GREEK REVIVAL STYLE MOULDING PROFILES & GALLERY
ABOUT THE WESTERN RESERVE
In the late 1820s – 1850, the Western Reserve of Ohio grew out of rough pioneering communities into more prosperous and suitable towns that were well constructed. Today, this region covers the areas of Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Toledo, and Youngstown.
A more austere variation of the Greek Revival style than those built out east, and less dependent on the temple type, the homes in Ohio’s Western Reserve were original and straightforward.
ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF OHIO’S WESTERN RESERVE
Architects of Ohio, such as Jonathan Goldsmith, were masters in Greek artistry. They employed a conservative approach to the Greek architectural style.
Homes were built with quality materials and in excellent proportion, with evenly spaced windows radiating plenty of light. Architects of Ohio had talent ranking alongside the greatest in New England.
From small dwellings to grand farmhouses on vast plains, Ohio had a rich architectural landscape. Moldings were flat and simple but very intricately designed, delivering overall dignity and strength. An example of such outstanding design was the Joseph Swift house of Vermillion. This home embodied the formal and symmetrical beauty of Greek Revival style with a four-column Ionic porch.
HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
Long before its villages were graced with stately churches, distinguished academies, and temple-front homes, the Western Reserve was a vast wilderness of towering forests, winding rivers, and untamed landscapes stretching across northeastern Ohio. Following the treaties of the late eighteenth century that opened the Connecticut Western Reserve to American settlement, the Connecticut Land Company began offering millions of acres to pioneers eager to establish new communities upon the frontier. After the War of 1812, the trickle of settlement became a steady migration as Revolutionary War veterans and families from Connecticut, New England, and upstate New York journeyed westward. The earliest architecture was necessarily humble with earthen shelters, rough stone dwellings, and hand-hewn log cabins, but as prosperity spread throughout the Reserve, the modest Georgian and Federal buildings of the first settlements gradually gave way to an architecture of greater refinement and classical beauty.
Greek Revival architecture flourished across the Western Reserve during the 1830s and 1840s, reflecting a young nation’s admiration for the democratic ideals and legacy of ancient Greece. Yet unlike the grand plantation houses of the South or the monumental civic architecture of the eastern seaboard, the Western Reserve developed a more disciplined interpretation rooted in its New England heritage. Many of the region’s finest homes were not the work of celebrated architects, but of exceptionally skilled master builders who adapted the influential pattern books of Asher Benjamin and Minard Lafever. Native sandstone quarried throughout northeastern Ohio, together with hand-pressed brick and finely worked timber, gave these buildings a regional identity found nowhere else in America. Today, the Western Reserve preserves one of the nation’s richest concentrations of Greek Revival architecture, featuring a landscape where classical ideals, New England tradition, and frontier ambition converged.
