Belmont Historic District

Belmont is a small railroad village in Belmont County, Ohio, and its historic district takes in the original plat plus a stretch of Jefferson Street to the south. Joseph Wright laid out the unusual elongated, "coffin"-shaped plat, with corner streets running at 45-degree angles. The district holds 139 buildings dating from about 1810 to the 1920s, mostly modest wood-frame houses with Gothic and Greek Revival detailing, along with log houses later sided over. Jefferson Street forms the commercial core, with brick and wood stores, a Richardsonian bank built in 1895 and altered in 1900, and Queen Anne houses such as the Dr. Lindley Schooley House. The village's economy rested on the railroad. Seven cigar factories operated here, and Cooper Acton's factory produced 4.2 million cigars in 1910. Belmont also became eastern Ohio's largest horse market and a major livestock shipping point. Early garages, a telephone company and a movie theatre reflect its growth into the twentieth century.