Sidney Walnut Avenue Historic District

Fifteen houses crowd a small hill northwest of downtown Sidney, Ohio, along Walnut Avenue and North Street. Most were built or remodeled between 1890 and 1910, when Sidney grew from a rural county seat and market center into a banking, commercial and industrial city. The earliest is a Southern Colonial house from 1847 built by Thomas Stephenson, who arrived in Shelby County in 1825. Later houses range from Greek Revival and Italianate to elaborate Queen Anne mansions, a Four-Square, a Dutch Colonial remodel and a 1913 bungalow. The best known is Bonneyconnellan Castle, built in 1889 by school furniture manufacturer John Loughlin as a replica of a Scottish castle, with three battlemented stone towers. Other owners included store, steel scraper, churn and grain mill proprietors, and members of the Wagner family, who held manufacturing, brewing and banking interests. The district is recognized for its architecture and for showing how the hilltop became the town's elite residential street.