This building is located at 181 East Broad Street, Columbus and has a long history associated with it. First built for Benjamin Smith, noted railroad contractor in the mid-nineteenth century, the house was temporarily the Ohio Governor's mansion in the 1880s, then sold to the Columbus Club, a group of prominent business leaders, in 1887. The contract for building his home provided that each of the bricks used in the structure was to be pressed in Philadelphia, wrapped separately in paper, and shipped to Columbus, Ohio. The two-story mansard building is styled in the French Second Empire tradition with numerous ornamental elements such as round-headed mansard roof dormers, hoodmolds formed of rope molding with centered, stylized anthemion motifs, slate roof tiles, and intricately detailed paneled brick chimneys. The interior captures Victorian style with a grand curving stairway, mantelpieces, and hardwood trimmed arched doorways.
