herr2ck: Columbus Foundation

May 2026.

The Columbus Foundation, whose headquarters was built as the Charles H. Lindenberg House and known as the Old Governor’s Mansion, is a nonprofit in Columbus. It is a relic of East Broad Street’s formerly upscale residential nature and sits quite proudly on what is now a glorified expressway.

The Columbus Foundation is located at 1234 East Broad Street in the King-Lincoln Bronzeville neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. It is bordered by houses to the north, Broad Street to the south, the site of the Joseph F. Firestone House and Winner Avenue to the east, and Governors Place (Champion Avenue) to the west.

History

Postcard of the Lilley Regalia Company circa 1910. (Ohio History Connection)

The house that the Columbus Foundation occupies was built in 1904 as the Charles H. Lindenberg House. Lindenberg was the son of German immigrants who arrived in the United States after a revolution in 1848. He was a Civil War veteran, and after the war ended, Lindenberg went on to establish several companies. He himself founded the Columbus Piano Company (later the Lindenberg Piano Company) and the Columbus Brass Company. Most notably, however, Lindenberg and his brother, M. C. Lilley, and John Siebert established M. C. Lilley & Company. At first, they published the Odd Fellows’ Companion magazine, but over time the firm became known as the Lilley Regalia Company and made garments for initiations and similar ceremonies. Lindenberg eventually became president, and the company too became the largest in the country.

Lindenberg commissioned architect Frank Packard to build a mansion on East Broad Street, and though the NRHP listing labels it as “Neo-Georgian Eclectic,” I’ll just call it Colonial Revival. Packard used limestone from Columbus, Dayton, and Greensburg, along with toilets from Lindenberg’s own Columbus Brass Company. It was built with a large sunken garden in the back of the house, which has since been removed. However, the original garage and gardener’s cottage remain.

Prior to the mid-1910s, each governor had to search for their own house in Columbus, such as the Noah Swayne House that once stood on the site of the Columbus Metropolitan Library. In 1916, newly elected governor James M. Cox had a house in mind at 940 East Broad Street, previously the home of governor and Springfield native Asa Bushnell. However, the new Secretary of State had signed a lease there instead, and Cox was forced to live out of a hotel room. As a result, the General Assembly passed a bill in 1917 that established the Executive Mansion Board, which was meant to build an official residence owned by the state to make the process of house-hunting easier. They purchased a lot on Broad Street a block westward, between Ohio Avenue and Champion Avenue, but the state then learned a house of appropriate size was for sale. In May 1919, Lindenberg sold the house to the state of Ohio for $75,000 for use as the permanent governor’s residence.

c. 1920 photo of the house as the Governor’s Mansion. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

The process of converting the Lindenberg house to the new governor’s mansion was a lengthy one. First, the Kinsell House next door was purchased by the state and demolished. New furniture for the mansion was made by inmates at the Mansfield State Reformatory. The interior design was done by Dayton native Agnes Caulfield. Governor James Cox and First Lady Margaretta Parker Blair were the first residents of the mansion, moving in during December 1920. An Ohio State Institution Journal article from April 1920 lauded the expansive house and its sumptuous finishes, including rooms such as a sun parlor, “palm room” (greenhouse), den, breakfast room, salon, and several others.

A view of the original finishes and grand staircase. (Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society)

The Governor’s Mansion was used by the state of Ohio for 36 years and housed ten governors. However, in 1957, governor C. William O’Neill moved to the Malcolm D. Jeffrey House in Bexley (built for the son of the Jeffrey Manufacturing Company’s founder in 1925 by architect Robert Gilmore Hanford), which remains the current governor’s mansion today. The NRHP listing does not mention it, but this was undoubtedly due to the changing racial landscape of the area and the presence of a public housing project (Poindexter Village) a few blocks north of the mansion. Following the governor’s move, the Broad Street house became the archives of the Ohio History Connection beginning in June 1957. It served this purpose until 1970, when the Ohio History Center opened.

1972 photo of the house’s exterior. (NRHP listing)

By the 1970s, the house was intact structurally, but the exterior’s wood trim was damaged and the interior was heavily partitioned into offices. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. At that point in time, it was listed for sale, but had not yet been sold. The house sat empty until it was purchased by a developer in 1978, and it was briefly used as a restaurant and offices, resulting in heavy alterations to the interior.

