We’ll leave German Village and Columbus today with this final look at greenspace. Much like Lafayette Square in St. Louis, the center of German Village is a park, the aforementioned Schiller Park. Originally known as City Park (its western boundary street preserves that name), the current name reflects the strong German heritage of the neighborhood.

It is typical of a Victorian walking park in that there is no centralized axis or layout, but rather just a series of winding paths, including a picturesque lake.

The late summer flowers were looking beautiful when I was there. Like many cities, Columbus was wracked by anti-German sentiment, and the greenspace was temporarily renamed Washington Park before reverting to Schiller after World War I. The statue of Johann Cristoph Friedrich von Schiller, the famous German playwright and poet, was cast in Germany. I was not able to find out the name of the sculptor.