German Village Haus and Garten Tour

Greg and I spent Sunday afternoon strolling around German Village on the occasion of the neighborhood's 52nd Annual Haus and Garten Tour. 

German Village, located just south of downtown Columbus was home to (as the name implies) the city's large population of German immigrants beginning in the early 19th century through the start of the 20th. The neighborhood declined due to anti-German sentiment over the course of the World Wars, and by the 1950s a good chunk had been demolished and the remainder was considered a slum. But a massive preservation effort was undertaken beginning in the 1960s as a result of the efforts of a few far-sighted individuals who were able to convince friends and friends-of-friends to buy in. The entire neighborhood is now on the National Register of Historic Places. It's a fantastically frozen-in-time collection of brick (including sidewalks and streets) and clapboard, residential and commercial, with plenty of postage-stamp gardens and window boxes thrown in for good measure.

I spy a Sputnik. So very in love with these light fixtures. But that's a story for a different day.

Even the weedies are all charming and variegated.

I ♥ white hydrangeas. Much more appealing than those blues and pinks that just look like they're trying too hard and aren't hardy at all to boot. I miss you Annabelle (the variety on the right of which I had one at each front corner of our house in Kalamazoo).

To be quite honest, we didn't actually make it to too many of the stops on the tour. The lines to get through the houses and gardens were fairly long and eventually our tummies got the better of us. Schmidt's Restaurant and Sausage Haus is a Columbus must-do that we hadn't done yet. So the time was then. The family's been making sausages since 1886 and doing the restaurant thing since 1967. It lived up to its history. After a large portion of German fare and a large beer (though not the largest they offer), we did a bit more wandering.

If you're ever in Columbus, do check out German Village. It's lovely to stroll around every season of the year. And there are some lovely shops and fantastic restaurants.

♡,

Erin