The Columbus Foundation, the new occupants of the former Governor’s Mansion, was founded by Harrison Sayre. Sayre worked for the American Education Press, and following influence from his father and other friends who were philanthropists, he established the Columbus Foundation in 1943 with assistance from Huntington National Bank and City National Bank & Trust. Early grants from the foundation were to the Children’s Hospital, YMCA, Columbus Museum of Art, and the Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra. The Columbus Foundation grew rapidly, with contributions from many local businessmen and relationships with nonprofits. One of their most notable projects was the restoration and operation of the Kelton House as a museum beginning in 1975, as Grace Kelton (granddaughter of the original owners) left it to the foundation.

After a brief stint at a house on the corner of Neil Avenue and 5th Avenue donated by Battelle (which I’ve also visited), the Columbus Foundation acquired the former Governor’s Mansion in 1987, after it was gifted to them by Les Wexner and his mother Bella. An extensive $1 million renovation took place, conducted by Richard Trott & Partners (who donated their time), which involved updating the building’s systems, ensuring ADA compliance, and reconfiguring the interior into reception, office, and meeting space. This work was completed in May 1989, though the Columbus Foundation had moved inside by November 1988.

1990 view of the Joseph F. Firestone House. (Columbus Metropolitan Library)

More controversially, the Columbus Foundation demolished the Joseph F. Firestone House at 1266 East Broad Street (roughly at the corner of Broad and Winner) and a 1920s Tudor Revival gas station in 2008, despite neighborhood dissent. Another Frank Packard design, the house was built in 1906 for Joseph Firestone, who was vice president of the Columbus Buggy Company. Its final owner, architect John Gibboney, sold the house to the foundation below its appraised value in 1999, noting that it was in “wonderful” condition when his office departed in 2003. The Columbus Foundation did not maintain the house afterwards, and they considered it to be too expensive to restore and was not in line with their plans to modernize their education center. The sites of these buildings remain a vacant lot today. Around the same time, an addition was built to the east of the original house.

Photos

After its various restorations, the house is in pretty good shape today:

Every single detail of this house is symmetrical, even the footprints of the sunroom to the east and the porte-cochere of the west. Though its details are more ostentatious and Georgian versus the more austere Federal style, its brick exterior with limestone quoins and the overall design are pretty indicative of Colonial Revival architecture.

The main mass of the house:

It has a tripartite form, with two slightly projecting wings on an otherwise flat wall plane. The wings have large picture windows, with subtle and carefully placed ornamentation between the first and second floors. A cornice lines the space above the second floor below the roof, and three detailed dormers are centered above each window. The roof itself is hipped, with a gentle pitch and slate tiles.

The main entrance:

The large wooden door and sidelights appear to be original, as does the bronze and glass canopy above them.

Triple windows on the second floor:

The larger center dormer:

The rusting indicates that it is metal and not stone. This is also probably why the details are in such good condition.

One of the larger picture windows on the side wings:

I didn’t frame that one well and couldn’t crop it very much, so it’s at a different aspect ratio (7:5) versus my camera’s native (3:2). Anyways, you can see the fancy corbels, modillions, and entablature between the first and second floor here.

The second-floor window, which is vaulted:

The wavy glass at center indicates that some of these panes are original. Pretty unusual for a house of this age.

Attic dormer:

You can tell that I took these much later than my other King-Lincoln Bronzeville photos because I have so many. I’ve said it before, but my more recent work is characterized by a greater quantity of pictures for each building.

The sunroom has large picture windows, two Doric columns, and a denticulated cornice:

The eastern wall is almost fully dematerialized, much different from the solid brick walls of the main house:

I thought this would be the site of the Firestone House, but it’s probably more like the Kinsell House that was demolished in 1920, when this became the Governor’s Mansion:

Looking back at the house from the east, with better lighting:

Let’s circle back to the west facade. Although foliage hides most of it, the porte-cochere and the windows’ beautiful stonework is visible:

There’s also a smaller L-shaped appendage at the rear, which hinders the building’s symmetry. Luckily, it isn’t visible from Broad Street.

The porte-cochere:

This was where Lindenberg’s guests would roll up in their pimped-out carriages, and they could disembark in shelter from potentially nasty weather. It uses identical detailing to the eastern sunroom, aside from these giant corbels by the column pedestals:

You’ll also note that these doors are identical to the main entrance, too.

Bit of a glare, since it was the morning, and I wanted to get this done before heading to Zanesville and Cambridge that day. At least the principal south facade was lit up nice:

It’s great what the Foundation did for this building, but very shameful that they demolished one of the very few remaining East Broad Street mansions by neglect. We do not build like this anymore, and to throw away a salvageable house on a whim is a disservice to both the neighborhood fabric and Columbus’s history.