Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Of some effects of this revolution in fuel we may
speak when we come to the gas wells of Ohio.
I had conceived of Columbus as a rural capital, pleasant and slow,
rather a village than a city. I was surprised to find a city of 80,000
people, growing with a rapidity astonishing even for a Western town,
with miles of prosperous business blocks (High Street is four miles
long), and wide avenues of residences extending to suburban parks. Broad
Street, with its four rows of trees and fine houses and beautiful lawns,
is one of the handsomest avenues in the country, and it is only one
of many that are attractive. The Capitol Square, with several good
buildings about it, makes an agreeable centre of the city. Of the
Capitol building not much is to be said. The exterior is not wholly bad,
but it is surmounted by a truncated something that is neither a dome nor
a revolving turret, and the interior is badly arranged for room, light,
and ventilation. Space is wasted, and many of the rooms, among them the
relic-room and the flag-room, are inconvenient and almost inaccessible.
The best is the room of the Supreme Court, which has attached a large
law library. The general State Library contains about 54,000 volumes,
with a fair but not large proportion of Western history.
Columbus is a city of churches, of very fine public schools, of
many clubs, literary and social, in which the intellectual element
predominates, and of an intelligent, refined, and most hospitable
society. Here one may study the educational and charitable institutions
of the State, many of the more important of which are in the city,
and also the politics. It was Ohio’s hard fate to be for many years
an “October State,” and the battle-field and corruption-field of many
outside influences. This no doubt demoralized the politics of the State,
and lowered the tone of public morality. With the removal of the cause
of this decline, I believe the tone is being raised. Recent trials for
election frauds, and the rehabilitation of the Cincinnati police, show
that a better spirit prevails.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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