Washington Avenue Historic District

Washington Avenue Historic District is a residential neighborhood in the near north side of Elyria, Ohio, where large single-family houses were built from about 1870 to about 1920. Its streets include Washington Avenue, Columbus, Harrison and Ohio, and the west-side lots border wooded Elywood Park along the Black River. The houses show Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Georgian Revival, Tudor Revival and Spanish Eclectic designs. Among them is the 1894 A.L. Garford House, a Shingle Style mansion designed by Arthur Oviatt and the largest house in Lorain County. The district was home to many of the town's leading citizens, including a bank president, an attorney, a coal company head and Edgar F. Allen, founder of Elyria Memorial Hospital and the International Crippled Children's Society. Of the 64 resources, 57 contribute to the district's character. Washington Avenue and Columbus Street remain strictly single-family, and the area still looks much as it did decades ago.