The house on Dream Street

From Quiet Road to "Dream Street"

Broad Street itself was first laid out around 1797 with the settlement of Franklinton, and a new section was built in 1812 when Columbus was founded. For decades, the city's wealthier residents preferred homes along Front Street with a view of the Scioto River. That changed after the Ohio Canal arrived in 1831 and the National Road was extended through Columbus in 1833. The resulting traffic, noise, and odors pushed families of means to look eastward.

East Broad Street was attractive precisely because it was quieter. It was the road to Granville, but early on, not many travelers used it. Land was relatively cheap, and the street was tree-lined. The first grand gesture came from Alfred Kelley, the lawyer, banker, and state legislator known as the "father of the Ohio Canal System." In 1838, he drained a swampy tract east of downtown and built a Greek Revival mansion that contemporaries dismissed as "way out in the country"—though it was only four blocks from the Statehouse. Others followed, and a pattern was set.

The Gilded Age Mansion Row

By the late 19th century, East Broad Street had become the definitive showcase of Columbus wealth. The National Register documentation describes it as "one of the most fashionable streets in Columbus and the eastside address of many of Columbus' prominent businessmen and professionals." The houses reflected a range of popular styles, particularly adaptations of Colonial Revival, but also Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival.

The residents were the city's industrial captains. Clinton DeWeese Firestone, co-founder of the Columbus Buggy Company—at one point the world's largest manufacturer of light buggies—built a five-level stone mansion at 580 East Broad Street in 1887, designed by architect Elah Terrell. Charles E. Morris, owner of Morris Ironworks, built his home on the street. Carl G. Heyne, president of the American Cash Register Manufacturing Company, lived at 973 East Broad from 1912 to 1914. And Harry P. Wolfe, director of The Ohio State Journal and manager of the Wolfe Brothers Shoe Company, kept a house at 974 East Broad.

The street's evolution continued into the early 1900s, when luxury apartment buildings were added to the mix of single-family mansions. The East Broad Street Historic District was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, recognizing the surviving concentration of this residential heritage.

A Cautionary Arc

The glory was not permanent. By the time of the Second World War, the "top-hat-and-tails" era had faded. Many of the great mansions were converted to offices, boarding houses, or nursing homes, and some were lost altogether—the Firestone mansion was demolished in 1962. But enough of the street's grand residential fabric survived to earn historic designation, and the Heyne-Zimmerman House remains a representative piece of that story: a Colonial Revival home built for a businessman on what was then Columbus's most prestigious avenue—now poised to begin its next chapter as a boutique hospitality destination.