Hidden America: Downtown Columbus

On Monday morning we had breakfast at Tommy's Diner in Franklinton, another slightly depressed blue collar neighborhood to the west of the Scioto. The most interesting thing about Franklinton is that it is the original European settlement in the area and was eventually annexed by Columbus which arrived later but grew faster. Tommy's is an authentic American diner, not a throw-back or any other kind of wannabe, and has become a Columbus institution since it was founded by Greek immigrants in 1989. It's the kind of iconic American restaurant which is ideal for fueling up for a long day of travel, with all the traditional breakfast options like omelets, steak, and pancakes as well as a few nods to the owners' Greek heritage. I love visiting these places when we travel because our hometown of Miami has either zero or one of them depending on the year and they are an essential piece of Americana. Tommy's was absolutely top notch with delicious food and all the ambience of a classic diner from the vintage posters to the brusque but efficient waitress.

The big event for the day was the Center of Science and Industry, Columbus's well-regarded science museum on the western bank of the Scioto. After some confusion about which garages accepted validations from the museum we parked at the Starling Garage, a very modern building whose facade was adorned with sweeping sculptures composed of Escherian flocks of starlings.

COSI turned out to be an even better science museum than we had expected. Aside from being obviously well-funded and well-maintained it was unexpectedly large with numerous independent galleries. There was also a unicycle high wire activity (with a safety harness of course) that only Cleo had the right kind of shoes for. I was really surprised when she declined to try it. Some of the other highlights were the Ocean, Life, and Space sections of the museum. The mistake that we made was failing to plan ahead by bringing bag lunches with us, as the fast food offered in the cafeteria wasn't very appetizing. We probably could have made do for the kids but by two thirty Mei Ling and I were too hungry to make smart decisions and we decided to leave even though the kids hadn't come close to making it through all the exhibits. If we end up in Columbus again we'll still have COSI available for at least half a day of fun.

We went back to North Market for lunch and tried a couple of the restaurants that hadn't been open yet the first time we visited. On the way back downtown we passed the impressive nineteenth century St. Joseph Cathedral which reminded us that Europe doesn't have a monopoly on magnificent churches. The Gothic Revival style and ashlar masonry were reminiscent of the iconic Italian cathedrals and municipal palazzos that we had been inundated with on our first summer road trip.

Driving south along the Scioto we pulled over to admire a beautiful line of skyscrapers including the iconic LeVeque Tower which was the tallest building in Columbus for almost fifty years following its completion in 1927. The LeVeque Tower was one of the first Art Deco skyscrapers to be completed in the roaring 1920's as part of an architectural movement that spanned the country and included the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building in New York City. Between the road and the river was the elegantly landscaped East Bank Park with a bicycle path alongside the water.

Next was another curiosity I had discovered with the aid of ChatGPT, the sculpture in the reflecting pool outside the Ohio Supreme Court building that is billed as the world's largest gavel. I couldn't help but wonder if there had been a stiff competition to build the world's largest gavel and Columbus had emerged victorious, or if perhaps we were about to see the world's only gavel sculpture. We almost saw nothing at all because the building was on South Front Street which had no parking and no standing allowed. There was no traffic so I pulled over and jumped out on my own to see the gavel, but when I reached the reflecting pool there was no gavel to be seen. Had it been moved? Decommissioned? STOLEN? This was quite a disappointing turn of events and not wanting to accept defeat I attempted to enter the building in search of someone to provide answers. Unfortunately the door was locked and there was no sign of life inside. While looking for an open entrance I noticed that there was a second reflecting pool to the south side of the building and this one indeed contained the sculpture I was seeking. I'm not sure the sight was worth all the trouble had gone to but I was glad to have at least accomplished my mission.

We came across the Ohio Statehouse by accident while making random turns through Downtown. The city of Columbus was built from scratch to accommodate the state legislature's desire for a new capital in the center of Ohio. The site was chosen at the behest of wealthy landowners from Franklinton, which was the main settlement in the area at the time but would go on to be absorbed into Columbus. The decision to have a pillbox-shaped cupola instead of a dome was quite controversial at the time, with some critics deriding the eventual choice as a "Chinese hat".

Across from the statehouse was the Ohio Theater which had a display of their schedule of musicals for the coming season. One of the downsides of traveling in the United States in late summer is that it is typically between theater seasons and we don't have the opportunity to see local productions. If we end up coming back to Columbus on a long weekend during the school year I'll be sure to coordinate the timing with a musical everyone wants to see.

