Shield's Block

Four three-story commercial buildings at 23-29 South Park Place in Newark, Ohio, make up Shield's Block, built about 1870 facing Courthouse Square. The buildings are brick on a stone foundation, with a flat built-up roof, double-hung two-over-two windows with simple stone lintels and sills, brick beltcourses marking the floors, and a bracketed cornice. The ground-floor storefronts have been altered extensively, but the upper levels are nearly intact. The east wall, once shared with a since-demolished building, still shows joist holes, stair attachments and chimney flues. The adjoining Park Bar, built about 1900, was added to the listing. It uses steel columns but was designed to echo 19th-century buildings, with stucco, a large projecting metal cornice and matching beltcourses. Newark was platted in 1802, and the square became its governmental and commercial center, with most rebuilding between 1860 and 1910. The block was listed as a typical late 19th-century Italianate commercial row that contributes to that surviving townscape. Its owners were rehabilitating it at the time.