Introduction – The Public Square in Medina, Ohio

The Square is the center of the City of Medina, which is the county seat of Medina County. In the center of the Square sits a dignified, white, ornate, Victorian Gazebo with four blocks, one facing the pavilion on each side, forming a perfect square around it, framing it from a bird’s eye view. The Square is lined with Victorian-styled buildings, streets, lamps, sidewalks, and trees. It is reminiscent of a neighborhood in Beacon Hill near the Capitol building in Boston, Massachusetts, but smaller, and with a certain, distinct Midwestern charm. The brownstones and street lamps lining Beacon Hill were built in the 1700′s and 1800′s. The buildings and street lamps lining Medina Public Square are not quite as old, built in the 1870′s and restored in the 1970′s.

The Gazebo is a large, white, octagonal, ornamented, pavilion with bright lights shining down from its ceiling. Orchestras and bands perform concerts inside the Gazebo on summer evenings to large crowds sprawled across the grassy park on picnic blankets surrounding it. Local acting companies perform plays such as “Romeo and Juliet” to crowds equally large and engaged. I watched one of my babysitters get married in this white pavilion, on a bright and sunny summer day. She made a big deal out of how much I had grown up when she saw me after the ceremony with my mother.

The four streets that form the Square are lined with Victorian-styled shops and restaurants, a fire station, and what was formerly known as the Old Phoenix National Bank. It was originally named Old Phoenix National Bank because when the Public Square burned down for the second time in 1870, and had to be entirely rebuilt from the ground up in a uniformly Victorian style, the new bank symbolized the sacred bird of mythology that was reborn from its own ashes. Today Old Phoenix National Bank is known as First Merit National Bank, a much less poetic, but perhaps, more pragmatic name. It is a sign that the world is constantly changing and becoming more modern, no matter how much I may want things to be the way they used to be, as happy and magical as a Disney movie that can be rewound and replayed again and again on my first VCR.

Medinians enjoy a summer concert performed inside the Gazebo.