Wellington Center Historic District

Wellington's town center, around Main Street and Herrick Avenue, is a district of about 11.5 acres with commercial blocks, a cheese warehouse, a library, seven houses, two churches and a town hall. Most of it dates from the nineteenth century, when Wellington was a mercantile village and its main industry, cheese making, supported about forty factories. The brick Horr-Warner warehouse of 1880-1881 and a cheese store survive from that trade. The three-story Town Hall and Opera House of 1885 was designed by Oscar Cobb, a Chicago theater specialist, for a town of under 2,000 people. Its auditorium seated 1,000 and hosted Chautauqua events. The Methodist and Congregational churches show Romanesque Revival and High Victorian Gothic design. Houses include Greek Revival, Italian Villa and Queen Anne examples. The Herrick library stands on the site of the hotel linked to the 1858 Wellington rescue, the last attempt to recover a fugitive slave in northern Ohio under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.