Walking with Ghosts & Architects
Columbus Landmarks Foundation
By Amber Stephens
Amber writes from her 1850s farmhouse in Amanda.

It was a perfect autumn afternoon when Doreen Uhas Sauer led a group of some two dozen onlookers through the back streets of Iuka Ravine. The wooded historic area near Ohio State's campus is a natural oasis snug within an urban setting. It's also a place where 1920s bungalows meet modern apartment buildings. Along the way, participants in the Columbus Landmarks Foundation's walking tour learned about Columbus history, early architecture and a bit of local lore. "In some ways it's like historic gossip," Uhas Sauer says of the walking tours.

The foundation's popular walking tours began with a single tour of Green Lawn Cemetery near downtown Columbus. Today more than 30 walking tours throughout the city showcase a variety of neighborhoods, structures and architectural styles. Still, tour goers are drawn to the tour that started it all. "Green Lawn has consistently been quite a draw," said Uhas Sauer, chair of the foundation's education committee. "I think people just want to hear the stories and that's what brings them back to it."

The 360-acre cemetery is a final resting place of Columbus' elite, including World War I Ace Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker; writer James Thurber; Samuel P. Bush, grandfather of Pres. George H.W. Bush; and P.W. Huntington, founder of Huntington Bank, among many other notables.

Established in 1848, Green Lawn was created at a time when Victorian gardens were becoming fashionable and cities were seeking large burial plots in the wake of cholera outbreaks. In the words of Joseph Sullivant, president of the founding Green Lawn Association, the cemetery was to be a place " where Art, guided by Taste might be united with Nature."

But no tour through Green Lawn would be complete without a ghost story. One well-known tale is the story of Louisiana Briggs, a southern sympathizer during the Civil War, who is buried at Green Lawn. Known as "The Lady in Gray," Briggs' spirit is said to mourn over the grave of her beloved at Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery.

The foundation began adding ghost stories to its walking tours as a way to personalize the locations, Uhas Sauer says. "We've always put them in the context of folklore." At least one tale, she admits, is completely fabricated. "One story is absolutely flat-out made up. I use it to see who picks it up and who substantiates it."

Volunteer Becky Ellis, however, has heard various reports of ghostly happenings at some of the sites she tours, including The Kelton House Museum, a former stop on the Underground Railroad. "Kelton House is probably the best known and the most active," she says.

The museum is said to be haunted by Grace Kelton, the last family descendent to live in the home. "There's an armoire that's left open upstairs because that's the way she wants it," Ellis says.

Ellis has even heard reports of some tour goers seeing haunts. Others, however, just like to hear the tales, even if they don't see any spirits. "It's really hard to move people along because the stories are so interesting," she says.

For people interested in a Landmarks' tour, Ellis recommends starting with a ghost tour. "The ghost tours are a great place to start because you get great doses of ghost stories and little bits of history and architecture."

Organizers hope the walking tours will also educate the public about the struggle to save Columbus' threatened historic structures. "One of Columbus' greatest strengths is its intact and cohesive neighborhoods," says Kathy Mast Kane, Landmarks executive director.

Those neighborhoods include Merion Village, a turn-of-the century housing community built for German, Irish, Italian and Hungarian immigrants; Victorian Village, which helped start the preservation movement in Columbus; and the Hawthorne Park/Woodland Avenue neighborhood where artists have found a haven. Many other unique districts color the capital city.

While the preservation movement has created heightened awareness of historic treasures today, people weren't always eager to save the old. "Today it's at least understood as one of many approaches to urban development," Mast Kane says.

Aside from promoting regional preservation, Landmarks also promotes quality new design and redevelopment. Each year the foundation sponsors the James B. Recchie Design Award, for "quality urban design." Previous honorees have included the cap over I-670, which promotes storefront continuity on High Street, and the Arena District, which integrates the only remaining Union Station arch into a design with historic sensitivities.

Awareness of "in-fill," or modern buildings built in historic neighborhoods, has also improved in the decades since Landmarks' founding, Uhas Sauer says. It's this attention to neighborhood aesthetic that now discourages modern apartment buildings in places such as Iuka Ravine where historic homes nestle into the hillsides like organic nests.

It's the kind of place where people can stroll on a perfect autumn afternoon surrounded by nature and history. And for volunteers such as Uhas Sauer, it's not just an historic neighborhood, it's home.