West Main Street District

West Main Street in Norwalk, Ohio, is lined with houses, churches and civic buildings that together illustrate most American architectural styles from about 1830 to 1910. The district covers parts of six blocks and includes 72 houses, five churches, a Carnegie library and a museum house, set back from tree-lined sidewalks. The oldest homes cluster toward the east, and later styles appear farther west. Highlights include the Federal-style Kimball-Wooster House of 1832, the Vredenburgh-Gardiner House with its layered additions, and the Wooster-Boalt House of 1848, a Greek Revival building that began as the Norwalk Female Seminary. Three successive Episcopal churches, from 1835, 1860 and 1908, all survive on one site. Several homes belonged to founding families of the Firelands settlement. A 1967 state survey described the street as architecturally the best individual street of homes in Ohio, which is the main reason for its listing.