Columbus is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country. It’s growing faster than any other city in the Midwest. The state capital has come a long way from its humble beginnings.
On this edition of All Sides, we’re talking with author Brent Warren about the evolution of Columbus, which is documented in his book Columbus in 50 Maps.
Support WOSU 89.7 NPR News during our spring membership drive and receive Brent Warren's book Columbus in 50 Maps as a thank-you gift.
Guest:
- Brent Warren, reporter for Columbus Underground and author of Columbus in 50 Maps
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is our membership drive. More about that in a minute. Columbus has received some positive press in recent years. The compliments have ranged from being the fastest growing metropolis area in the Midwest to being one of the nation's best big cities.
This wasn't always the case for the state capital once described as a cow town. How Columbus has evolved over time is the focus of the book, "Columbus in 50 Maps," written by our guest today, Columbus Underground reporter, Brent Warren. Welcome back to All Sides Brent.
Brent Warren: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: So in the introduction to your book, "Columbus in 50 Maps," you write, Columbus is a place perpetually in search of an identity. We were never gifted with a catchy nickname or had a ready-made identity bestowed on us.
So I mean, this is a topic we've discussed in the past on All Sides, but you're someone who grew up here. You wrote a book all about Columbus. So what do you think Columbus's identity is?
Warren: Um, well, I don't have a catchy answer to that. I think, you know, we talked last time I was on the show, I think when the book was about to come, come out, we've talked a little bit about this, like, um, you know in some ways I think we need to give ourselves a little bit of a break on that front.
You know, it's like, we're maybe a teenage city. We're not, um we have to give ourselves a chance to kind of grow into the city that, that we're becoming, you know. If you look back at history, and I talk about this in the introduction to the book, all of the cities around us, like Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, all those cities spent time as like one of the top five cities in the country for population, you know, Columbus was never that. When these
Juravich: Well, we're still growing. Maybe we'll get there someday. Exactly.
Warren: Exactly, that's the difference. We never were like a super prominent city in the country like a hundred years ago, the way Cincinnati or Detroit or Cleveland was. We just been sort of, we were actually pretty small town back in those days.
So we didn't have the chance to kind of establish this like, oh, this is what everybody thinks of around the country when they hear Columbus, you know, we're a small town and we just sort of steadily grew through the decades. And all of a sudden here we are. As a big city. So I think we're still working on that.
In the book, I do look at some different things. We have a section on Arch City, which was our nickname at one point, because there were arches downtown. And we have a map that shows where the current arches are in the short north, the modern arches, and where the historic arches were, which is mostly downtown and other places but
Juravich: So there's old arches that I don't remember, is that? Yes, yes, oh, they were.
Warren: Yes, yes. Oh, they were gone by like, you know 1918. Oh There's a short period of time where we had all these beautiful arches and they were in like Every postcard of Columbus featured these arches people love them They were kind of a distinctive feature of our city and we were known as the arch city for you know Like 20 years or so and then
Juravich: Who decided to tear them down?
Warren: Well, I don't know the city, the people, sort of like efficiency, the technocrats who decided they weren't efficient and we were changing out the way we did streetlights and the arches didn't work as well. So they put in modern streetlights, and they took the arches down.
But that's an example of how these things are fluid over time. You know, there was a time when people knew Columbus as Arch City, and that's kind of gone And now some people are trying to bring that back, you know, you see some businesses name that. You see the arches in the short north, but that's just, it's always changing.
Juravich: This is 89.7 NPR News. This is our membership drive. Thanks for joining us today. You can become a member when you make a gift right now. This is listener-supported public radio. Make a gift at wosu.org or call 866-897-9678.
Discover Columbus in a whole new way with the book, "Columbus in 50 Maps ." It's a collection of 50 beautifully designed maps that explore neighborhoods, history, food, and how the city has grown. It's the kind of book you'll want to come back to again and again.
You could get your own copy when you start a sustaining gift of $10 a month right now, or make a one-time contribution of $120. Give now at wosu.org. Your monthly support helps WOSU Public Media show up every day with trusted news, thoughtful programs and local stories that matter.
