The Ashtabula Harbor Commercial District is a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

in the northern section of the city of

Ashtabula Ashtabula ( ) is the most populous city in Ashtabula County, Ohio, United States. It lies at the mouth of the Ashtabula River, on Lake Erie, northeast of Cleveland. At the 2020 census, the city had 17,975 people. Like many other cities in the ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Comprising a commercial section near the city's

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( ) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest avera ...

waterfront, the district includes buildings constructed largely in the late nineteenth century, at which time Ashtabula was a flourishing port city. Most of the buildings in the district were constructed between 1865 and 1878, although occasional buildings were erected in the early 1900s. The district's area has long been commercial; from its earliest years, the street running through the district was known as Bridge Street, because it terminates at a bridge spanning the Ashtabula River. Until it became part of the city of Ashtabula in the 1870s, Ashtabula Harbor was a separate municipality (it lies two miles north of the city's downtown), and Bridge Street its commercial sector.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 1. St. Clair Shores: Somerset, 1999, 25-26. The area's buildings vary greatly in appearance, with some surpassing others by several feet. Designs include examples of the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

, Queen Anne, and Neoclassical styles, while the construction materials are primarily brick with occasional

frame A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction *Framing (con ...

structures. The Ashtabula Harbor Commercial District was designated in 1975 and listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

at the same time, qualifying both because of its historically significant architecture and because of its place in area history; it gained this designation largely because it retains its late nineteenth-century appearance as a flourishing harbor's business district. Seventy-five contributing properties are located within the district's boundaries. In 1978, the city government created the Ashtabula Harbor Historical District, a substantially larger area including numerous residential streets as well as the federally designated commercial street. Since 2010, the city district's boundaries have extended from the river bridge to Lake Avenue and from Morton Drive along the river to the Walnut Beach Park on the lake. City ordinance forbids exterior alterations to buildings in the federally designated district unless the owner has first completed a process of gaining approval from the city's

historic preservation Historic preservation (US), built heritage preservation or built heritage conservation (UK) is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance. It is a philos ...

review board.The Ashtabula Harbor Historical District: How Historic District Zoning Affects You
. City of Ashtabula, n.d. Accessed 2014-12-28.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Ashtabula, Ohio Geography of Ashtabula County, Ohio Italianate architecture in Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Ashtabula County, Ohio Neoclassical architecture in Ohio Queen Anne architecture in Ohio Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio