herr2ck: Goodale Park, pt. 2 - “Good Ale History”

March 2026.

Goodale Park is Columbus’s oldest public park. A major landmark of the Victorian Village/Short North area, it marks the boundary between those areas and downtown Columbus. Besides the park’s picturesque landscape design, it is surrounded by lavish Victorian houses, which this post in particular covers.

Goodale Park is located in the Victorian Village neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. It is bordered by Buttles Avenue to the north, Goodale Street and I-670 to the south, Park Street to the east, and Dennison Avenue and the Circus House to the west.

History

I covered the history in part 1, so the historical narratives in this part will be shorter and confined to individual buildings. I also visited the Circus House on Dennison Avenue separately.

Photos

Columbus Auditorium I [demolished]

An illustration of the auditorium, which is a bit more embellished in scale and style than the built product. (JSTOR)

Although no longer extant, I wanted to put in a blurb about the former Columbus Auditorium that stood at the northeast corner of Goodale Street and Park Street. It was actually a renovation to an existing building, the 1885 Park Roller Skating Rink. The alterations were designed by Yost & Packard in an eclectic interpretation of the Renaissance Revival style, and the auditorium opened on June 24, 1897. Its principal facade faced Goodale Street, with the longer edge along Park Street.

Circa 1901 photo of the Columbus Auditorium, taken from Goodale Street. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

Auditoriums were common in cities in the Victorian era, which hosted conventions, speeches, and sporting events. Indeed, the Columbus Auditorium was used for the same purpose, and it was the first home venue for Ohio State’s basketball team before their move to the Armory in 1898. The auditorium also hosted the first Columbus Auto Show in 1909. According to the 1901 Sanborn map, it was used as the 4th Regiment Armory as well.

Interior of the auditorium taken from a mezzanine. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

A snowstorm on February 18, 1910 resulted in a roof collapse for Columbus Auditorium, and it was abandoned and later demolished. The site was then occupied by Haft’s Acre (or the Fairmont Boxing Arena as labeled on the 1921 Sanborn map), an uncovered oval surrounded by wooden bleachers. Whatever the condition of the site afterwards, it was obliterated with the construction of the Goodale Expressway (now I-670). A second Columbus Auditorium was later built downtown in 1927, also known as the Lazarus Annex, which has likewise been demolished.

Zanerian College of Penmanship (612 Park Street)

Historic image of the building. (Wikimedia)

This brick Beaux-Arts structure was built in 1921, and the Sanborn map from that year labels it as having a reinforced concrete frame with brick curtain walls. The second and third floor originally housed the “Zaner Business School” (Sanborn maps), while the first floor was used as offices. The 1921-1961 map labels the building as being used as offices, and an addition was built onto the rear in 1958. It remains in use as offices today.

Main entrance:

The brickwork is simple yet nicely textured, and the blossoming trees frame the building pleasantly:

There is also a slight cornice supported by doubled corbels.

The concrete frame is visible on the sides and has a more warehouse-like expression:

Victorian Gate Condominiums (684-732 Park Street)

I covered these 1994 Postmodern apartments in a Short North article, and I wasn’t aware that the complex included a third building on Park Street. This building in particular stands on the site of the Ohio Medical University Protestant Hospital (later the White Cross Hospital).

28-60 Buttles Avenue

These gray brick rowhouses were built circa 1900-1910 and have a busy gabled roofline.

76 Buttles Avenue

This sprawling brick McMansion takes up what was formerly five separate lots and is far out of scale with the surrounding neighborhood. It would be more at home in suburbia. According to the county auditor’s website, it dates to 1994. Here is one of the houses that used to stand on the site:

Victorian Manor Condominiums (98 Buttles Avenue)

These poorly scaled Postmodern apartments have an ugly, faux Second Empire-ish mansard roof. They also have an odd relationship to the street, with a sort of cloister formed by the garages in the foreground and the apartments in rear.