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A monthly gift helps protect what matters most. And you can get a great thank you gift in return. If you have lived in Columbus for years, "Columbus in 50 Maps" is going to even, even if you've been here for years.
"Columbus in 50 Maps" will show you something new. How your neighborhoods connect to how the city has changed, stories behind the places you pass by every day. It's a fresh way to see your very own city.
"Columbus in 50 Maps" can be your gift for $10 a month or a one-time gift of $120 to receive your copy and support public radio. Go to wosu.org right now. So you are a reporter. You work for Columbus Underground, but you also grew up here. You're a Columbus guy through and through. But how has being a reporter changed your view of the city, has it at all?
Warren: Well, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, absolutely has. I mean I started at Columbus Underground in 2013. So I've been covering pretty closely for all these years, development in the city.
So I mean we have a map in the book called "Short North Development ." And that map was basically based on the reporting I've done over the years because I've tracked this so closely, all of the different... Uh, new developments on High Street in the short north, uh, and we kind of break it up by era.
So you can see, I mean, it's, and I, I should mention, uh Vicki Johnson Doll. She was our map maker and she just did an amazing job. Like with the "Short North" map, I kind of threw her a huge amount of information and said, okay, how can we make this into a map?
And she, she really did it. Like, so you can just glance at this map and Like, oh, from 2010 to 2020... There were a huge number of new mixed use developments in the short north. And you can see that and you can where they were. You can see what was there before and what they were replaced with.
So, you know, going back to your question of how does that change your view? I think when you drill down a little deeper into the stories behind these developments and you kind of follow them from the very beginning, from when they're first proposed to when they are eventually approved and then finally built, and then there's people living in them.
It gives you kind of a finer view of what that does to a neighborhood, how that changes the neighborhood over time, and also just kind of the process, which there's so much more to it that people don't realize, I think. You just see the construction cranes and think, oh, there's a new thing coming in.
But I mean it The idea for that project probably started like five years before then, and it's been this long journey to get it to that point of the construction cranes.
Juravich: When we were talking earlier about what is Columbus's identity, would you say that to some people it's Ohio State or does Columbus, like is that a good thing? I don't know. How do you evaluate the Columbus-Ohio State identity?
Warren: Yeah, no that's a big one. I think definitely to some people, especially nationally, you know, if you think of Columbus, you probably think of Ohio State and you think about football.
We also, not to bring everything back to a map in the book, but we have, you know, a lot of good maps in the books. We have a map of campus and the area around Ohio stadium, and I kind of wanted to show with that like.
On the one hand, there are these traditions tied to Ohio State football that are pretty a pretty big part of our culture in Columbus, you know, and I think it's important to kind of recognize them and say, Oh, yeah, how long have we been doing this "script Ohio" and you know all of these traditions that we have in Columbus that runs very deep here.
So that's kind of what we're able to show in that map. But then at the same time, we have all these maps that show how Columbus has expanded. And grown and sort of moved beyond just being a college town into something very different than what it was, say, even 30 years ago.
Juravich: Yeah, it's not like Columbus is no longer a suburb of Ohio State, right? This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the past and present of Columbus with the author of the book, "Columbus in 50 Maps," Brent Warren.
Brent is also a reporter for Columbus Underground. I want to say thank you to Nancy Manakee in Columbus. Thank you, Nancy. And Nancy writes, the station is a local treasure. Keep up the good work. Thank you for that, Nancy!
We also heard from Diana Novak in Powell and Diana and Nancy, both are sustaining members. Thank you so much for those gifts of support. And I also wanna thank Alvin Matthews from Columbus. Thank you for your gift today.
You can join them and become a member during this membership drive. This hour is all about Columbus as a growing city. We're asking the question, what is Columbus's identity? If you enjoy discovering what makes Columbus unique, "Columbus in 50 Maps" is a great place to start.
Through 50 engaging maps, it brings the city's history, culture, and everyday life into focus. It's easy to explore this book. It's hard to put it down, make a gift of $10 a month or make a one-time gift of 120, and we'll send you a copy of this book and a letter of thanks for supporting WOSU.
