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.
You can say this is all simply a state of mind and a way of seeing, but things really do look different in this remarkable village, where visitors rack their brains to come up with a way to describe the streetscapes with something other than “quaint” or “Rockwellian.”
New England characteristics and Greek Revival qualities set the tone for this more than 200-year-old community, settled by folk from Connecticut and Massachusetts in November 1805. Their wilderness-surveyed grid is still the template and frame for the many early buildings that line the village center and trace the farmers’ lanes that stretch into Granville Township. A monument, in the form of a tree stump, marks the place where the first tree was cut and used for a first public address to the gathered travelers. It stands at the intersection centering the survey, which is still called “the Four Corners.”
Public buildings were planned for the middle of town, and four churches now grace the corners of Broadway and Main Street, with complementary but unique steeples reflecting the various traditions and customs that still draw Granville residents together and yet point to their essential and essentially different character, house by house and family by family.
One example of this is the Community Picnic, held every other year since the inaugural bicentennial affair, where tables were set from the Four Corners to the foot of Sugarloaf Hill, across the southern edge of the Denison University campus. Thousands of village and township residents come and sit together, with each table displaying an utterly different look as to centerpieces, tableware, and dining. Some have homey baskets stuffed with home-made specialities—others with designer crates to set out a gourmet meal, half of which was delivered from halfway around the world. One table even had a hanging chandelier, which is a neat trick at an outdoor picnic!
Granville residents like to come together, to celebrate, to sing (like the full throated Welsh pioneers who snuck in before even the official pioneers arrived, leaving their name on the Welsh Hills that frame the township), to debate, to deliberate, to listen. And when we come together, we like to proudly share our differences, our uniquenesses, even our peculiarities. This is Granville, and things are different here, which is exactly how we like it.
Copyright 2009 by Jeff Gill