Mallway District
Nineteen-twenties brick shopfronts, a pocket park and the best-kept streets in Old Arlington — walkable, photogenic, and asleep by nine.
Tudor-revival brick shopfronts and arched passageway along Arlington Avenue in the Mallway, Upper Arlington
Why people stay in Mallway District
The Mallway is the 2100 block of Arlington Avenue and it is, honestly, about the size of one good city block. King and Ben Thompson laid it out in the 1920s as the shopping heart of their planned garden suburb, and the Tudor-revival brick, the arched pedestrian passage and the slate-look rooflines are all still there. Today the tenants are a coffee house, a salon, a dentist, an insurance office and a wine shop rather than a butcher and a five-and-dime. It is the single most photogenic 200 metres in Upper Arlington and it takes eight minutes to see.
At nine on a Tuesday evening the Mallway is dark. Colin's Coffee at 2124 Arlington Avenue is a morning business — in the door by seven, lights off by mid-afternoon — and most of the block keeps banker's hours. What you get after dark is streetlight on wet brick, dog walkers, kids cutting through Mallway Park, and the low hum of Fifth Avenue two blocks south. If you want a drink at ten you are driving: Grandview Avenue is nine minutes down Northwest Boulevard, Lane Avenue about the same north. Nobody here pretends otherwise.
This suits a specific traveller. Architecture people who want to walk Cambridge Boulevard, Roxbury Road and Andover Road, where the 1920s stock that got Old Arlington onto the National Register of Historic Places actually stands. Parents touring Upper Arlington schools. Wedding guests. Alumni back for a reunion. Golf pilgrims heading for Scioto Country Club or, in early June, the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village up in Dublin. Skip it entirely if your idea of a base is a hotel you walk out of into a bar — you will spend the week annoyed and driving.
On money: there is no hotel on the Mallway itself, and there never has been. The listings gathered under this heading all sit within a mile or so — Kingsdale, Northwest Boulevard, the Grandview Yard cluster — and a good midweek January double runs $109 to $145. That number is fiction on an Ohio State home Saturday, when the same room asks $300 and up with a two-night minimum, and it climbs again during May graduation and Memorial week. Book a Tuesday in February and Upper Arlington is one of the better-value bases in central Ohio.
Arlington Avenue, Cambridge Boulevard, Andover Road and Roxbury Road are the streets you came to look at, but nothing on them takes bookings — a good share of the overnight stock in Old Arlington is whole-house rental rather than hotel, and it books out months ahead for graduation and football weekends. For an actual front desk, look to the Kingsdale plaza on Tremont Road, the Northwest Boulevard corridor, or Grandview Yard about nine minutes southeast; expect $110 to $180 midweek for something clean and recent. Two things to avoid. First, rooms facing Fifth Avenue or Northwest Boulevard — both carry real commuter traffic from six in the morning. Second, anything advertised as "Upper Arlington" that is actually out by I-270 in Hilliard; check the street address before you book, because that is a fifteen-minute drive from everything described here.
Things to do in Mallway District
Colin's Coffee, 2124 Arlington Avenue, is the anchor of the block — in early, out by mid-afternoon, so treat it as breakfast rather than a plan for later. Take the cup outside, stand under the arched passage and look at the brickwork and leaded glass; this is the 1920s commercial architecture the district is actually known for.
The Upper Arlington Public Library's Miller Park branch at 1901 Arlington Avenue sits beside a small park a three-minute walk south of the Mallway. Free wifi, local-history shelves with photographs of the district under construction, and clean restrooms — genuinely useful on a rainy afternoon when the shopfronts have closed.
Head west off Arlington Avenue into Cambridge Boulevard, Andover Road and Roxbury Road. Tudor, Colonial Revival and a few flat-roofed oddities, mature oaks arching the road, no sidewalks on some blocks. This is the listed historic core; give it forty-five minutes and go slowly, because the details are in the chimneys and doorways.
Northam Park, off Northam Road about a kilometre north, is the city's busiest green space: hardcourt tennis, a big playground, open lawn, and the library's main branch at 2800 Tremont Road on its edge. Weekday mornings it belongs to strollers and retirees; after four it is entirely junior tennis.
Tremont Center, at Tremont Road and Zollinger Road, is a short drive or a twenty-five-minute walk north — a 1950s L-shaped plaza that still functions as a neighbourhood centre rather than a mall. Bakery, pharmacy, restaurants, an ice cream stop that draws a queue on warm evenings. Most units shut by nine.
If you land in early July, the Upper Arlington Independence Day parade is one of the biggest in central Ohio and it runs right past this district. People set out chairs the night before along the route; arrive by eight in the morning for kerb space, and expect every side street to be closed until noon.
What to see
Hotels near Mallway District
No hotels are listed in Mallway District yet. The nearest ones are on the region page.
Getting around Mallway District
There is no passenger rail in Columbus, so everyone arrives by road. From John Glenn Columbus International Airport it is roughly twelve miles: I-670 west, SR-315 north, exit at Fifth Avenue or Lane Avenue — twenty to twenty-five minutes off-peak, thirty-five at five in the afternoon. Rideshare runs $30 to $38, and there is no shuttle that serves Upper Arlington directly. COTA's Line 5 works the West Fifth Avenue corridor two blocks south of the Mallway; fares are $2 a ride, $4.50 for an all-day pass, buses roughly every half-hour on weekdays and much thinner on Sundays, with last departures early in the evening. Street parking here is free, unmetered and easy. Realistically, you want a car.
Questions about Mallway District
You can survive, but you will not enjoy it. Line 5 on Fifth Avenue gets you toward Grandview and downtown at roughly thirty-minute intervals, and it stops running early. Groceries, the Kingsdale plaza and anything open after nine all need wheels or a $10 to $15 rideshare. If you are carless, base yourself in Grandview Heights or the campus district instead.
It is the original 1920s commercial block of Upper Arlington, on Arlington Avenue, built as part of the Thompson brothers' planned suburb and now standing within the district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Think one short parade of Tudor-revival brick shops with an arched passage and a small park opposite — not a mall in the modern sense. It takes ten minutes to walk and rewards a slow look.
About four miles — twelve minutes by car on a normal day via Lane Avenue and the Lane Avenue bridge. On a home Saturday, treat that as forty-five minutes plus $40 or more for a lot, and do not attempt to drive back through campus at kickoff. Most people staying here park once in the morning or take a rideshare to the edge of campus and walk in.
Yes, but it is parks rather than attractions. Mallway Park, the Miller Park green and Northam Park cover playgrounds, tennis and open lawn within a kilometre. Note that Upper Arlington's swimming pools run largely on resident membership, so a visiting family cannot simply buy a gate ticket — plan on the parks, the libraries, and a drive to the Metro Parks instead.
