Eddie Rickenbacker's Columbus Boyhood Home

Eddie Rickenbacker was born in Columbus on October eighth, eighteen ninety, the son of Swiss immigrants. He grew up fascinated by engines in an era when the automobile was still a novelty, and by the time the United States entered the First World War he was one of the country's best-known racing drivers. He entered the Army as a staff driver, talked his way into a cockpit, and flew with the Ninety-Fourth Aero Pursuit Squadron.

By the armistice he had twenty-six confirmed aerial victories, more than any other American pilot in the war. He received the Medal of Honor in nineteen thirty. His childhood home on Livingston Avenue, built in the early eighteen nineties, is listed on the Columbus Register of Historic Properties as the birthplace of America's ace of aces.