Granville - One of Ohio's Best Hometowns
Granville has been selected by Ohio Magazine as one of Ohio's Best Hometowns for 2010.
Ohio Magazine - November 2009
Neighborly Spirit - by Jennifer Rodgers (Source: Ohio Magazine, July 2010 issue)
"Any small-town resident knows that summer is synonymous with fresh food, community gatherings and peaceful, laid-back afternoons. And Granville does small-town summers by the book.
A sun-drenched carriage ride from Granville Carriage Co. is an idyllic way to begin your Granville experience. The tour, led by Toby, a 17-hand gray Percheron gelding, winds through the village’s uptown and back into shaded residential streets as Toby’s owner, Diana Jones, points out Granville highlights. Part history, part folklore and entirely scenic, the tour is a great way to learn about Granville’s past and present before exploring on your own.
Satisfy post-ride hunger with a sandwich or ice cream at an umbrella-topped table outside Victoria’s Parlour, or with a garden-side bite at the historic — and as rumor has it, haunted — Buxton Inn. If it’s Saturday, though, your best bet is to create your own picnic basket with a trip to the Granville Farmers Market where colorful produce fills the stalls, the scent of fresh-cut flowers fills the air and friends and neighbors gather in clusters along the sidewalks of Broadway, the village’s main thoroughfare. If you visit Granville during the summer, you’re more than likely to be a part of this weekly tradition. Community gatherings define summer in Granville, and the market is just the start. . ."
Granville - by Jennifer Rodgers (Source: Ohio Magazine)
"Though the evening crowd has waned — and more glasses are being carefully polished and returned to wood cabinetry than being refilled — Granville’s Wine Cache is still a hub of early-weekend commotion.
“Weren’t you at Whit’s earlier? I was behind you in line,” says one customer, approaching a fellow fan of the village’s popular frozen custard shop.
“Have you been to the farmers market, yet? I’ll be there tomorrow — I’ll look for you!” says another, extending an invitation to out-of-town guests.
Though it seems like a scene from a small-screen, “everybody knows your name”-style watering hole, the genial spirit of Granville is apparent throughout the town’s New England-inspired streets, and applies to both neighbors and visitors. . ."
Though it seems like a scene from a small-screen, “everybody knows your name”-style watering hole, the genial spirit of Granville is apparent throughout the town’s New England-inspired streets, and applies to both neighbors and visitors. . ."
Granville's Community Spirit
Granville is the kind of town where spring blossoms take turns from yard to yard in coming to their full blown peak, nodding agreeably to overarching rainbows against not quite threatening skies; where the slanting summer light picks up only the most golden dust to catch the light as outdoor concerts end; where the leaves turn color through autumn in artistically arranged masses with complimentary colors; where the icicles hang with particular grace even in the frozen but well-lit heart of winter. . .
Education in Granville
When the Four Corners were laid out in the original plat, a schoolhouse was planned along with a church as the first public building shared by all.
The New England forebearers from Granville, Massachusetts, had already set a high priority on learning and scholarship, a value they carried with them in their ox carts and among their belongings.
Books and musical instruments and a love of education were as important to the initial settlers as a sharp axe and sturdy yoke for the oxen, and they were put to work just as quickly. . .
Entertainment in Granville
Those early Welsh and New England pioneers liked to talk about “making your own fun.”
That may have been making the best of necessity back in 1805, but in Granville today, we still have a taste for entertainment that is of our own making.
The Old Fashioned Fourth of July is a week of local musicians and parades with floats that bear all the proud hallmarks of “we made it ourselves.” Broadway is blocked off for an amusement area with a midway of rides and games, along with a row of booths where food and crafts are made and sold by area residents. Guess where the longer lines can be found? . . .
Health and Safety in Granville
Main Street, just off the Four Corners, along a stretch of brick pavement that abuts Broadway, is home to a block long Farmer’s Market, from summer into fall each Saturday morning – attending the Farmer’s Market is as much entertainment as it is shopping for many village and township residents!
There’s a health factor that many of us in Granville swear by, as much as the worth of eating food grown out of the same terrain you’re standing on, and that is the element of knowing your neighbors.
If you know, really know, the people who live next door and across the street and around the corner, there seems to be what the medical folks call “a protective factor” about that kind of knowing and being known. . .
Granville's Business Environment
Granville has been interested in business since the earliest days of the settlement. We cut down trees and made all-wooden clocks, we dug the Welsh Hills and followed a seam of iron ore far enough to start the Granville Furnace and make cast iron stoves to ship down the Ohio & Erie Canal.
Education has been, in many ways, one of our most reliable industries, starting with a college started here by Baptists in 1831 as the Granville Theological and Literary Institution, and now a very successful private liberal arts undergraduate school of 2,100 students, Denison University.
Back when it was just Granville College, and before the businessman William S. Denison made the donation that put his name on the place, there were three other academic institutions in the village, all attracting students from around Ohio and back into New England. Some for women, who would have been in a separate school before the Civil War, and competing schools for young men. . .
Granville's Culture and Heritage
There may not be many places in Ohio where March 1 sees a number of red dragons on a white and green background fluttering from a multitude of homes.
St. David’s Day is a day for Welsh pride; here in the shadow of the Welsh Hills, we have a scattering of street names and buildings that echo the hills of Wales, and are equally hard to pronounce . . . or spell: Gwennol Drive, Bedwyn Bach Lane, Merywen Circle, Ty Tawel Farm – and Bryn Du. It all goes back to Bryn Du.
For the Welsh heritage that is so strong in the Granville area, you can credit, or blame, someone named Jones. And no one ever had trouble spelling Jones, which, along with Rees and Morgan, was the bulk of the early mark on the map by Welsh settlers around the village. . .