Tremont House Tour

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The Tremont House was built in 1846.  Next year (2021) will be its 175th birthday!  If you worked in the Tremont House (at Leonard’s Pharmacy, for instance) or have stories about the Tremont House, please let us know.  We would like to collect as much as we can about this grand old building to help celebrate its 175 years of life.

Welcome to the Bellevue Historical Society's Tremont House. It is one of the oldest and most distinctive buildings in Bellevue. It was opened in 1846 by Loel and Samuel B. Chandler who operated a hotel on the second floor to serve stagecoach passengers traveling on the Western Reserve and Maumee Pike which today is U. S. Route 20. Its elegance in such a remote region must have been awe inspiring at the time. The three-story brick building featured Greek Revival architecture with six fluted columns on each floor. A belvedere on the roof topped off its classic lines. Named after a famous hotel in Boston, an early advertisement by the Chandlers boasted that the Tremont House was "as good a building as can be found in Northern Ohio." At the heart of the community of Bellevue, the Tremont House is the most prominent building in street scenes throughout the

town's history. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. The Society plans to return The Tremont House to its 1846 grandeur. It will become the home for the Society's vast collection of artifacts and pictures which tell the story of Bellevue's history.


Located at the intersection of North West Street and East Main Street, the Tremont House's location alone makes the site significant. In 1662, British King Charles II granted a Charter to the colony of Connecticut. This land became known as the Western Reserve. It extended 120 miles from Pennsylvania's western border to the line which is Bellevue's present day West Street. What an appropriate name! Of the vast Western Reserve, 500,000 acres of the western part were given by Connecticut as reimbursement to those Connecticut citizens whose property was burned by British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. They received approximately one acre of land for each dollar of loss by fire. Therefore, this region became known as the Firelands. This also accounts for the obvious New England influence in the area's architecture and culture. Present day West Street is the dividing line between Sandusky and Huron Counties.


Main Street, Route 20, was a part of the Western Reserve and Maumee Pike which was established in 1823 as the first east-west road from eastern Ohio to Toledo. Stage coaches regularly stopped at the Tremont House to allow passengers to rest and refresh themselves.