Things you don't expect to see traveling down a street: an entire house! While it might seem hard to believe, picking up and moving a house was not unusual during the 1800s, as the cost of building a new home was greater than moving it. In more recent decades, moving a home was usually done as an effort to save a historic building from being razed.
Worthington has seen its fair share of homes that started life in one location, then moved to another—or even, in the case of the Old Rectory—to a third. The Old Rectory started its existence facing the southeast corner of the Village Green, serving as a home for St. John's Episcopal Church rectors and their families. In 1924, the church sold the house to the Colburn family, who moved it to 799 Hartford, on the site of the current Old Worthington Library. By 1965, it served as administrative offices for Worthington Schools. Meanwhile, the Worthington Public Library was in search of a new facility, having outgrown its location at 752 High Street. In 1976, the schools and the library agreed on a swap, with the school administration moving to 752 High Street and the library claiming the site of the Old Rectory for a new library building. With the Old Rectory considered too historically and architecturally important to tear down, the Worthington Historical Society came to the rescue, purchasing the building and, in the middle of the night on July 6-7, 1978, moving it through downtown Worthington to its current destination at 50 West New England Avenue.
Another notable home was the Hannah Bishop house, which was built on the northwest corner of High Street and W. Dublin-Granville Road and home to the Bishop family in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The house was moved to its current location at 782 Hartford Street in 1921. Particularly notable were two African-American residents of the home in the 1920s and '30s, Keary and Maude Mabra. Maude was the first woman in Worthington to vote in 1920, and Keary operated a barbershop from the house.
More recently, the Griswold house was moved from 788 Hartford Street to 95 E. Dublin-Granville Road on November 18, 2001. The Griswold was another three-location home, having been built in 1826 by Ezra Griswold on the corner of Morning Street and Dublin-Granville Road. After the home's last occupant, Mila Jeanette Griswold, died in 1998, contractor Bill Owens assumed the cost of the move and renovation of the home, saving it from being razed.
