Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Old Gothic Barns were a pair of historic agricultural buildings near the city of Cincinnati in Green Township, Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. Built in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, they were designated a historic site in the 1970s because of their distinctive architecture.”
Wikipedia article Old Gothic Barns, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 314 National Register listings in Hamilton County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · one of 9 National Historic Landmarks in Hamilton County.
National Register reference number.76001438- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Green township, The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
and a half years. He was also a member of the Walnut Hill school board, and laid the corner stone ffi the first school building built under the free school law. When the late war broke out he entered the army with four sons, two of whom were killed, one at Chancellorsville, the other murdered. He was in the first battle of the west at Vienna, and served, at one time, as a member of the staff.
Green is the most regular and symmetrical township in the county. It is a perfe'ct square - an even surveyed township of thirty-six sections, six miles on a side, such as is common in the newer western and northern States, but not in the older settled regions, and of which no other instance is presented in Hamilton county. It lies altogether in fractional range two, township two, and is precisely included between the range and township lines, which separate it from Cincinnati and Mill Creek township on the east, Delhi on the south, Miami on the west, and Colerain on the north. Its section lines are run with remarkable correctness, considering that it lies wholly within the Miami Purchase, and might have shared in the troubles caused by the carelessness of the earliest surveyors. Save for some eccentricity in the second meridian east of the township line, the sections are mostly exact square miles, a fact which can be stated, probably, of no other tract of equal size within the Purchase. Still, its total acreage amounts to but twenty-two thousand seven hundred and fourteen - about an even half-section short of what it should be were all the sections full.
Some of the most interesting and attractive drives in the county are through this township, upon the Cleves and Harrison turnpike, the Colerain pike, a mile of whose course lies through the northeastern corner, and other important roads, some of which lie, as in the newer States settled upon Congress lands, on the section lines. The Cincinnati & Westwood narrow-gauge railway lies mostly in Green township, and is at present the only iron road within its limits. Starting at Ernst Station, on the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad, in the city, it comes up the valley of Lick run, from which it soon diverges to reach the higher ground, across which it runs for more than three miles in a general northwesterly direction, stopping for the present at Robb's, near Bridgetown. The projected Cincinnati & Venice railway, if built upon the surveyed line, will enter the township from the north at St. Jacob's, proceed nearly due south four miles, and intersect this road just south of Cheviot.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 4,930 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Old Gothic Barns between 1819 and
1975: 2,230 Fungi, 1,650 Animalia, 868 Plantae, 142 Protozoa, 21 Unrecorded, 18 Chromista, 1 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A Schwartz, A. Braun, A. F. Braun and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of Old Gothic Barns: 1 past producer, 1 producer.
1 still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Cincinnati, the town this property stands in, in 70 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 25 thunderstorm wind, 17 hail, 14 flash flood, 7 flood.
The reports record 1 injury. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Numerous roads were flooded throughout the Cincinnati area and some basements were flooded. Flooding also caused some damage at Reading High School and Whitaker Elementary School.
Lightning struck a home causing a fire in the attic, which spread toward the second floor before being extinguished. Significant fire and water damage occurred to the home.
High water was reported on several roads in the downtown Cincinnati area and the near West Side. A retaining wall collapsed onto a roadway near the intersection of State Avenue and Ernst Street and a building was flooded on Poplar Street. Also, an apartment basement flooded on Linn Street and one resident needed to be rescued.
14 papers published in this town,
digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 0 issues,
0 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be
looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
10,876 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
constructed of large hand-hewn timbers, and the wall treatment is door. A similar door is located near the southwest side, and has been rear of the building forms a lean-to area, but appears to be original CONDITION UNEXPOSED The EXCELLENT RUINS The larger of the two buildings has steeply pitched intersecting roofs The smaller building also has steeply pitched intersecting gabled roofs. These two barns are noted for the purity of their Gothic Revival style. CHECK ONE XUNALTERED to the structure. XORIGINAL SITE located at the second floor level are rounded arch with louvered At the rear of the building is a small addition with gable roof. doors are trimmed in wood and also have large "x"'s in the center.
with the wooden "x"is located south of and adjacent to this bigger wooden "X" across it. A smaller single door, also rounded arch and All other windows throughout the building have louvered shutters. The cupola is capped by a large, pointed spire. The gable ends are DATE forming semi-circular arches and flanking a smaller single door. evenly spaced below the overhanging eaves.The building is frame, The most distinguishing feature is a cupola located at the junction of and consists of two doors that form a semi-circular arch when closed. The cupola is square with rounded arch openings on all Three windows are located at the second floor board and batten. and a sill separating the two arched areas.Louvered shutters cover replaced with a window.
This section also appears to be original to the building. The arch and the doors are trimmed with wood and each door has a large -GOOD the two roofs. AREAS OF
Statement of significance
The Old Gothic Barns with their steeply pitched intersecting roofs, are 1700-1799 INVENTION CONSERVATION X1800-1899 ECONOMICS RELIGION ART ARCHEOLOGY-HISTORIC PHILOSOPHY COMMUNICATIONS THEATER PERIOD SIGNIFICANCE LAW INDUSTRY PREHISTORIC SCIENCE AGRICULTURE support this assumption. MILITARY SCULPTURE XARCHITECTURE _EXPLORATION/SETTLEMENT LITERATURE _TRANSPORTATION rare and excellent examples of Gothic Revival architecture applied to MUSIC style applied to farm structures. The barns are located on what was originally the William Bell Estate. is unique in farm architecture in southwestern Ohio.
_ENGINEERING _EDUCATION Bell was an early pioneer to Green Township and had massive land are the only farm buildings in this area of the state that present -1500-1599 The Old Gothic Barns are an excellent example of the Gothic Revival such a pure adaptation of this style. -1600-1699 prior to his death in 1847 but documentation is not available to -1400-1499 _COMMERCE _1900- _COMMUNITY PLANNING and windows, are all typical of the Gothic Revival style. The steeply ARCHEOLOGY-PREHISTORIC farm buildings. The buildings are basically unaltered and retain much
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76001438, 71 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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