It Takes a Village

I promised on Wednesday to tell you more about the Ohio Village, so I’ll give you a brief rundown today.

The Ohio Village is connected to the Ohio Historical Society. It is a reproduction of a typical central Ohio town from about the Civil War era, though the buildings themselves were constructed in the 1970s (also, thankfully, most of them have running water where necessary and heat. The number of people we had in the little house where I was working last weekend would not have made a fire safe. The oil lamps made me nervous enough, since two of them almost got knocked over at one point).

A few of the buildings that can be explored include the ladies seminary, market square, hotel/pub, boarding house, general store, funeral parlor, two homes, school house, and seamstress shop, among others.

Images borrowed from the OHS website.

Each building has a character who lives there, a volunteer who maintains a persona specific to that shop–the general store clerk, the milliner’s assistant. For my part, I was working in Miss Rose Taylor’s residence (a teeny tiny cottage that you can’t even see in the above picture; it’s right between the funeral parlor at the end of the white building, and the barn).

Due to budget cuts, the village was closed for a few years in the early 2000s, but has been open to the public again since 2007. It is open for museum hours from Memorial Day through Labor Day, as well as for special events throughout the year. Currently they are open on weekends for Dickens of a Christmas; follow the link for more information on the program, the Village, and the Society.