Moment in Time (February 17, 2022)
The 1858 book History of Franklin County described in detail the people and activities of the region, beginning from the early settlement of the area after Lucas Sullivant surveyed the land, and continuing through the organization of the county in 1803, to 1858. Included in this accounting was the description of business economic activities. An interesting narrative described the flurry to buy and sell land: “...the price of real estate in both town and country, run up at railroad speed. In fact, a kind of speculation mania prevailed about this time through all parts of the union; and the people of Franklin County partook in their full proportion. Buying and selling of real estate, laying out towns, and sub-dividing lots and lands into smaller parcels, and selling, leasing, etc., were the most common operations of the speculator.”
Billy Bott purchased the farm and home of Cinderella Holman and created the Grand View Terrace addition shown in the 1915 plat depicted here. The addition included an existing structure previously known as the Franklin County Poor House. Bott reserved a central portion for a fountain and park, which are shown in the two photo insets.
This is exactly what happened in the part of the county that is now Grandview Heights and Marble Cliff. These landowner ’speculators’ sold parcels of land between the rivers to be used as farms. Soon after, the Ohio Legislature passed a law in 1831 that allowed counties to establish ‘poor houses’ for ill and indigent residents of the counties that could no longer pay their taxes. The following year Franklin County Commissioners purchased one of these farms “in the forks of the Whetstone” on which they built a “Poor House building”. It was completed in early 1833, and still stands as one of the first buildings in Grandview. The director of the poor house farmed the acreage around the house and raised animals in order to feed the residents.
In 1839 the county commissioners decided that the location was too far from Columbus, and was not very accessible, particularly during times of high water, due to the lack of a dependable bridge over the river. So they bought property farther north, near King Avenue on the riverbank, and sold the farm on which the home was located. Several different farmers owned the farm until 1890, when it and farmland adjacent to it was purchased by Edward Denmead. The acreage was platted into lots for development by Denmead and Fred Croughton.
Columbus socialite Cinderella (also recorded as Cindrella) Hull Holman, the widow of Columbus businessman Charles S. Holman, bought lots 72-80 of the subdivision for $13,800. The lots encompassed all the land between Broadview and Grandview Avenues, north from the railroad tracks to the top of the hill across from the municipal building, and included the former poor house, which became her home. In 1915 William Bott, of the well-known Columbus firm of Bott Brothers, proprietors of Bott Bros. Billiards on North High Street (later known as the Clock restaurant), purchased the 6.5 acre estate from Holman. Bott subdivided a portion of the property into 15 lots. He built three homes (one for him and his wife Frances) on the three largest lots 1-3, which front Broadview Avenue, and also renovated the poor house so that it could be put up for sale.
A 1916 announcement in the Columbus Dispatch described Bott's subdivision in part this way: “GRAND VIEW TERRACE is Columbus’ highest-class, most exclusive, and smallest addition (there being only a few lots). Located on a beautiful knoll covered with large forest and fruit trees and one hundred feet higher than Goodale Boulevard. All lots sloping on each side to Broadview and Grandview Avenues and Goodale Boulevard. In the center of which is a large spacious park with a beautiful fountain, electrically lighted and fed by an old fashioned windmill. A large pergola faces the park and on each side of fountain and throughout addition are white rose arbors.”
This plat shows the subdivision, with the fountain (lower left inset), the adjacent rose arbors, and the pergola (upper left) in the fountain park reserve that was designed for the subdivision. The location of the poor house previously owned by Cinderella Holman, which she purchased in 1894 after the death of her husband, is in the shaded rectangle in the center of the drawing.