Harmar is a historic neighborhood in the city of Marietta,

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Located at the western side of the

confluence In geography, a confluence (also ''conflux'') occurs where two or more watercourses join to form a single channel (geography), channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main ...

of the Muskingum and

Rivers, it grew up around the early

Fort Harmar Fort Harmar was an early United States frontier military fort, built in pentagonal shape during 1785 at the confluence of the Ohio River, Ohio and Muskingum River, Muskingum rivers, on the west side of the mouth of the Muskingum River. It was bui ...

in the 1780s, being settled in conjunction with Marietta. After a period of forming part of Marietta, it existed separately beginning in 1837 before rejoining the mother city in 1890. Connected by bridge to the rest of the city, it retains much of its nineteenth-century architecture and landscape, and most of the neighborhood is now a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

History

The first pioneers of Marietta landed in April 1788, beginning by building cabins and planting crops along the river. They generally lived on the eastern side of the Muskingum, across from Fort Harmar,Andrews, Martin R., ed. ''History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio and Representative Citizens''.

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

: Biographical, 1902. but their farms were close enough to the fort that garrison troops routinely watched their farming activities, and their ventures across the river were not always peaceful, as pioneer Robert Warth was murdered by Indians just west of the fort on the flat land that later became occupied by the neighborhood. Until 1800, neither side of the river had an official legal status, but an act of the

Northwest Territory The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from part of the unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolution. Established ...

legislature incorporated the settled areas of both sides as the town of Marietta, effective January 1, 1801. Decades later, disagreements with city leaders prompted Harmar residents to request separation from the rest of the city, and on January 5, 1837, the

General Assembly A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company. Specific examples of general assembly include: Churches * General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of presby ...

passed an act incorporating Point Harmar separately from Marietta,
Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Ohio: Being the First Session of the Thirty-fifth General Assembly
'. Columbus: State of Ohio, 1837. which itself was reincorporated by an act of March 13, 1837. Believing the bill's provisions to be in accord with the desires of the residents, a legislative committee found itself to have been deceived after residents resolved almost unanimously to reject many of the provisions, and five days after Marietta's incorporation bill passed, the first act was repealed and replaced by a new act drafted to reflect the resolution of Harmar's electorate. This status continued until 1890, when the two municipalities were re-merged. The same year marked the end of Harmar's own legal school district, separate from the districts of Marietta and Marietta Township, which had been formed in 1866. On January 9, 1970, the neighborhood was the site of fire at the Harmar House Center nursing home, which ultimately killed 32 of the 46 residents."17 Reportedly Killed In Rest Home Blaze— Marietta, Ohio, Facility Burns With 42 Inside", ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', January 10, 1970, p1

Landscape

Architecturally, Harmar is a good example of Ohio communities planned in the nineteenth century. Its

grid plan In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogon ...

begins at Fort Harmar and proceeds along both rivers away from their confluence, with the wide tree-lined streets being oriented north-south and east-west rather than paralleling the rivers.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 2. St. Clair Shores: Somerset, 1999, 1382. Houses in the neighborhood include examples of various nineteenth-century architectural styles; the Federal,

Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture is a architectural style, style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada, ...

, and

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

styles are most significant, and the

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the arch ...

and

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

styles are also common. Since 1880, Harmar has been connected by bridge to Putnam Street in Marietta proper; the first bridge was destroyed in the

Great Flood of 1913 The Great Flood of 1913 occurred between March 23 and March 26, after major rivers in the central and eastern United States flooded from runoff and several days of heavy rain. Related deaths and damage in the United States were widespread and ...

and a

swing bridge A swing bridge (or swing span bridge) is a movable bridge that can be rotated horizontally around a vertical axis. It has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravit ...

constructed in its place,Hoehn, Howard R.
Putnam Street Bridge (Marietta Bridge)

Historic American Engineering Record Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). It administers three programs established to document historic places in the United States: Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American E ...

, 1997-12. although the bridge has since been replaced by a newer span that opened in September 2000.Biennial Transportation Improvement Program
Wood-Washington-Wirt Interstate Planning Commission, n.d, 9. Accessed 2016-01-04. State Route 7 formerly traversed the neighborhood, although the opening of the nearby Washington Street Bridge facilitated its rerouting away from the Putnam Street Bridge.

Historic district

In 1974, of Harmar was designated the Harmar

Historic District A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

and listed on the

. Forty-two buildings, plus the fort site and one

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an a ...

, were included in the district as

contributing properties In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distr ...

. In 1993, the district was expanded by the addition of more than two hundred contributing properties over an area of approximately ; the original district protected areas closer to the fort, while the later designation expanded the district to the base of the bluff at the far edges of the neighborhood. Not all of the contributing properties are still in existence, as the destroyed Putnam Street Bridge was included in the district, but the replacement span was designed to be compatible with the architecture of Harmar to the west and the larger Marietta Historic District at its eastern end.

References

{{authority control 1801 establishments in the Northwest Territory 1837 establishments in Ohio Populated places established in 1837 1890 disestablishments in Ohio Former municipalities in Ohio Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Marietta, Ohio Muskingum River National Register of Historic Places in Washington County, Ohio Neighborhoods in Ohio Ohio populated places on the Ohio River