Lakeside Historic District

Lakeside is a resort community of about 200 acres on the shore of Lake Erie, near the tip of the Marblehead Peninsula in Ottawa County, Ohio. A fence encloses the grounds on three sides, and a grid of streets crosses terraced, tree-covered land. Roughly 850 buildings stand there, nearly 95 percent of them small frame cottages from the 1870s to the 1920s. Many are narrow Camp Meeting or Lakeside cottages with street-facing gables, sawn wooden ornament and double-decked porches, alongside Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire and Queen Anne examples. Larger buildings include the three-story Italianate Hotel Lakeside, begun in 1875, the 1929 Hoover Auditorium, and four 1920s Mission style association buildings with stucco walls and tile roofs. The community began with a church, an open-air auditorium, tents and board-and-batten cottages. Most of the original resort survives, apart from losses in fires in 1905 and 1929, and many sections keep their 19th-century appearance. That intact character as a Chautauqua-style resort underlies its listing.