Arts & Culture
A deconstructivist building that launched its architect's international career, a 32-room independent bookstore built inside a former saloon and nickelodeon, and a conservatory that owns the only Chihuly glass collection held by any public botanical garden in the world.
Book Loft of German Village
The Book Loft opened in 1977 in a former saloon and nickelodeon theater on South Third Street, then expanded over roughly four decades by acquiring and connecting neighboring storefronts until it filled 32 rooms of books linked by narrow passageways and staircases; the store didn't own the entire building outright until 2021. It remains independent and family-run rather than part of a chain, an increasingly uncommon setup for a bookstore of its physical scale.
Columbus Museum of Art
Columbus Museum of Art was founded in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts and was the first art museum to register its charter with the State of Ohio. Its permanent collection includes the Ferdinand Howald collection of early American modernism and early Cubist paintings by Picasso and Juan Gris, plus what the museum describes as the largest holdings anywhere of three Columbus-born artists: Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Elijah Pierce, and George Bellows.
Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Garden
Franklin Park Conservatory, open since 1895 and built in the wake of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, acquired a permanent collection of more than 3,000 Dale Chihuly glass pieces in 2004 for roughly $7 million -- making it, by the conservatory's own account, the only public botanical garden anywhere in the world with a Chihuly collection of its own. Its original Victorian glass house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and its 1994 "Blooms & Butterflies" show was the first seasonal butterfly exhibition run by any U.S. conservatory, a format other institutions later copied.
Thurber House
Thurber House on Jefferson Avenue is the home James Thurber's family rented from 1913 to 1917 while he attended Ohio State University -- not his birthplace, but the residence most tied to his Columbus years. Restored and opened as a public literary center and museum in 1984, it now administers the Thurber Prize for American Humor, described by the organization as the country's top honor specifically for humor writing.
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Wexner Center for the Arts, on Ohio State University's campus, opened November 17, 1989, designed by Peter Eisenman with Columbus architect Richard Trott after Eisenman won a 1983 design competition over finalists including Cesar Pelli and Michael Graves. It was Eisenman's first major public building and is widely cited by architecture critics as one of the first deconstructivist buildings constructed in the U.S., organized around a white metal scaffolding-like grid that deliberately collides with the mismatched street grids of the OSU campus and the city of Columbus, which run 12.25 degrees apart.