A former bank in Old North Columbus now deals in craft beer and loud guitars. Ace of Cups at 2619 North High Street was opened in 2011 by Marcy Mays - guitarist of the beloved Columbus band Scrawl - who turned the handsome old bank building into the north campus area's essential bar and concert venue: a 300-capacity concert room within a 375-capacity building, run by and for the city's musicians, artists and scene lifers. A decade of Mays's stewardship made the room a fixture for up-and-coming .....

Seven varsity sports share one roof in the newest corner of Ohio State's athletics district. The Covelli Center at 2640 Fred Taylor Drive in Columbus opened on 4 June 2019 after two years of construction, a 48.9-million-dollar, 100,000-square-foot arena designed by Moody Nolan with Populous and built by Gilbane, seating 3,700 with standing room. It gave permanent competition homes to Buckeye wrestling, men's and women's volleyball, men's and women's gymnastics and both fencing programs - more th.....

American soccer's modern era has a birthplace, and it is this steel grandstand in Columbus. Historic Crew Stadium, at 1 Black and Gold Boulevard on the Ohio Expo Center grounds, opened on 15 May 1999 as Columbus Crew Stadium - the first stadium ever built by a Major League Soccer club, the 28.5-million-dollar gamble by founder Lamar Hunt that triggered the league-wide wave of soccer-specific stadiums. The opening statement was emphatic: 24,741 fans - an overflow above the 22,555 seats - watched.....

A father-daughter team curates three separate live shows every day the doors open - a music operation wearing a restaurant's clothes. Natalie's Grandview, at 945 King Avenue just north of Grandview Heights in Columbus, opened in December 2019 in the 9,000-square-foot former home of the King Avenue 5 sports bar. The founders had already proven the model: Charlie and Natalie Jackson built Natalie's Coal-Fired Pizza and Live Music in Worthington from 2012, pairing gourmet pies from an Italian-impo.....

Billed as one of the longest continually running rock clubs in the United States, the Newport Music Hall on North High Street has been a fixture of live music in Columbus for more than half a century. Set directly across from the Ohio State University campus, the historic hall began life as a movie theatre before becoming a music venue, and its grand, faded interior has hosted a remarkable procession of artists on their way up and at the height of their fame. The venue is a general-admission ha.....

It replaced a condemned grandstand and became the Ohio State Fair's big-name stage. The Celeste Center at the Ohio Expo Center, 717 East 17th Avenue in Columbus, opened in 1991 and seats 10,200 for concerts in an amphitheatre-style bowl. The name honours a governor: Richard F. Celeste, Ohio's chief executive through the 1980s and later United States Ambassador to India, whose administration oversaw the fairgrounds redevelopment after the old State Fair Grandstand was demolished in 1990. The bu.....

They call it The Barn, and it has been standing since the end of the First World War. The Taft Coliseum - long known as the Fairgrounds Coliseum or Ohio Expo Center Coliseum - opened in 1918 at the Ohio Expo Center and State Fairgrounds, 717 East 17th Avenue in Columbus. The building predates almost everything around it: built for livestock judging and high-class horse shows, it hosted the second-ever NCAA Wrestling Championships in 1929 and served as home court for Ohio State men's basketball .....

When it opened it was the largest poured-concrete structure on Earth, and university officials worried it would never fill. Ohio Stadium at 411 Woody Hayes Drive in Columbus - The Horseshoe - has instead packed in crowds above 100,000 for a century of Ohio State football. The design solved a real problem: architect Howard Dwight Smith's double-deck horseshoe, the first in America, cantilevered the upper deck over the lower so tens of thousands could sit close to the field; the American Institut.....

The turf is heated by 21 miles of piping and 24 sensors, so snow melts on contact and the Buckeyes practice outdoors in an Ohio January. Ohio State Lacrosse Stadium, at 630 Irving Schottenstein Drive in Columbus, opened in January 2023 as the university's first lacrosse-only venue. The project answered a long imbalance: the men's and women's lacrosse programs had shared the Woody Hayes Athletic Center with football and played home games in a mostly empty Ohio Stadium, while Big Ten rivals Michi.....

The happy-hour show is the hottest booking in the building. Rumba Cafe at 2507 Summit Street in Old North Columbus, near the Ohio State campus, has run live music seven nights a week since 2006 - a 200-capacity bar-venue that punches far above its size in the city's scene. The room's signature innovation is scheduling: eight to ten early-evening happy hour shows a month, born when local rock veterans The Spikedrivers proposed playing as the sun went down - a slot that captured the whole demogra.....