Mantua Center District (Additional Documentation)

Mantua Center is a small crossroads township center in Portage County, Ohio, organized around a public common where State Route 82 meets Mantua Center Road. The district covers about 3.6 acres and contains two churches, a town hall and two houses, nearly all built around 1835-1840. The Christian Church, built 1839-1840, serves the oldest Campbellite congregation in Ohio, formed in 1827 after Sidney Rigdon began preaching in Mantua. James A. Garfield was among the visiting pastors. The Methodist Episcopal congregation, formed in 1806, built its present frame church after an earlier building burned. That building later served as a township school annex and became a civic center in 1968. The town hall is notable for an octagonal cupola with a domed top, a Greek Revival feature rarely preserved on public buildings. One house on the northwest corner began as a store built in 1835. The nomination values the district as a distinct and intact whole even though its individual buildings are modest.