Mantua Station Brick Commercial District

Mantua Station's brick commercial district is a cluster of business blocks on Main and East Prospect Streets, close to the railroad tracks. Built between 1873 and 1901, the buildings share corbeled brick cornices, iron structural columns and similar ground-floor display windows, giving a unified look despite varied heights and window shapes. The earliest block, at Main and Prospect, was built by C. H. Thompson in 1873 and later became the Bowen Block. Thompson also built the Thompson Block in 1884 and a grain elevator in 1898. The C. H. Ray Block followed in 1886, and blocks at the southeast corner were rebuilt in 1901 after a fire. A brick warehouse, the grain elevator and a small frame railroad station complete the group. The district matters because Mantua Station, after the railroad opened in 1856, became the town's commercial center, housing merchants of many kinds. Its buildings preserve that late nineteenth-century commercial character.