Ohio's 157 Churches on the National Register of Historic Places

157 Ohio churches in the Churches List directory hold National Register of Historic Places listings. The state's first directory-matched church listing came January 18, 1973, when Cincinnati's Saint Peter in Chains Cathedral, an 1845 Greek Revival landmark with a 220-foot spire, entered the register alongside Covenant First Presbyterian Church across town.

Three urban counties anchor the list: Franklin (Columbus) with 19 register-listed churches, and Hamilton (Cincinnati) and Cuyahoga (Cleveland) with 17 each. Erie County's 10 listings, clustered around Sandusky's 19th-century lakefront blocks, give Ohio a fourth concentration that few states match outside their largest cities.

The complete list of Ohio churches on the National Register

The table lists all 157 Ohio congregations in this directory whose buildings hold National Register of Historic Places listings as of June 11, 2026. Click a column to sort; the county menu filters the list.

When did Ohio churches enter the National Register?

Ohio front-loaded its church listings: 120 of the 157 entries came in the 1970s and 1980s, the two decades when Ohio's preservation office surveyed its urban cores ahead of demolition pressure. The pace fell to 15 listings in the 1990s and single digits after 2000, with a modest revival of 10 listings since 2020 as congregations pursue register status for rehabilitation tax credits.

Which Ohio counties hold the most register-listed churches?

Where the register-listed churches stand: the map

How this list was assembled

The list joins the Churches List directory (15,714 Ohio congregations as of June 11, 2026) against the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places database by building location and name. 157 matches hold as of the snapshot date; the earliest Ohio church listing dates to 1973. A register listing covers the building, not the congregation, and some listed buildings house congregations younger than the walls. Corrections are applied through the corrections page.

Related reading in The Letter: the Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus church guides cover the three counties that hold a third of these listings, and Ohio's Methodist circuit map explains the denominational settlement behind the buildings. The Ohio state page lists all 15,714 Ohio churches.