My Fascination with Western Reserve Town Squares

By Wally Huskonen

I grew up in Andover, Ashtabula County, Ohio. This village bordering the Ohio state line with Pennsylvania has a square exactly in its middle. The village square requires travelers on U.S. Route 6 (east-west) and Ohio Route 7 (north and south) driving through or into the village to circle what is called the Andover Public Square. It takes up an area of approximately 1 acre and features a bandstand in its southeast quadrant.

During my growing up years, I enjoyed attending the annual Andover Street Fair during which food booths and concession rides filled the Square. 

If you live in a city, village, or township in the Western Reserve, you may be interested in a little bit of research I did on these features of our region. I asked CoPilot (Microsoft’s AI app) “How many town squares are there in the Western Reserve?”

CoPilot’s answer: There is no definitive count of town squares in the Western Reserve, but dozens of communities—especially those founded before 1850—feature traditional New England-style village greens or public squares.

The Western Reserve, a 3.3-million-acre region in northeastern Ohio settled primarily by New Englanders, was deliberately laid out with town centers modeled after Connecticut and Massachusetts villages. These typically included a central green or square surrounded by civic buildings like churches, schools, and town halls. While not every settlement retained its original square, many still do, and some have restored or commemorated them.