Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1978. 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 Athens State Hospital Cow Barn is a historical agriculture building, art gallery, and cultural heritage center on the grounds of the former state hospital in Athens, Ohio, United States. One of several agricultural buildings associated with the hospital, it has been named a historic site.”
Wikipedia article Athens State Hospital Cow Barn, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 19 National Register listings in Athens County · listed in 1978 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Athens County.
National Register reference number.78002003- 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 Athens township, The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
fired at and wounded the old bear, and then, wishing to see his dog kill one of the cubs, laid down his gun and. hissed his dog on to attack the cub - the old bear and other cub beating a retreat. Boyles, becoming interested in the fight between his dog and the cub, had approached near them, when he was disagreeably startled by seeing the old bear return, brought by the cries of the cub, and place herself between him and his gun.
Athens county - a county which, one of the earliest organized in Ohio, contains, perhaps, a greater number of surviving pioneers than any other in the state except Washington. The desire, on the part of these pioneers, to see preserved in a somewhat connected form the annals of the first settlement of the county and of their own labors and struggles in founding society here, is not an unnatural one. '^Near is thy forgetfulness of all things," said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his aphorisms, ^' and near the forgetfulness of thee by all." With something of this feeling,^ it is, perhaps, that the old always dwell with such keen pleasure on the events and associations of their early life. Conscious of approaching change and of waning strength, they love period when the eye was bright, the brain active, and the step elastic. There is, also, a feeling among men that the record of a well-spent and useful life, even if humble, deserves to be remembered. They derive a pardonable pleasure from the thought that posterity will not wholly ignore nor forget them.
It is in recognition of this feeling that these pages have been written. To preserve some account of the lives and labors of the early settlers, who bore so honorable a part in converting a wilderness into a great commonwealth, and to rescue from total oblivion some matters that seem worthy of being narrated, is the modest object of this sketch concerning the history of Athens county.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 21 fires within 5 miles of Athens State Hospital Cow Barn between
2006 and 2020, burning about 32 acres in total. 1 started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
9
Debris and open burning
8
Power generation/transmission/distribution
2
Natural
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,278 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Athens State Hospital Cow Barn between 1896 and
1975: 1,070 Animalia, 151 Plantae, 47 Fungi, 4 Unrecorded, 4 Protozoa, 1 Chromista, 1 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. D. Selby, A. H. Blickle, Auburn E. Brower 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 National Weather Service names
Athens, the town this property stands in, in 71 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 41 thunderstorm wind, 21 hail, 3 flash flood, 2 lightning.
The reports record 8 injuries. 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.
Thunderstorm wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph caused tree damage and collapsed a county fair tent. The tent collapsed during the swine judging, with as many as 400 people inside. Many of those caught in the tent, appeared stunned, but calm. Eight people received minor injuries. No animals were hurt. One witness said., " It was the best example I've seen of everyone working together." The nearby anemometer at the Scalia Lab on the Ohio University campus reported a wind gust of 41 mph. In a related incident, an indirect death occurred while a 74 old man lost control of his tractor and it overturned. He was trying to take shelter from the midday storm. He was 60 feet from his residence on Hooper Ridge Road, near Amesville.
Numerous large trees and branches were blown down in the city. The Emergency Management Agency reported 2 houses were severely damaged by fallen trees. Trees also fell across roads, sidewalks, driveways, and yards. Electrical power was lost.
An EF1 tornado with maximum winds up to 100 mph touched down near Angel Ridge Road in Athens County. The tornado tracked east-northeast crossing Gura Road, Long Run Road, and North Coolville Ridge Road before lifting just past Kincade Road. Damage was limited to snapped and uprooted trees and some snapped power poles along the path, with the worst damage occurring in a 300 yard wide swath along Long Run Road. This is the seventh documented tornado in Athens County and the first since 2018.
Numerous trees were downed throughout the city of Athens. The Athens County airport reported a wind gust of 58 miles per hour around the time these trees were downed.
The Hocking River at Athens rose out of its 20 foot flood stage late in the afternoon on February 19th. The river remained above its flood stage for only a brief period of time and was back in its banks that evening. Low lying areas around the river and the nearby campground observed minor flooding between Athens and Coolville while the Hocking River was out of its banks.