Give right now at wosu.org. The programs and local coverage you count on from WOSU Public Media depend on steady listener support. Without it, those services become harder to sustain. A monthly gift helps keep them in place.
Start that gift today at wosu.org. Give $10 a month and get a great book of maps or a one-time gift of $120. And you'll be supporting public radio too. So this is listener-supported 89.7 NPR News.
We count on listeners like you to give when we have these membership drives. In return, we bring you news and information you can trust. All Sides is here for you every day at 10 a.m. talking about central Ohio.
We have in-depth, thoughtful conversations and we're able to do that because we are listener-supported. Make a gift right now at wosu.org. So books about maps, map books, are having a moment.
There's a similar book about Cincinnati that launched on the same day that the Columbus book launched. I also found a book about my hometown, Pittsburgh. There's "Pittsburgh in 50 Maps ." What do you what's the attraction of these map books? What's going on?
Warren: Well, I don't know. It's hard for me to say why it's having a moment now, because I've always loved maps. I'm a map nerd through and through. But I think a lot of people are catching on to that, maybe, these days.
Juravich: Okay, maps are cool, yeah.
Warren: Yes, maps are cool and you know the nice the the cool thing I think about this book series is that Like so many of the maps that we see day to day now I mean, it's almost like everything is a Google Map everything is just sort of like looks the same and even Google Maps which is so amazing and you knew it was incredible when that first came around.
There's more ads in it now, you know, there's it sort of likes highlights businesses that have paid to be on the map you know, so I feel like we kind of get used to seeing maps only in this one format and the cool thing about this book is we were able to go and sort of go in a completely different direction sort of visually and have a sort of like really visually interesting and beautiful maps that also conveyed information that you do not really see on the internet to be honest.
Like like one of the maps we did was um pretty simple it seems like just of the different school districts in Columbus. You would think, oh, that would be an easy one to find, but it's actually not that easy to find that information online, like in a visual way that shows easily, so you can easily tell where one school district starts and where one begins.
So we did that so you could easily see it, but then also, the way the map, the book is formatted, we have a little bit of text with each map. So we're able to kind of show that big picture of, these are the school districts, and then you look at that picture and you see, um... that the Columbus City Schools has these little islands out at the sort of edge of the county and that are not connected to the main part of the district and you're kind of like, how does that happen?
So in the book, I'm able to explain, hopefully pretty simply and succinctly about the win-win agreement that this whole sort of long history of school district politics in Columbus and kind of trying to explain why the map looks the way it does.
So not only do you have the visual, but you have to the text kind of giving some more historical context that really you can't, like if you just Google it, it's actually, it's almost overwhelming the information you get.
Juravich: So you try to explain why people have pay Columbus taxes, but don't live in Columbus City schools, basically. Yeah, that happens all the way around the the district on all on all sides, right?
Warren: Right. Right.
Juravich: Um, okay, so and it's called it's called a win win from a long time.
Warren: A long time. The win-win agreement, yeah, from the 80s, I believe.
Juravich: Was it like an annexation agreement? Yep. All right. Well, you can learn more about that in "Columbus in 50 Maps ." This is 89.7 NPR News.
We're talking about Columbus past and present with the author of the book, "Columbus in 50 Maps," it can be your gift today when you make a gift at 866-897-9678 or give a wosu.org. Make a gift of $10 a month or a one time gift of 120 dollars to get "Columbus in 50 Maps ." What was the hardest map to put together? In the whole book.
Warren: Um, that's a good question. There's so many of them, uh, ended up taking a sort of being harder than you would think at first, you know, like we, um, I had this idea very early on to do, um I saw online somebody referred to Bethel Road as like their High Street in Columbus, but that was so interesting cause you know Bethel Road is a place that has this amazing, um array of, uh ethnic restaurants.
Businesses, mostly food-related businesses from all over the world. All tucked into strip malls, right? Yes, exactly. I mean, it's the kind of place that if you just Google Columbus, like what are the things to see, Bethel Road is probably not going to come up high on the list.
Even if you actually physically drive down Bethel Road, the way those strip mall's are set up, they're so far away from the road, it is actually hard to realize like, what? Yeah exactly so I had an idea it's called the the map is called "Strip Mall Treasures" and I kind of worked with Vicki our map maker to figure out how do we kind of bring that visually to the fore to sort of explain what Bethel Road is to somebody who might not know.
So what we ended up doing was we have like an aerial view of the corridor so you can see the development pattern which is very suburban and you have these enormous strip malls with huge parking lots you know. My background is in urban planning, and urban planners hate strip malls.
You know, it's not pedestrian friendly. It's kind of a waste of all this space in front of the businesses. But in a lot of places, including in Columbus, that's where there's a lot immigrant-owned businesses.
And so for this map, we were able to show we put little flags that kind of indicated the origin of the different restaurants and the food-related businesses. So you could kind of see at a glance. Oh, this is what Bethel Road is really all about, you know.
Juravich: Yeah, Columbus definitely has a very international food scene, but you have to find it apparently on Bethel Road. Yeah for that urban planner perspective who decided to put the parking lot in front of the strip mall. Why why not put it behind it?
Warren: Yeah, developers, so you can blame them. People like to, developers like to sort of advertise that there's plenty of parking, free parking. So and it's right there, you can see it.
Juravich: Well, that's a shame. All right. So you're a reporter for Columbus Underground. You learn a lot about the city every day. That's your job, is to write about the city. Did you learn anything surprising while writing this book? Like something you didn't know?
Warren: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of like sort of the early part of the book, we do more historic maps. And that was the section that I probably learned the most about because in order to pinpoint things on a map, like I wanted to show where were the Native American settlements that in what we now call Columbus before there were white settlers here.
And that's not the easiest information to track down, surprisingly.
Juravich: It's probably not in a simple history book, do you think so? No.
Warren: No, no. And, you know, as we know, a lot of our history kind of starts. Oh, this is the history of Columbus starts when the white settlers arrived. But there were people here before. So I really dove into that history in order to produce a couple of maps.
So we have one that shows the earthworks and mounds that were all throughout Franklin County, most of which have been destroyed. But, you, know, like Mound Street. Was called Mound Street downtown, because there was a huge 40-foot-tall mound in the center of what we now call downtown Columbus.
And just things like that, there's a lot of things that I learned delving into that history. And it was really my pitch for sort of going beyond what you can find in a Google search.
Again, I had to check books out of the library to find some of this information, which is really drove me further into kind of learning more and more. And I hope we were able to take some of that and get it across in the book as sort of like interesting things that maybe you didn't know about the city.
Juravich: I wanna say thank you to Lauren Staken from Hilliard and also thanks to Eric Gibson from Columbus. Thanks for your gifts of support today. And thank you all for joining us for our membership drive.
This hour is all about Columbus as a growing city and we're asking the question, what is Columbus's identity? If you enjoy discovering what makes Columbus unique, "Columbus in 50 Maps" is a great place to start.
Through 50 engaging maps, it brings the city's history, culture and everyday life into focus. This book is easy to explore and hard to put down.
Make a monthly gift of $10 a month or make a gift of 120 dollars and we'll send you a copy of this book as our way of saying thank you for supporting WOSU. You can get the book at wosu.org right now.
Give $10 dollars a month to get this great book of maps or a one-time gift of one hundred and twenty dollars. We are counting on you to support public radio right now We are listener-supported 89.7 NPR News.
We count on listeners like you to give what you can during these membership drives. 866-897-9678 or wosu.org. One of the maps in your book that I found interesting addresses the placement of the city's trees.
Looking at the map definitely made me think like, oh, we don't have enough trees in certain places. And we recently did a show actually about the city tree canopy, so this relates really well. But this map really shows it. Can you describe the tree map for a little bit? Like, or is it a, is it a tree map or is it a pave services map?
Warren: Yeah, no, there's there's both. So the interesting thing is, if you and and the city and Morpsey, I think the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission, they they track some of this data and it's fascinating when you see it on a countywide or a citywide scale.
