How Was Canton Built

Canton is built in the pattern of an Ohio county seat, with one extraordinary monument on a hill above it.

The memorial

The McKinley National Memorial is a double-domed mausoleum of pink Milford granite, 29 metres high and 24 across, set on a terrace at the top of a monumental stair of 108 steps arranged in flights. The design was chosen by competition and the whole thing was paid for by public subscription from across the United States, with schoolchildren contributing. Inside, the president and his wife lie in dark green granite sarcophagi beneath the dome, on a floor laid out as a cross.

The grid

Bezaleel Wells laid out a standard grid around a central public square in 1805, and the nineteenth-century commercial blocks that survive downtown are brick with cast-iron and terracotta detail, several now housing galleries and bars.

Industrial fabric

The Timken works and the rail corridors define the city’s eastern and southern edges, and brick industrial buildings are being converted downtown.

The Hall of Fame

The 1963 building with its distinctive ribbed dome, sometimes described as resembling a football tee, extended several times and now part of a larger campus including a stadium.

Saxton House

The house where McKinley courted and married Ida Saxton, and where the couple lived, survives downtown and is now the First Ladies National Historic Site — an Italianate town house of the 1840s, run with the National Park Service and devoted to the role of presidents’ wives.

Housing

Timber and brick worker housing in the inner neighbourhoods, and larger houses in the north-west quarter.