Gustavus Center Historic District

Gustavus Center developed as the geographic center of Gustavus Township, where major buildings dating from 1832 to 1898 came to surround the village green. On the northwest quadrant, the George Hezlep House, built in 1832, featured Federal-Greek Revival architecture and had a closet reputedly used on the Underground Railroad. The Farmers' Exchange Store and the neighboring Storekeeper's House, both Greek Revival structures, were built in 1840, and Fraternal Hall rose south of them in 1870. Gustavus once had four churches, including the Methodist Church of 1856 with its temple front and belfry and the Congregational Church, built east of the center in 1854. The eclectic Town Hall, built in 1890, fronted the southeast quadrant. The Gustavus Centralized School, reported as the first centralized school in the United States, was built in 1898 and later replaced by the current building in 1928. Settlement at Gustavus Center began when Josiah Pelton of Connecticut arrived in 1800 after buying 6,605 acres, the northern half of the township, from Lemuel Storrs. In 1802, Pelton's son Jesse and his fiance Ruhamah DeWolfe accepted an offer of 100 acres to the first woman to settle in Gustavus. The community grew steadily into a self-sufficient farming center, and although paved roads and the automobile later drew trade elsewhere, farming remained central to Gustavus' economy in the twentieth century. While nearly all the center's businesses disappeared, its houses and institutions endured as representative structures of a rural nineteenth-century Western Reserve township.

Ohio · United States