Mount Sterling Historic District

Mount Sterling's historic district occupies about nine acres along London Street in the southeast corner of Madison County, Ohio. It groups the 1883 town hall, the Pleasant Township house, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad station and several brick commercial blocks built mostly in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The town hall, a two-story Victorian building with a slate mansard roof and a tall front tower, is the focal point; its upper floors still hold an intact opera house. The Masonic, Alkire-Tenny and Abbott's buildings housed shops, apartments and meeting halls that produced rental income. The district matters because these buildings still relate to one another as originally intended, as the town's governmental, commercial and transportation core. Mount Sterling has always been an agricultural community with little large-scale commercial development, so the cluster remained largely intact. Few intrusions exist, including a dairy bar, a pharmacy and a firehouse.