Haydenville Historic Town

Haydenville is a company town in southern Hocking County, Ohio, strung along old U.S. Route 33. Rows of nearly identical houses line the road, interrupted only by the church, school, company building, community building and railroad station. Peter Hayden bought 3,000 acres here in 1852, and a charcoal furnace was running by 1856. Coal and then clay products became the main industries. The earliest employee houses, from about the 1870s, were two-story porous brick buildings. Larger houses built between 1883 and 1900 used fired clay products made by the company. The 1870 Gothic Revival church also displays the variety of local clay products. After the 1907 sale to the National Fireproofing Company, houses became smaller and were eventually built of wood. The company town was sold in 1964 and its homes were sold off, but the buildings remain. The district was listed for its architecture and its record of industry built around clay.