Mentor Avenue District

Mentor Avenue in Painesville, Ohio, is lined with fifty-four buildings that trace nearly a century of changing architectural taste. The district runs from Liberty Street, where the Greek Revival City Hall and the Congregational Church stand, west to the Lake Erie College campus. Styles include Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, and 20th century Cotswold and Georgian designs. Among the earliest buildings is the Denton-Powers house of 1820, attributed to architect Jonathan Goldsmith, who also is credited with the Levi Shepard residence and City Hall, built in 1840 as the Lake County Courthouse. The street also housed notable people, including Thomas Harvey, author of Harvey's Grammar and Harvey's Readers and later state school superintendent, and plow manufacturer Grandison Wilder. Few intrusions break the streetscape, giving the district an unusual coherence for its location near a city center, though commercial development presses on its eastern edge.