That if you have paved surfaces if you map those and then you also map the tree cover It's almost like they're inverses of one another, you know where you have a lot of paved surfaces. You have no trees.
And you can see, just looking at that map, you can things like the ravines in certain neighborhoods. You can see our metro parks, obviously. And you see these big areas just almost devoid of trees completely.
And then also we feature in the book, there was an effort to go and sort of map the actual temperature on different points in Columbus on a single day in August, like a few years ago. And we're able to map that in the books.
And that correlates pretty closely to those other maps, you know, where you have trees, it's a lot cooler. And these neighborhoods without very many trees, those are the hottest places, and really it's only gonna get worse as our climate changes, you now.
Juravich: And whenever you were making a map like that, a map about trees, a map of how paved surfaces, was that something that you originally had? Like when you made your list of like what maps you were gonna be doing, was that on the list or did some of these things just like come up as you were making one map and it became an?
Warren: Yeah, yeah. Some of them absolutely just came up because I kind of discovered that the data existed already. Oh, yeah, yeah more obscure. The city had done the work to sort of map some of this stuff.
Juravich: But nobody's seen it unless they follow Morpsey, yeah. Right, right.
Warren: Right, right, or you could go to their website and play around with it. But we were able to take that data and we didn't have to do as much to make it into a map as some of them, you know, because the data already existed.
So when I find out about that temperature map, I'm like, oh, wow, that's amazing. And then Vicki made the actual visual of it and I'm, like, well, that is really incredible. It really tells us a lot about Columbus.
Juravich: You can see it for yourself. If you get this book as your thank you gift today, you'll also be supporting public media.
You're listening to All Sides on listener-supported 89.7 NPR News. It's our membership drive. Support the in-depth conversations we bring you every day. You're only gonna find this news and information on public radio.
Support the station right now at wosu.org, or give us a call, 866-897-9678. This hour, we're talking about a map book that will. You will love to have this book in your book collection. It's not a book you necessarily read cover to cover.
It's one you open again and again and again and get sucked into looking at all these maps. "Columbus in 50 Maps" invites you to explore Columbus through 50 visual stories from food spots to growth patterns to hidden gems. It's a thoughtful, local, and made to browse kind of book.
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So start your sustaining gift today at wosu. Um, Brent, did you for Columbus has become more and more diverse, but like many cities, there are some segregated areas. Did you break down the city in terms of like race and ethnicity or immigrant populations? You have a map or two about that, right?
Warren: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We have census maps that show sort of the racial distribution in the city and we talk a little bit about how that has changed in some ways and in some ways it hasn't changed.
Definitely we have more maps that shows where the main immigrant populations are in the city. We have one that shows there's this really interesting sort of stat that the Census Bureau tracks, which is called the diversity index.
So we have a map that shows that it's like which by census tract, like which parts of Columbus are the most diverse and which are the least diverse and it shows it for kind of the whole county. So there's lots of different ways to break that down. We also have maps.
I mean, not all the maps are. They don't all feel like homework. Some of them are a little more fun. So we have a map of all the taco trucks in Columbus, which is another way to show kind of how immigrant populations and the immigrant groups that are driving a lot of the growth, actually the majority of the growth now is being driven by immigrants.
How has that impacted our city in different ways? How is it that we have, in 1990, I think we talk about in the book, they're about 7,000 people of Latino or Hispanic descent in Columbus. And then you fast forward 30 years and it's like 70,000.
So that's gonna change a city in a lot of different ways. And one of the ways, as you can see in the book, there's a lot taco trucks in Columbus, whereas there didn't used to be. So yeah, lots of ways to kind of get at that issue and sort of illuminate what's happening in the city.
Juravich: The taco trucks is a fun way to show the change, yeah. Do you know how this compares to other Ohio major cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati? Do they have that significant immigrant growth rate like that?
Warren: We have a larger immigrant population than either Cincinnati or Cleveland. And I think we're getting just the fact that we're growing more than those cities. And we're definitely attracting more international immigrants.
But you know, they're changing, too. Every place in Ohio is changing, as we saw with Springfield. And a lot of the immigrant populations have come to places where you maybe didn't expect it.
