A Historical Guidebook to Old Columbus. Bob Hunter

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      28. East side of the Statehouse, South Third Street—Abraham Lincoln spoke from the esplanade on the east side of the Statehouse twice. He first spoke to a group of about fifty people standing outside on the east steps on the topic of slavery for more than two hours on September 16, 1859. At the time, Lincoln was not well known and was still a lanky, clean-shaven man not yet wearing his trademark stovepipe hat. He won the Republican nomination for president the following May. He spoke there again on February 13, 1861, while on his way to Washington for his inauguration. The crowd was much larger this time. That day he also spoke to a joint session of the Ohio legislature in the House Chamber. While visiting with then-Governor Dennison in his office, still in ceremonial use by today’s governor, Lincoln received a telegram telling him that the election had been certified and he was officially the president-elect. Because of the later construction of the Statehouse Annex, the spot where Lincoln spoke cannot be seen from Third Street today. A bronze marker is attached to one of the massive columns next to where he spoke, although today all are enclosed in the Atrium. Four years and two months after his second speaking appearance, Lincoln’s body lay in the Statehouse en route to Springfield, Illinois, following his assassination.

      29. 12 South Third Street—The three-story home of Civil War general Samuel Thomas stood here, next door to Trinity Church. During the war, Thomas organized the Sixty-Third and Sixty-Fourth US Colored Infantry, troops that served in the protection of Mississippi River ports. He joined a syndicate of Columbus capitalists engaged in railroad building in the South and West and was one of the originators of the Nickel Plate Road and several other railroads. In 1881 his business interests caused him to move to New York, where he eventually died. The house was torn down in 1926 prior to the construction of the Lanman building, which was razed in 1974. The Galleria stands on the site today.

      30. 34 South Third Street—Prominent attorney Phineas B. Wilcox had a home on this spot in the city’s early days. Wilcox had been born in Westfield, Connecticut, graduated from Yale, and married Sarah Andrews in 1821; the couple came to Columbus in 1824. She was the older sister of John W. Andrews, who would live next door to them at 36 South Third. Their son, James Andrews Wilcox, graduated from Kenyon and Yale and rose to the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. He practiced law with his father, who was said to have one of the finest law libraries in the West. Phineas died in 1863. James married Lucy Sullivant, daughter of Joseph Sullivant and granddaughter of Franklinton founder Lucas Sullivant; James died in 1891.The five-story Columbus YMCA building, designed by well-known Columbus architects Joseph Warren Yost and Frank L. Packard, stood here from 1893 to 1923, when it was demolished to make way for the construction of the Columbus Dispatch building that occupies this spot today. In 1893, fourteen-year-old Mel Karshner saw an exhibition of the new game of basketball here (the sport had been founded in December 1891 at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts), and he and his brother, Malcolm, soon were part of a formidable “Y” team reputed to be the best in Ohio. Based on this experience, Mel started the Ohio State basketball team as a sophomore in the fall of 1897.

      31. 36 South Third Street—A small, two-story brick Greek Revival–style house that stood next door to the Columbus Dispatch building dated to the early years of the city. From the late 1840s on, John W. Andrews, a prominent local attorney, lived in this house with his wife, Lavina (Gwynne), and two children. The couple was still living there at the time of his death in 1893. He gave an important speech in the First Presbyterian Church on February 14, 1854, against the Nebraska Bill, which would repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allow new states to vote on whether to allow slavery. Opposition to the bill, which became law as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, led to the formation of the Republican Party. Andrews’s speech was reprinted in book form by BiblioLife in 2009. Andrews’s house was still standing in 1924 when the Dispatch building was completed; a 1925 photo shows a gasoline pump in front of the house and several auto-related signs affixed to the exterior, including one for Chevrolet. A picture of the gutted house and story about its razing appeared in the Dispatch on January 7, 1927.

      32. 60 South Third Street—John Noble, a hotel manager and local politician who served on the city council and also in the Ohio Senate, had a home here and enlarged it into the Vendome Hotel in 1898. The five-story building was operated as a hotel until 1918, when the YWCA purchased it. The structure was demolished in 1932.