Remarkable Ohio

Counties

Below is a complete listing of all Ohio Historical Markers. To find a detailed marker listing including text, photographs, and locations, click on a county below. Our listing is updated by the markers program as new markers are installed and older markers are reported damaged or missing.

34-25 The Bank Block

Side A: Built by pioneering retail developer Don Monroe Casto Sr., the Bank Block was dedicated in 1928. Considered one of the earliest regional shopping centers in the United States, it innovatively featured 350 free parking spaces-complete with uniformed attendant-to accommodate the rapidly growing numbers of automobile-owning suburbanites. The Bank Block’s first tenants included several competing national grocers (Kroger, A&P, and Piggly Wiggly), the First Citizens Trust (later Ohio National Bank), a stationer, barber shop, and pharmacy. It remains the nucleus of Grandview’s commercial district. Casto, once described as “the man who changed the shopping habits of the free world,” also built the Town and Country Shopping Center in Whitehall and was a dominant figure in retail commercial development in the Midwest for much of the 20th century.
Side B: Same
Sponsors: Ohio Bicentennial Commission, The Longaberger Company, The Grandview Heights-Marble Cliff Historical Society, and The Ohio Historical Society
Address: 1279 Grandview Avenue, 
Grandview Heights, 
OH, 
43212
Location: 1279 Grandview Avenue
Latitude: 39.9838017
Longitude: -83.0449860