The auditor’s website claimed that they were built in 1919. This seemed strange to me, however, consulting the 1921 Sanborn map reveals that this assertion is correct. A brick house used as a nursing home for the nearby hospital stood on the site as of 1910, and a large addition was built onto the rear of it by 1921. What is now the apartments is the former addition, and the original house has been demolished. I’m not sure when the current facade was built, but it may have been in the 1980s or 1990s.

104-110 Buttles Avenue

At first glance this appeared to be a historic Columbus rowhouse with a rather fanciful parapet, but it was actually built in 2004 and is very authentic to its precedents. I’m not sure what it replaced, since Google Maps doesn’t go back that far, but houses stood on the site through at least 1961.

One of the houses that once stood here was the Theophilus Rees House at 106 Buttles, an extremely eclectic Richardsonian Romanesque design with a massive tower:

(Wikimedia)

Freshwater House/John Sater House (114 Buttles Avenue)

1897 photo of the exterior. (All Columbus Data)

This lovely house with a prominent corner tower was built for attorney John Sater, who also happened to be the speaker at the dedication of the Charles Benton Flagg Memorial inside Goodale Park in 1907. The house itself was designed by Charles Stribling in 1896 as an example of the Chateauesque style.

After Sater’s death, the United Commercial Travelers used his house (renamed to the “Freshwater House”) for meetings and social events. It has since returned to residential use, and the house still retains its slate roof and architectural details.

The porch has three large vaulted openings, supported by stout doubled columns:

Detail of the tower, which has an “F” (for Freshwater, I assume) finial atop the roof:

The shape of this dormer is very indicative of the Chateauesque style:

Saul Levy House (122 Buttles Avenue)

This 1897 house has a rather unusual roofline and a Craftsman sunroom above the porch, the latter being an addition circa 1901-1910.

Dr. Joseph Schoene House (130 Buttles Avenue)

Schoene’s house as seen in 1897. (All Columbus Data)

A grand Queen Anne with a plethora of fun Victorian details, Schoene’s 1896 house was extolled by Handsome Homes of Columbus as “a beautiful pressed brick [design] with heavy stone trimmings…The Dr. has spared no expense in having all the material in this home the very best.” Aside from the fine materiality, the house is in superb condition today and is almost completely original, lacking only a small balcony above the porch and some of the roof cresting.

There are a few uncommon features to the house, namely the square corner tower (most Queen Annes have circular or hexagonal turrets and towers) and the jerkinhead gables on the main wings. However, other features such as the wood shingles, leaded glass windows, and specialty brick on both the porch columns and the vaulted windows are very typical of Queen Annes.

Picture window:

The vaulted windows have a special rusticated brick along the arches, and fancy stone impost blocks with flower reliefs are used:

Attic window and jerkinhead roof:

The square tower:

The roof also has small corbels at the eaves:

Handsome Homes of Columbus goes on to elaborate that Dr. Schoene had a laboratory on the rear of his property built on “strictly scientific principles.” By some stroke of luck, I actually took a couple pictures of this lab, under the impression that it was a particularly fanciful carriage house:

It has a matching jerkinhead roof here, as well as a small roof lantern, likely for ventilation purposes:

As you can probably tell by the modern doors and cars parked out front, the laboratory has since been converted to residential use.

134 Buttles Avenue

I think Victorian Village takes the cake for “best Queen Anne architecture in Columbus.” Between Buttles Avenue and Neil Avenue, the two are jam-packed with restored houses. Schiller Park is lined with Italianates, and most of the streets on the Near East Side like Bryden Road, Jefferson Park, and Hamilton Park have had most of their older Victorians replaced with newer American Foursquare and Craftsman houses. Anyways, this circa 1895 house has a large wrap-around porch, original hexagonal slate tiles on the roof, and an octagonal turret.

One of the porch columns, with bands of unfinished stone:

Nicely isolated view of the roof’s turret:

Hubbard Avenue School’s tower as framed by this house and the Charles Stribling House next door:

Charles Stribling House (140 Buttles Avenue)

1897 photo of Stribling’s house. (All Columbus Data)

Local architect Charles Stribling designed this moody stone Queen Anne as his own residence in 1895. It uses a dark, rusticated masonry (which is just a veneer) and has a myriad of bay windows and chimneys that further break the wall and roof plane. Again, the house is in excellent condition today, and the red paint on the window frames really suits them.

