Ghent Historic District

Ghent is a small hamlet in Bath Township, Summit County, Ohio, and its historic district preserves eight modest wood-frame buildings along the west side of Wye Road. The oldest is a woolen mill built in 1832 beside Yellow Creek. It produced wool cloth and yarn, peaked during the Civil War, became a machine shop in the 1890s and was then converted to multiple-family housing. Nearby are houses from the mid-19th century, including one built by Thomas Pierson, who also built an octagonal bee house around 1859 to raise bees year round. Two houses on the hillside above Wye Road have always been residential, and a small barn is counted as non-contributing after reconstruction. The district was recognized as a compact, intact example of a hamlet's mixed-use character in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its significance runs through 1952, when the general store burned and the hamlet's role as the township's local center of goods and services faded.