Bexley

History

Bexley was named at the suggestion of an early resident, Col. Lincoln Kilbourne, in honor of his family's roots in Bexley, in London, England. The village of Bexley was incorporated in 1908 when prominent citizens of Bullitt Park to the north along Alum Creek, including industrialist and 35th mayor of Columbus Robert H. Jeffrey, agreed to merge with the Lutheran community of Pleasant Ridge to the south near the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio college, Capital University (established 1850) and the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary (now Trinity Lutheran Seminary) founded 1830. Both educational institutions today are affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Bullitt Park had been founded in 1889, when Logan M. Bullitt of Philadelphia submitted his first plat for the area. Wealthy citizens of Columbus continued to build urban townhouses and country homes to the east along Broad Street and Town Road (now Bryden Road), extending to Franklin Park. By the 1890s, several large homes were erected across Alum Creek in the Bullitt Park area, one of which became the original campus of the Columbus School for Girls, still an exclusive girls' private school in Bexley. The onset of the Spanish–American War was also instrumental in Bexley's history. In 1898, Ohio Governor Asa Bushnell chose a cluster of unsold lots around Broad and Drexel in Bullitt Park as an assembly site for state volunteers for the war. Camp Bushnell, as it was known, was home for three weeks to 8,000 Ohio recruits headed for Cuba. This led to the development of water and sewer lines for the soldiers, thus preparing the area for later real estate development in subsequent decades. By 1908, the residents of Bullitt Park, north of Main Street, and Pleasant Ridge, south of Main…

Geography

According to the 2010 census, the city has a total area of , of which (or 99.18%) is land and (or 0.82%) is water.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  62,867
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  55,892
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  47,698
• Carolina Chickadee

  Poecile carolinensis (Audubon, 1834) · Aves
  46,744
• Downy Woodpecker

  Dryobates pubescens (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  39,538
• House Finch

  Haemorhous mexicanus (P.L.Statius Müller, 1776) · Aves
  38,550
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  38,160
• Mourning Dove

  Zenaida macroura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  36,625

Most recent

• M 2.5 — 2026-02-22
  2 km NE of Hillsboro, Ohio
• M 3.4 — 2017-05-24
  1 km S of McArthur, Ohio
• M 2.6 — 2015-02-11
  8 km SE of Richmond Dale, Ohio
• M 3.5 — 2013-11-20
  2 km SW of Buchtel, Ohio