Stribling would later move into a simpler American Foursquare design on Bryden Road in the early 20th century, which he also designed and I’ve also visited. I guess he grew out of his eclectic Victorian phase and more in line with the fussier homes of the 1900s. I remember running into some snags with the research for that one, because every source pointed to this house instead.

The turret is very fine and has a conical slate tile roof:

Note the contrasting inset terra-cotta panels on the second floor:

Porch columns and entablature:

The three oriel windows facing the alley:

148 Buttles Avenue

Across the alley from the Charles Stribling House is another Queen Anne, which interestingly creates a duality with it by having a turret on the opposite side. This one has excellent masonry work on its porch and intricate roof finials.

Stained-glass transom above the picture window:

The tower’s roof has an ogee-like shape to it:

154 Buttles Avenue

This house seems to be undergoing mitosis, with a little gabled wing that is about half the width of its companion on the other side of the building.

158 Buttles Avenue

Progressing a bit further in residential architectural history, this house is an example of an American Foursquare design with its symmetry and square massing. However, the porch is super classical and blindingly white compared to the red brick of the facade. It was built circa 1901-1910.

164 Buttles Avenue

I’m jumping at the chance to call this frame house a Shingle design, since that style is pretty rare. Its facade is uniformly covered in wooden shakes and is meant to emphasize the house’s “envelope” by itself. The house probably dates to circa 1890.

Lowry Sater House (168 Buttles Avenue)

Here’s a fun one…I’d classify this as an eclectic house, since it doesn’t conform to an exact style and borrows from several others to create a picturesque design. The sweeping gable would later become common on Tudor Revival designs of the 1920s and 1930s, which was decades later than this house was actually built. It has a clay tile veneer that resembles stone, a massive Romanesque-ish column supporting the broad porch overhang, and a gigantic stained-glass window (which is probably not original).

The 1910 Sanborn map notes the exterior as being “tile ven’d” (veneered), but there is no mention or graphic depiction of this on the 1901 map. Therefore, it’s possible that the house was altered in some way to this state.

The porch’s large column:

It has vaguely Ionic volutes, but it is rather primitive yet exotic due to its proportions.

Wood and ironwork on the second floor:

A close look at the stained glass:

Sater was a lawyer who worked with his uncle, John Sater (you may recall his house mentioned earlier). He was treasurer of Ohio State’s board of trustees for a time and later served as a trustee of the Ohio Historical Society.

Charles Woodward House (172-174 Buttles Avenue)

1966 photo of the exterior. (All Columbus Data)

Buttles Avenue certainly has every uncommon residential style along its length like some kid collecting Pokemon cards… Chateauesque, Shingle, Eclecticism, and now Prairie School. Although it shares certain features with Craftsman two-flats across Columbus, I would classify this circa 1910 building as Prairie School due to its carefully designed orthogonal composition, leaded glass windows on the second floor, and decorative elements on the columns.

Detail of the column ornament and slate roof above:

I just shot a bunch of Wright designs out the wazoo in Oak Park, River Forest, and Racine, so I feel like I have a better understanding of what is Prairie School versus Craftsman architecture. Still, even back in March 2026 I carefully framed Woodward’s house in conversation with its neighbor--notice the differing directional emphasis:

178 Buttles Avenue

This one has some wonky masonry issues going on--the brick near the picture window appears to be spalling, and some of the bricks in the gable are a noticeably darker shade.

Robert Thompson House (182 Buttles Avenue)

An 1897 photo of the house with its carriage house in the background. (All Columbus Data)

At the corner of Buttles and Dennison is the large Robert Thompson House, built circa 1895. It is in fair condition, though its porch has been altered with brick piers replacing the original columns, along with an asphalt tile roof. The main house has vinyl windows and has been subdivided into apartments.

One of the inset stone panels dividing the windows:

A similar design at the top of the gable:

A notable feature of Thompson’s house is its massive carriage house, probably designed with more flair due to its visibility from Dennison Avenue. It has also been converted to residential use.