960. Rickly was a banker who bought what had been the city’s “circus lot” in the 1860s and built a two-story brick home. Rickly founded Heidelberg College, where Rickly Chapel is named for him. He became superintendent of Tiffin schools before moving to Columbus, where he was elected clerk of the Ohio House of Representatives. He founded a bank with his brother in 1857 and organized Capital City Bank in 1875. When the first bank failed during the Panic of 1873, he paid every depositor in full. In 1880, a customer demanded money for a worthless security; when Rickly refused to pay him, he pulled out a gun and shot out both of Rickly’s eyes. Rickly survived, though, and lived twenty-five more years. Rickly’s son, Ralph, succeeded him at the bank and lived in this house with his young wife, Ida Harrison. But Ralph died in 1919, only thirteen years after his father, and his young widow became associated with this spot among later generations of Columbus residents. Ida Rickly married Walter Beebe Sr., and after he died, she married Sage Valentine. But the house became known for Ida, “the tulip lady across from the Seneca [Hotel].” Every spring, she planted massive, gorgeous beds of tulips that drew crowds of onlookers. She supposedly gave away all of the bulbs each year. Ida died in 1960, and sadly, her will stipulated that the beautiful house be razed. The spot has been vacant ever since.
16. Southeast corner of Broad Street and Grant Avenue—This twelve-story red brick structure with white terra-cotta was designed by Frank L. Packard and opened in 1917 as the Seneca Hotel. A four-story addition was constructed on the east side, fronting on Broad Street in 1924. This luxury hotel, which catered to long-term residents, had ninety-one suites, lavish ballrooms, and a rooftop garden. In May 1959, shortly after Fidel Castro toppled the Cuban regime of Fulgencio Batista, Castro’s sister and mother checked in at the Seneca and stayed until September, apparently because the new dictator wanted to keep them safe from his enemies. Front desk clerk Beatrice Rhodebeck told Dispatch columnist Mike Harden that Castro’s mother “always wore a complete black outfit, black veil, shawl, gloves; they went to Mass every morning.” She also said that Castro’s sister was spending money like water and “when Raul [Fidel’s brother] came to pick them up and saw the bill, he about had a heart attack. He jumped all over me and I jumped back.” She said that after the trio reached Port Columbus, Raul telephoned her and said “I have never had a woman talk to me like that, and one of these days I’m going to come back and take care of you.” Raul, who became the Cuban president in 2006 because of his brother’s illness, never did. For years, Woody Hayes’s Ohio State football teams stayed here on the night of home games. Woody sometimes paced the hallways to enforce the curfew. The hotel was once the home of the University Club, and after the Seneca closed the building was converted to office space for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. It stood empty for years after the Ohio EPA moved out in 1987 and was close to demolition a couple of times but has now been remodeled into luxury apartments.
17. Northeast corner of Broad Street and Cleveland Avenue—William A. Platt, the city’s first watchmaker (1830–50) and later president of the Columbus Gas Company, married Fanny A. Hayes and built and moved into a mansion at this site in 1855. Platt’s jewelry store was located in the Neil House block. The house was located on 3 acres, much of which was devoted to gardening, one of Platt’s passions. His wife, the sister of President Rutherford B. Hayes, died in childbirth in 1856. The house was torn down in 1929.
18. 471 East Broad Street—John Joyce, founder of the Green Joyce Company, built a three-story, twenty-one-room, 10,000-square-foot house here in 1880. Green Joyce was a wholesale dry goods company that at one time had three stores in Columbus. The site of Joyce’s home is currently occupied by the Motorist’s Insurance Company building.
19. 478 East Broad Street—Francis C. Sessions, cofounder of Ellis and Sessions Dry Goods, first president of Commercial National Bank, and a founder of Columbus Art School (which became the Columbus College of Art and Design), lived here in a square, brick mansion with a nearly fflat roof and cupola that he built in 1840. He added an adjoining conservatory to the north. When he died in 1892, Sessions left this house and funds to form an art gallery and continue the art school; the house served as an art gallery and the home of the Columbus College of Art and Design until 1928, when the building was demolished. It stood in front of the current entrance of the Columbus Museum of Art.
20. 485 East Broad Street—William Deshler gave his son, John, and new daughter-in-law, Minnie Greene, a two-story home that stood on this spot as a wedding gift in 1875. But the new Mrs. Deshler complained that this home was “just too far out in the country,” and in 1879 the couple traded houses with John Lilley and his wife, Rachel, who owned a house on Third Street, opposite the Statehouse. Some member of the Lilley family remained in the house until 1908. It was razed in 1931.
21. 580 East Broad Street—The mansion of Clinton DeWeese Firestone was completed on this site in 1886 when Fire-stone was president of the Columbus Buggy Company, the largest light vehicle manufacturing company in the world. This was one year before Clinton’s nephew, Harvey Firestone, wrote a letter from his home in Columbiana County and asked his famous uncle if he could have a job. Clinton found Harvey a job as a bookkeeper in a coal yard. By 1892, Harvey was in charge of the Michigan sales district, where he eventually received a demonstrator sulky with rubber tires and had an idea that became the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. Clinton Firestone died in February 1914, and the mansion was sold to the Columbus Mutual Life Insurance Company the following August. The company occupied the mansion for decades. It was torn down in 1962. A muffler and brakes shop occupies the spot today.
22. 620 East Broad Street—The state bought 30 acres at this location in 1836 for the site of Ohio’s first “lunatic asylum,” this spot being considered remote enough for such a place. The state legislature had stipulated that the site be “at least one mile from the city.” A Greek Revival building to house the patients rose within two years, and by 1847, three additions had finished a quadrangle of 440 rooms. Union general and future president Ulysses S. Grant visited here on October 3, 1865. The structure caught fire and was destroyed on November 18, 1868, with the loss of six lives. In 1870, the land was sold for $200,000 to
a syndicate that planned East Park Place, and the state used $100,000 of this sum to buy the 300-acre farm of William S. Sullivant for a new asylum farther removed from the growing city on the west side. In the 1880s, Andrew Denny Rogers, former Civil War major, first president of the Columbus Consolidated