AREA HISTORY

TEMPERANCE ROW

Westerville’s Temperance Row Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places, recognized by the National Park Service as the nationally significant enclave where leaders of the Anti-Saloon League of America lived, raised their families and in 1919 won Prohibition against the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquor. 

The 20 homes they built and occupied 1910-1935 were styled along the lines of an agrarian-romantic movement that espoused rustic Craftsman architecture, using natural materials and designed to enhance wholesome home life seen as instrumental in social reform. 

The Anti-Saloon League was one of the most powerful special-interest political movements in American history, and non-alcoholic Westerville was the league’s kind of town, “so dry,” said ASLA famed Capitol Hill lobbyist Wayne Wheeler, “that you have to sprinkle the streets after a rain.” 

For guidebooks and tours, please visit the Westerville History Center & Museum, 126 S. State St., two blocks from Temperance Row.