Haydenville: Ohio's Last Company Town

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Most visitors to Hocking Hills drive right past Haydenville without knowing it's there. The tiny unincorporated community sits along the Hocking River near US Route 33, southeast of Logan, with a population of just 337 as of the last census. But Haydenville has a story unlike any other town in Ohio — a 170-year-old company town built entirely from its own products, where the buildings themselves were the company's catalog.

Peter Hayden and the Company Town

Originally known as Hocking Furnace, Haydenville was founded in 1852 by Peter Hayden (1806-1888), a Columbus industrialist who recognized the value of Hocking County's abundant natural resources — coal, iron, sandstone, and especially fire clay. Hayden bought up land, operated an iron furnace, ran coal mines and sandstone quarries, and shipped products on the Hocking Canal and later the Hocking Valley Railroad, in which he was a major investor and corporate officer.

In 1882, Hayden incorporated the Haydenville Mining and Manufacturing Company, pivoting the town's economy toward the manufacture of brick and ceramic tile from the region's high-quality fire clay. Business boomed in the late 19th century as American cities paved their streets with brick and fireproof construction became standard in the wake of widely publicized and devastating urban fires.

Haydenville was a company town in every sense. The company owned every house and both stores. Employees were paid in scrip — currency that could only be spent at the company store. If you lost your job, you lost your home. Other stores were not allowed to open. At its height, the company employed roughly 360 workers at the brick plants, railroad facility, and coal and clay mines.

A Town Built from Its Own Products

What makes Haydenville architecturally unique in Ohio — and arguably in the country — is that nearly every building was constructed from products manufactured by the company itself. The town was a living advertisement: prospective buyers could walk through Haydenville and see the structural quality, durability, and decorative range of Haydenville brick and tile in actual use.

The earliest houses, dating to the 1870s, were two-story brick homes with slate roofs, arched front windows, and decorative corbelling. Later houses from the 1880s and 1890s were built from tile block — tall, narrow, saltbox-style structures with decorative corner quoins and factory-made chimney pots. The most distinctive type is a one-story, three-gable, jerkinhead-roofed house built from brick and tile, with paired windows, small porches, and central chimneys topped with company-made chimney pots.

The decorative details are where things get creative. Builders used the full catalog of factory output — including, most imaginatively, sewer pipes repurposed as architectural ornament. Paving blocks, silo tiles, and drainage products all found their way onto facades. Ohio University scholars coined the term "Sawyer Gothic" to describe the resulting architectural style — something you won't find in any textbook because it exists nowhere else.

Even in death, the company's products were present. Haydenville's two cemeteries contain hand-fashioned clay headstones and large chimney pots inscribed with the dates of the deceased.

Peter Hayden: A Complicated Legacy

Hayden was a Gilded Age industrialist, and the company town model was built on economic control — scrip wages, company stores, and no alternative housing or employment. But for his era, Hayden was considered progressive in his labor relations. He was known to stay in bunkhouses with his workers rather than maintaining a separate estate. He delivered Christmas gifts to workers' children and hosted holiday parties for the entire town. On union issues, he reportedly sided with workers more often than not.

Hayden also used convict labor in his early operations — a common but exploitative practice of the period. He reportedly taught inmates tangible skills and offered them full-time employment upon release, though the moral calculus of convict leasing remains deeply problematic regardless of individual intent.

Redrow Holler

Above Haydenville on the hill sat Hopperville, later called Redrow Holler — rows of red brick company houses named for the coal hopper owned by Peter Hayden that stood on the hill. The community of miners and their families who lived there was tightly knit, with its own distinct identity separate from the town below.

Redrow Holler no longer exists — the houses are gone, and the hill has returned to forest. But the people who grew up there keep its memory alive. Descendants have successfully petitioned for a historical marker, and community tours organized by Appalachian Understories bring former residents back to walk the ground where their homes once stood. Local historian Pete Crane, who grew up in the holler, has been building a diorama of the community from memory — an act of preservation as personal as it is historical.

What's There Today

Haydenville is quiet now. The brickworks was demolished in the 1980s. No commercial buildings survive. But the residential architecture remains remarkably intact — over 120 contributing properties across 20 acres earned the community a listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 as the Haydenville Historic Town district. A historical marker erected in 2001 by the Ohio Bicentennial Commission tells the story at the roadside.

The Haydenville Tunnel — a mile-long passage once used to transport clay from the pits to the brick factory — is still open but abandoned, visible below the cemetery on its northern corner. The remains of Hocking Canal Lock No. 19, built as part of the canal system that first connected this valley to the outside world (1829-1842), sit just north of town at the southeast corner of Highway 33.

The Hocking Valley Scenic Railway passes through Haydenville on its narrated trips from Nelsonville — the train conductor points out the town and its brick-making history as part of the ride. It's probably the most common way visitors encounter Haydenville today, even if most don't realize the depth of what they're seeing from the train window.

Visiting Haydenville

Haydenville is not a tourist destination with visitor centers or guided tours (though Appalachian Understories has organized occasional community tours). It's a living community — people live in these historic houses. Visit respectfully: drive slowly, stay on public roads, don't trespass on private property, and read the historical marker near US Route 33.

The best way to appreciate Haydenville is to simply walk or drive through slowly and look at the buildings. Once you know what you're seeing — a town that built itself from its own factory output, the last company town in Ohio, an architectural style that exists nowhere else — the modest brick houses become extraordinary.