Juravich: Can you talk to me about, you have a map that talks about redlining, which is, which used government regulation to keep minorities from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods. And how did you figure out that that shaped Columbus? Cause I mean, that partially influenced the shape of Columbus too. Yeah. Yeah.
Warren: Yeah, yeah, yeah and that's that's one of those maps like as you mentioned, this is a this is a series there's these 50 maps books about a handful of different cities and I think there's probably a red redlining map in every one of these books so I kind of knew that we were going to do that but I wasn't sure how what the best way to show that would be and actually I think somebody I reached out to at Ohio State suggested that overlaying a map of the highways on the redlining map would be an interesting way to show how redlining shaped where the highways went in Columbus. And if you look at that map, you can see it shaped it in some pretty obvious ways.
Juravich: Yeah, so tell us a little bit more about that for people who can't see it. So basically where the highway goes through, there's like one population on one side is one color and the other population, like, yeah.
Warren: Or even like if you look at I-70 and how it kind of it goes right through the southern end of downtown, but then it kind-of dips, there's that dip in 70.
Juravich: Yeah, so 70 does 70 could could have just gone straight.
Warren: Yeah. But.
Juravich: But it's obvious they put a dip in there and so you're and you're like, oh that's obvious.
Warren: Yeah, you know, it goes under Bexley and it took out some predominantly African-American neighborhoods in the process.
Juravich: Well, and then I just flipped to the very next page because after the redlining page, then you go into a lighter mood with streetcar lines and amusement parks. So what's this about? We used to have a streetcar? I don't know. We definitely.
Warren: We definitely used to have streetcars. Oh, that's a shame. Yes, yes. And it's through a couple of the maps in the book, you can see the streetcar network kind of like drove development in a lot of ways.
So a lot what we think of as our historic neighborhoods with the traditional street grids and the older homes, those were built along the street car lines. But one of the things I always thought this was an interesting part of Columbus history is you had these amusement parks that... Developers would put at the end of the streetcar lines because the neighborhoods hadn't really grown out that far yet, you know, they built the lines first and they had a hard time sort of getting the ridership up on those lines.
Juravich: They couldn't get them to write it to the end? Yeah.
Warren: Yeah, and especially on the weekends when people aren't going to work. Not as many people were riding the line. So they're like, oh, let's put an attraction at the very end. OK, so these amusement parks are really cool.
They had these enormous pools. They had I think the Olin Tanji Park one had a upside down wooden roller coaster kind of thing, which is pretty amazing to see pictures of that. But yeah, just another kind of like really interesting fact from Columbus history that people might know about, but then to see it on a map, you can see, oh, this is where they were.
This is where the street lines were. You can see it all in one place.
Juravich: Yeah, so we used to have three amusement parks and Olentangy Park that you mentioned is basically like right in Clintonville, right? That was the end of the line. Then there's Indianola Park, which is kind of beside Clintonville.
Warren: Yeah, it's sort of a North Forest Street. There's a shopping center there now.
Juravich: And then this one that's called Northwood Amusement Park. Where is that?
Warren: Yeah, I had never even heard of that. That was like kind of close to Bexley. It just sort of sprung up. It was also on a streetcar line. It, I believe, lasted until they put the highway through. And that was the end for it.
Juravich: This is listener support at 89 7 NPR News and this is All Sides. It's our membership drive and for this hour we have a great thank you gift we're talking about for anyone who loves Columbus and wants to learn more about our city.
Your support keeps WOSU here with trusted local stories and our thank you gift today is a way to stay connected to the place we serve. It's called "Columbus in 50 Maps" and it captures Columbus through 50 maps highlighting its people, places, and growth.
Start your sustaining gift today at $10 a month or give $120 as a one-time gift. We'll send you a copy as a way of saying thank you for your support today. Support this service you rely on at wosu.org.
I wanna say thank you to Donna Diaz from Columbus, and we also heard from Jesse Baron in Columbus. Thank you for your gifts of support. If WOSU Public Media is a part of your daily routine, keeping you informed and connected, this is a great time to give back.
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