Published 1 month ago

Ohio's Circleville ditched the grid system. Then it got squared.

Summary by Ground News

Circleville, Ohio, was founded in 1810 on an ancient Hopewell mound. An octagonal courthouse was built on the mound, which became the midpoint for two concentric streets that were connected by straight streets radiating from the center. With such an extraordinary grid, the choice for the new town's name had a certain inevitability.

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Ohio's Circleville ditched the grid system. Then it got squared.

When you’re “squaring the circle,” you’re attempting the impossible. Yet in the mid-19th century, that’s just what the good citizens of Circleville, Ohio, did: They straightened out the circular grid on which their city had been laid out a few decades earlier. Mathematically impossible So why didn’t they change its name to Squareville? Perhaps because, similar to its curious origins, strange things keep happening in and to this small town 25 mil…

1 month ago

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