My next task was finding a place to pull over so we could take a look at a tantalizing park I had caught glimpses of inside a city block while we were driving on streets without parking lanes. Eventually we found a spot and were able to stroll through the Columbus Commons, an amazing urban space that was an important part of a downtown revitalization project in the 2010's. The commons was surrounded by sleek office buildings and some very cool-looking modern condominiums. Inside the park there was a performance stage and a carousel and a lot of wide open space that is utilized for concerts and a kickball league.

Having exhausted Downtown we drove further south to Scioto Audubon Park to see if we could get a close-up look at the river we had already crossed over so many times. This was quite a large park so we drove as deep inside as we could and walked in the direction of the river. A wooden platform had been built above the water's edge but it only looked out over a short cul-de-sac with brown, stagnant water. We set off down the path that continued parallel to the main channel but a solid line of trees and vegetation obstructed any views of the river. After about five minutes of that we gave up and returned to the car. To the best of my knowledge there isn't much else in the park besides a climbing wall and a water tower, so perhaps Scioto Park will be a future site for improvements along the lines of what we had been seeing downtown.

The park was very close to German Village so this seemed like a good opportunity to return to the Book Loft, the bookstore that we hadn't had time to explore the previous day. Once we were inside the kids quickly scattered and I soon found that the store was much larger than it appeared from the street. The Book Loft bills itself as one of the nation's largest independent bookstores and in fact has thirty-two rooms arranged in labyrinthine fashion. They only sold new books but there were a lot of discounted editions, mostly classics, and I picked up Crime and Punishment for Ian. He's pretty good at reading books I was never able to get through and then explaining them to me. The store also had large selections of board games, puzzles, and various other diversions. After a couple of hours most of us were itching to leave but of course it took ten minutes of searching to dig up Ian who had secreted himself in a distant corner with a stack of novels. Across the street from the Book Loft was St. Mary Catholic Church, another icon of German Village.

On Tuesday morning I was hard at work looking for another breakfast restaurant as satisfying and memorable as Tommy's Diner had been. I settled on Joya's in the northern suburb of Worthington. Like Dublin, Worthington is slightly older than Columbus but has been completely eclipsed by its much larger neighbor. Joya's is located in Old Worthington which is centered on a stretch of North High Street, the same High Street that we encountered repeatedly in Columbus exploring neighborhoods from Short North to German town. The food has a strong Bengali influence which is merged with traditional American breakfast favorites. The menu items were so tempting that we over-ordered and couldn't finish, even though everything was delicious. Old Worthington was a pleasant stretch of neighborhood which looked as though it could have been preserved from a hundred years earlier although the businesses were clearly aimed at a twenty-first century upper middle class clientele.

After breakfast we had more than an hours to kill before our last Columbus farmers market. We drove to another Columbus suburb called Upper Arlington, just west of the city, where there were a couple of consignment stores for Mei Ling and Cleo to browse through. Mei Ling has always been a clothes hound but now that she has Cleo as a reinforcement she is difficult to deter from overstuffing her closet. In the end though, it was Cleo who came away with a pair of earrings for her trouble. Upper Arlington has a very upscale residential area around the Scioto Country Club so we spent our last ten minutes prowling around the neighborhood scoping out mansions.

Our final stop in Columbus was the Pearl Market in Downtown, which runs every Tuesday from eleven to two on Gay Street in Downtown and every Thursday at the same time in Columbus Commons, May through October. This was a much smaller market than the one we had been to in Clintonville but there was some good produce straight from the farm and we purchased some fruit to take with us for the drive to Cincinnati.

I had hoped we would be able to see an unusual art experience called Otherworld but Tuesday was the one day of the week that it was closed. It seemed to have similarities with Meow Wolf in Santa Fe and Mega Mart in Las Vegas which we had all enjoyed. I had to add it to the growing list of reasons we will need to return to Columbus when the kids have a long weekend off from school. I already have several theaters with interesting upcoming seasons like the Fox, the Palace, and Shadowbox; ZipZone Outdoor Adventures; the Franklin Park Conservatory; the Japanese market and restaurants at Kenny Centre Mall. We also have places that we can explore in more depth like Short North and COSI, and several food halls we haven't tried. It's almost preternatural how much stuff Columbus offers compared to other cities of similar or even larger size. It turned out to be really lucky that Columbus was our only option for direct flights from Ft. Lauderdale or we might have missed it completely.