Best Ohio State campus sights for visitors who aren’t students, ranked
The Oval and university buildings on the Ohio State campus near Upper Arlington
Seven things on the Ohio State campus that are worth a visitor's morning, ranked — starting ten minutes east of Upper Arlington and costing almost nothing.
How to visit, and when not to
Ohio State's main campus starts about ten minutes east of Upper Arlington: down Lane Avenue, over the Olentangy, and you are in it. It is one of the largest universities in the United States, and the campus functions as a public space — you can walk into most buildings, sit on the Oval, and see several genuine collections for nothing. I ranked these seven by what a visitor with no connection to the university would actually enjoy, not by what a prospective student tour would cover.
Timing decides the experience. On a home football Saturday in autumn, roughly 100,000 people arrive and the whole district — including Lane Avenue back into Upper Arlington — becomes a parking and traffic event. That is a spectacle in itself, but it is not a sightseeing day. Term-time weekdays are lively and buildings are open; summer and the winter break are quiet but some galleries close. Parking is in paid garages run by the campus parking operator, charged by the hour, with the Ohio Union South and Arps garages nearest the High Street sights. Check current rates before you drive in.
1. Ohio Stadium and the walk around it
The Horseshoe is the reason most first-time visitors come. Opened in 1922, expanded repeatedly, and now seating just under 103,000, it is a listed piece of American sporting architecture and genuinely imposing from the outside — walk the full perimeter and take in the brick rotunda at the north end, which is the best single piece of design on campus. On non-event days you can often walk into the rotunda area and see the concourse; interior access varies and organised tours are arranged through the athletics department, so check availability rather than assuming.
If you are here in the season, the free alternative to a ticket is the atmosphere: the Olentangy bank fills with tailgates from early morning, the marching band's Skull Session at the arena beforehand is a spectacle in its own right, and the sound from inside the stadium carries across the river. Ticket prices on resale for a mid-tier home game routinely run several hundred dollars a seat, so most visitors sensibly settle for the walk and a bar. The stadium exterior at dusk, lit, from the Olentangy Trail, is the shot.
2. Thompson Library and the eleventh floor
The best free view in Columbus that nobody tells you about. Thompson Library, at the west end of the Oval on Neil Avenue, was gutted and rebuilt inside its 1913 shell in the late 2000s, leaving a soaring white atrium. Take the lift to the top floor reading room: you get the Oval laid out below you on one side and the downtown skyline on the other, framed by glass, in silence. It costs nothing, the building is open to the public during library hours, and you can sit there as long as you behave like a library user.
The catch is that it is a working library during exam periods, when every seat is taken and the atmosphere is fraught — mid-December and late April are the weeks to avoid. Hours shorten in summer and over holidays; check the library's own schedule. Go mid-morning on a weekday, walk the Oval afterwards, and note the Buckeye Reading Room's woodwork on the way. For a visitor with 45 minutes and no budget, this beats anything ticketed within a mile of it.
3. The Wexner Center for the Arts
At High Street and Fifteenth Avenue, the Wexner Center is the reason architecture students come to Columbus. Peter Eisenman's 1989 building deliberately breaks the campus grid, running a white scaffold-like armature diagonally through the site and colliding with reconstructed turrets from the demolished armoury that stood here. Some find it thrilling, some find it a nuisance to navigate; both reactions are correct. Inside are contemporary art galleries, a film and video theatre, a performance space and a good art bookshop.
Gallery admission has been free in recent years while films and performances are ticketed separately — confirm the current arrangement with the centre. Programming is ambitious and rotates several times a year, so check what is actually installed before you build a morning around it; between exhibitions you may find galleries closed. Even then, the exterior is worth ten minutes. It sits two minutes' walk from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library in Sullivant Hall, which makes for the strongest free double-header on campus.
4. Orton Hall and its geological museum
On the South Oval, Orton Hall is the campus's finest nineteenth-century building — Romanesque, 1893, with a bell tower and gargoyles modelled on prehistoric creatures. Its party trick is the masonry: the exterior stone was laid in the same sequence the rock layers appear beneath Ohio, oldest at the bottom, so the walls are a vertical geology lesson. Inside, the Orton Geological Museum is free, small and gloriously old-fashioned, with Ohio fossils, mineral specimens and skeletal casts in wooden cases under a high vaulted ceiling.
The catch is hours: it keeps limited, largely weekday opening tied to the academic term and staffed in part by the department, so verify before making a special trip. Allow 30 to 40 minutes. It is one of the few campus stops that works properly for children aged seven and up — the fossils do the work without any interpretive gimmickry. Combine it with the Oval, the library and a walk to Mirror Lake, and you have a two-hour circuit that costs only the garage fee.
5. Chadwick Arboretum, and 6. Waterman Farm
Fifth: the Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens, on the north-west side of campus off Fyffe Court. It is free, quiet and far better than its low profile suggests — a labelled collection of trees and shrubs, extensive perennial and demonstration gardens, and a lake. Late May through September is the window; visit in April and you will see mostly labels and mulch. It also solves the campus problem of nowhere restful to sit that is not full of undergraduates. Parking nearby is metered or permit-controlled, so read the signs carefully.
Sixth: Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory, the university's working farm on the western edge of campus by Lane Avenue and Kenny Road — five minutes from Upper Arlington. Seeing crop plots, a dairy operation and grazing land inside a major city is genuinely odd and rather wonderful. Public access is limited because it is a research facility, and open days and events are the reliable way in; check what is scheduled rather than turning up. For most visitors this is a slow drive-past on Lane Avenue with a moment of disbelief.
7. Mirror Lake and the Oval, plus what to skip
Seventh: the Oval itself and Mirror Lake. The Oval is the campus's great lawn, crossed by diagonal paths, ringed by the older buildings and by far the best place to understand the scale of the place — on the first warm day of spring it is covered in several thousand people. Mirror Lake, in a rebuilt hollow just north-east of it, has a fountain and a slope of grass and is a pleasant ten-minute detour. Both are free, always open, and best in late April or early October.
What to skip: generic campus walking without a target, which in a place this large means an hour of crossing car parks. Skip the Schottenstein Center unless you have tickets for a game or concert; there is nothing to see on the outside. And skip any campus visit at all on a home football Saturday unless the football is the point. If you have one morning from Upper Arlington, do Thompson Library's top floor, walk the Oval to Orton Hall, then finish with the Wexner Center and the Billy Ireland on High Street.
Before you book
What people ask before booking Upper Arlington.
Yes for Thompson Library, the Wexner Center galleries, Orton Hall's museum and the arboretum, all of which admit the public during opening hours. Research facilities like Waterman Farm and library special collections need appointments or scheduled events. Hours shift with the academic calendar, so check each venue's own page.
Use the campus garages rather than hunting street spaces; the Ohio Union South and Arps garages are closest to the High Street and Oval sights. They are run by the university's parking operator and charge hourly, with rates and event-day restrictions set separately, so confirm before you arrive.
Only if the atmosphere is the attraction. Tailgating along the Olentangy and the marching band's pre-game session are memorable, but museums, libraries and parking all become unworkable, and the traffic backs up along Lane Avenue into Upper Arlington for hours either side.
Two to three hours covers Thompson Library, the Oval, Orton Hall and the High Street pair of the Wexner Center and Billy Ireland, with one garage fee and a coffee. Add an hour if you want to walk the full perimeter of Ohio Stadium and down to the river.
