German Village: The World That Almost Disappeared Twice

German immigrants began arriving in Columbus's south end in the early eighteen hundreds and kept coming for decades. By eighteen ninety the German American population of south Columbus numbered around seven thousand and had built a neighborhood of brick houses, sandstone curb cuts, bier gardens, churches where services were held in German, and schools where children were taught in German. The neighborhood had its own newspapers. At the peak of German immigration, German Americans comprised roughly a third of Columbus's total population.

Then the United States entered World War One.

Ohio passed legislation banning German instruction in public schools. German street names were anglicized. The bier gardens were pressured to close or convert. Families that had lived in the neighborhood for two and three generations stopped speaking German publicly, stopped using German surnames in business contexts, and in some cases changed their names entirely. The community that had been central to Columbus's identity was pressured to make itself invisible. Much of it complied.

By the nineteen fifties the neighborhood had declined significantly. The brick row houses and Victorian cottages were aging, the population had dispersed to the suburbs, and city planners were talking about clearance and renewal.

What saved it was a group of residents who decided in nineteen sixty to establish a historic district and push for preservation. German Village became a city historic district in nineteen sixty and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-four, eventually recognized as the largest privately funded preservation district on the register. The brick streets and sandstone curbs that define it today survived because people fought for them in the nineteen sixties.