Moment in Time (August 3, 2021)

The Buckeye Lake Yacht Club was established on Buckeye Lake in 1906, with members representing Newark and Columbus and nearby areas. Grandview Heights was also represented with the early participation of prominent resident and developer George Urlin and his young protégé Harry D. Freeman, son of Col. George Freeman, Quartermaster of the Ohio State Arsenal.

Cartoonist Billy Ireland created this caricature of Harry D. Freeman of Grandview,

depicting him as a sailor on his catboat in reference to his association with the

Buckeye Lake Yacht Club. He served as the Commodore of the Club in 1912.

Harry built his Victorian home at 1051 Urlin in 1897 on the west side of Urlin Avenue just north of his father’s home. (The home was featured in the 2004 GH/MCHS Tour of Homes when it was owned by late Historical Society Trustee Jane Harris and her husband Ron). George Urlin lived across the street from the Freemans and was obviously enamored of Harry Freeman’s business skills. He chose Harry to serve as secretary-treasurer of several of his business enterprises, including the Ohio Realty and Construction Company and The Laminated Tube Company. Freeman was later Vice President of the Grandview Lumber Company, President of the Buckeye Lake Building Company, an officer of Cities Mortgage Company, and the owner of Freeman-Neff Realty Company. Harry was also elected as a trustee of the Hamlet of Marble Cliff in 1901.

Urlin was an early member of the Buckeye Lake Yacht Club, serving as an officer in 1910. That same year, Harry Freeman was selected as Rear Commodore in the Club, rising through the ranks as Vice Commodore the next year and Commodore in 1912. Urlin owned property on Round Island in Buckeye Lake, where he built a boathouse for his yacht Almardine with a narrow door over the main door, allowing him to admit the sailboat while fully rigged. The location was called Urlin’s Island by the members. The State of Ohio also granted Urlin a lease for Journal Island in the lake in 1909. He transferred the lease to Robert Wolfe, owner of the Ohio State Journal and the Columbus Dispatch, who built his lake cottage retreat there.

BLYC member and famed cartoonist Billy Ireland created panoramic cartoons of the Lake for the 1910 4th of July celebration, depicting the Lake as he visualized it in a birds-eye-view from high above its south shore. One of the entries was of Freeman, “astride Urlin's island boathouse roof, waiting to guide Almardine's mast into its high-slit doorway.” Ireland repeated this drawing in a page from his iconic 1911 book “Club Men of Columbus in Caricature” with drawings of prominent Columbus industrialists, politicians, lawyers, and businessmen. (The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at The Ohio State University was named in his honor in 2009). Freeman’s entry is shown in this photo, with him depicted at Urlin’s boathouse in the upper left. The book also featured other Grandview and Marble Cliff residents, including Charles Griswold, Butler Sheldon, Carl Lindenberg, Samuel Bush, Carl Hoster, Silvio Casparis, Alan Leamy, Charles Boardman, Eugene Gray, William Lanman, and architect Frank Packard.

Freeman developed the Harbor Hills community, on the north and northeast sides of Buckeye Lake, where he moved, and he died in 1961.