The Hocking River at Athens exceeded its flood stage of 20 feet early in the morning of April 5th, then continued to rise to a crest of around 20.8 feet the next morning. The river slowly fell back below flood stage early in the morning on the 7th. Low areas, the campground, and private camps along the river between Athens and Coolville began to flood during the time the river was out of its banks. Low sections of Harmony Road and baseball fields in Nelsonville also flooded.
Flooding was observed on Strouds Road, State Route 690, and State Route 550 between State Routes 690 and 329. A van was stranded in flood water at Sand Rock Road in Amesville. Another vehicle became stranded on State Route 690.
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
2,344 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
The Athens State Hospital Cow Barn, containing 15,330 square feet, 1s The large airy interior consists of & lower level, which housed the the records do not indicate the extent of the remodeling, which appears which included a two story brick dormitory for patients, who worked in except the cow barn were demolished by the state, July 27, 1977. The west, from the barn's south end. CONDITION UNEXPOSED DETERIORATED DESCRIPTION EXCELLENT located. FAIR quarter elliptical fanlight above and multiple horizontal panels below. CHECK ONE surface is partially overgrown by grass and weeds. XGOOD elaborate grain conduction system. which flank a single large rectangular entrance with sliding double barn multi-light window above.
rectangular mullion windows with three(multiple light)vertical sash, The barnyard east of the building is paved with brick.The brick The exterior walls of the frame loft under the gable ends are teen bays on each side by rectangular mullion windows with sets of five pyramidal roofs surmounted by ornate finials. has exposed wooden plates, posts and bracing, and the remains of an Nine gabled roof dormers, project from the bottom slopes of the the dairy barns,and a handsome two story Italianate house built by Records show that the barn underwent remodeling in l950.However, level of the portico consists of an open gallery with three plain pillars, which support an enclosed frame half story with a gambrel roof.
have semi-elliptical arches and double sliding doors, each of which has.a The long north- south axis of the building is divided into four- _UNALTERED XLORIGINAL SITE Extending from the facade, which faces the east, is a story feeding and milking area, and the loft, which housed the hay, straw and Capt. James Bower, where the herdsman resided. All of the buildings a one and one half story building.
The Athens Asylum for the Insane, now the Athens State Hospital, was Bower, a Civil War veteran, born near Pittsburg. In 1855 Bower came to vaccinated for brucellosis. Also through his efforts, the first Ohio state 1940, at the Athens State Hospital dairy farm. the needs of the mental institution, which had 1,294 patients in 1905, the 1914 1400-1499 INVENTION ART ENGINEERING TRANSPORTATION BUILDER/ARCHITECT SCULPTURE SIGNIFICANCE POLITICS/GOVERNMENT ARCHEOLOGY-HISTORIC PERIOD MILITARY CONSERVATION improvement efforts through selective breeding produced world champion _EDUCATION saved the barn from demolition.
SCIENCE The dairy operation served institutional therapeutic and job training XARCHITECTURE _1800-1899 AGRICULTURE _RELIGION _COMMUNICATIONS - 1700-1799 of significant advancements in the field.of animal husbandry. -1500-1599 In l9l2 the hospital purchased the Bower farm and residence.The of a farm building associated with a state institution.sIt wag the site - INDUSTRY The Athens State Hospital Cow Barn is significant as a unique example The -LAW SOCIAL/HUMANITARIAN In 1918, Mr. Homer Gall, Sr., also & graduate of the Ohio State dairy farm supplled all the feed for the dairy, poultry, swine and beef A community effort, backed by the Hock- ing Valley Arts Council, to adaptively use the barn for an arts center, residence, later used as the herdsman's house, was that of Lt.
James production records and began to develop a purebred herd. In more recent times farm operations have been greatly diminished. Herd institution calf from an artificially inseminated cow was born July 4, with thirty-one patients in caring for the herd.In addition to supplying state institution herds in Ohio tested for tuberculosis and tested and cause of the ease of preparation.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 78002003, 18 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.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
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.
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.
Block
