The history of harrison place
1849, Land Platted as the Town of Oxford
Originally called the Town of Oxford, the Village was renamed, Ashley, after major landowners L. W. Ashley and J. C. Avery subdivided their property to create the original village plat. On June 15, 1849, county surveyor Charles Neil platted the Village of Ashley (as shown in Map 1a). In 1850 the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railway was built through the village on a path from Delaware to Mansfield and the village got its first post office. These changes caused the village population to increase significantly. The sixty-nine (69) originally platted lots had expanded to over one hundred and eighty (180) by 1877 as the village expanded.
1890, Building Built on SE Corner of East High and South Harrison Street
Pictured below on the left, the current building that is home to Harrison Place has a long history of providing commerce to the community. The building has been home to a pharmacy, hardware store, beauty salon, deli and a few fraternal lodges over the years. The Eastern Stars were perhaps the longest running tenant upstairs and the Olds Hardware store was perhaps the most memorable store as the below photo contains a billboard for the store on the end of the building along Harrison Street.
Bringing People Together and Reinventing "Community"!
The building's first floor was occupied for the past few decades by Rotary Products and the Ashley Beauty Salon. The Salon closed in 2018 and Plan 4 Land relocated to the Town from downtown Ostrander to the building in 2019. Plan 4 Land (www.plan4land.net) was founded in December 2013 with a goal of building stronger local communities through smart-growth development, with a specialization in conservation-based design and traditional neighborhood development.
Rotary Products subsequently built and relocated to a new manufacturing warehouse north of the Town in 2022. This provided the opportunity for adaptive reuse opportunity of the building as a community gathering space. The vision for Harrison Place is to provide entertainment programing and high-quality event space for residents of the Town and the regional area. Preserving the building in its historic state is a testament to bringing back the vibrant street life and activities that used to be in downtown Ashley when the railroad was thriving, and Ashley was a notable stop on the olde roads.
Ashley's Central Station
While the building wasn't historically a train station, the history of railway traffic in the Town is worthy of the museum to its legacy that has been built here. Following the Homestead Act in 1862, thousands of miles of railroad were built, which helped spur the economic vitality that the Town witnessed around the turn of the century. As we hear stories about the history of our Town, it was the influence of the Industrial Revolution that helped create wealth in our agricultural communities. For many years small towns were a major source of traffic for railroads all across the country. Long before anyone ever heard of freeways, the railroads moved all sorts of freight that kept the local businesses and nearby agricultural economy going.
Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 - March 13, 1901)
An American lawyer and politician who served as the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893. His family was from Virginia, with the most notable relatives being his grandfather William Henry Harrison, who was our country's ninth president, and Benjamin Harrison V, a founding father. Harrison was born on a farm along the Ohio River and was a graduate of Miami (Oxford) University Law School. As a prominent local attorney, Presbyterian church leader, veteran officer of the Union Army in the American Civil War and successful politician, Benjamin Harrison was our nation's president when the building was built and earns our recognition as the commemorative father of Harrison Place.