Hello, Bexley.
Stay curious.

Welcome to Bexley Local, a free community guide from Smart Ride Central Ohio. Explore local history, find places to visit, and check upcoming events with links to their organizers. This is an independent guide, not an official city service. Choose any story, or listen to the collection in order. You can replay it whenever you like, with no account, payment or time limit. If you are driving, set up before moving and leave the controls to a passenger. Let your next outing begin with a little curiosity.

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Bexley incorporated in 1908 when Bullit Park and Pleasant Ridge joined together. Bullit Park had developed with large homes and estates, while Pleasant Ridge was connected with the academic community around Capital University, which moved there in 1876. Bexley became a city in 1932. Its story brings together residential development, education and the daily life of a compact community. The city’s historical overview gives useful context for exploring Main Street and the neighborhoods beyond it without assuming that every part of Bexley began in the same way.

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Jeffrey Park combines wooded grounds, walking paths and recreation facilities in Bexley. The city describes a landscape that includes several kinds of woodland and garden habitat, alongside community programs associated with Jeffrey Mansion. It is a place to slow down and notice how a former estate can become part of everyday public life. Check current park and program information before visiting, especially for indoor activities or reserved facilities. Public grounds and scheduled programs do not always operate on the same terms.

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Imagine heading to a brand-new neighborhood movie theatre on Christmas Day. That is when Bexley's Drexel opened in 1937. Architect Robert Royce combined Art Deco and Art Moderne influences to give the theatre its distinctive character. Decades later, the building needed fresh energy. Jeff and Kathy Frank purchased the theatre business in 1981, renovated it, and celebrated its reopening with Ginger Rogers introducing Top Hat. Their programming helped establish the Drexel as a destination for independent, foreign, and documentary films. In 1991, one screen became three. Another turning point came in 2011, when Friends of the Drexel purchased the theatre and brought in CAPA to manage operations. The building joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2015. Its history makes a movie outing here part of a longer neighborhood story: audiences, owners, and supporters repeatedly choosing to keep a local screen alive. Before visiting, check the theatre's current films and showtimes, then take a moment to appreciate the marquee.

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In Bexley, visiting the arboretum does not necessarily mean finding a single garden gate. The city itself is the arboretum. Its official website describes Bexley as the first city in the United States to earn accreditation through the Morton Register of Arboreta. That distinction invites a different way of looking at familiar streets. A tree beside a sidewalk becomes part of a larger collection, and an everyday walk becomes a chance to notice bark, branching shapes, leaves, and seasonal changes. The arboretum credits generations of residents, businesses, and city workers for making trees a community priority. A citywide collection also has to coexist with homes, roads, utilities, and daily life. For visitors, that is part of its interest: people live and work within this landscape. Use the arboretum's website to explore tree information and guided walks, and enjoy public streets and parks while respecting private property. You can return to the same route in another season and find entirely different details.

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Bexley Public Library began in 1924 inside the building then serving as Bexley High School, now Montrose Elementary. It was a practical beginning for a community eager for books. The library's centennial history explains that a 1921 Ohio law allowed school districts to establish public libraries, creating a path for Bexley's Board of Education to act. Demand grew quickly. By 1927, the number of borrowers had increased by fifty-nine percent, and voters approved a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar bond issue for a dedicated building. Capital University offered land on Main Street through a rent-free lease. The new library opened in 1929, designed by architects O. C. Miller and R. R. Reeves with inspiration from seventeenth-century French and Italian architecture. Next time you visit, think about the different contributions behind that familiar destination: a school district, local voters, a university, and the readers who made more space necessary. The library's own history is a reminder that public places grow because communities decide they are worth building.

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Try picturing Capital University's arrival without the surrounding city you know today. According to Bexley Public Library's Main Street history, students and faculty moved to the new campus in May 1876, when farmland surrounded the site. The institution had received its university charter in 1850 and had previously occupied a location near Goodale Park in Columbus. By 1873, university leaders recognized that they needed room to grow. They accepted a proposal to buy land east of Alum Creek and establish a new campus. Its first building was Lehmann Hall, named for university president Wilhelm Lehmann. That move gives a useful starting point for understanding Bexley: the academic community was taking shape here before the village incorporated in 1908. When you pass the campus, imagine the transition from fields to classrooms, and the generations of students who followed. It is a reminder that a university's choice of location can become part of a neighborhood's identity for well over a century.

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A garden in Bexley offers a way to think about the whole state of Ohio. At the Governor's Residence, the Heritage Garden represents Ohio's five major natural regions. Its plantings interpret landscapes ranging from Lake Erie sand dunes to Appalachian terrain, alongside habitats such as woodlands and meadows. The Friends of the Ohio Governor's Residence and Heritage Garden explains that differences in soil, water, climate, and landforms help give each region its character. The house has its own story. Built for businessman Malcolm Jeffrey in 1925, it was donated to the state by the heirs of Florence Jeffrey Carlile in 1955. Governor C. William O'Neill became its first resident governor in 1957. Together, house and garden connect Bexley with state government, architecture, and natural history. This is an official residence, so plan through the published tour arrangements rather than treating it as a walk-in park. For a visitor, the garden offers an unusual question to carry home: which part of Ohio does this landscape bring to mind?

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