We're headed east on Broad Street in Columbus today, going out to the east side to the community of Bexley.

We're gonna visit an interesting house.

It's known as the Governor's Residence.

This was a building from the 1920s.

It wasn't built as a Governor's residence.

There was such a residence on Broad street where the Columbus Foundation is now.

The building in Bexely now replaced that some years ago.

And we are going to meet with the First Lady of Ohio and learn more about the Ohio Governor's residents.

Good morning.

How are you?

Hi.

I'm fine.

Thank you, Mrs.

DeWine.

Thank you so much for hosting us today.

You're welcome.

I really appreciate it.

Now, I understand this wasn't always the governor's mansion.

This was a private home.

Yes.

It was built in 1925 by Malcolm Jeffrey, who was an industrialist.

I think they did coal mining equipment manufacturing.

It took about two years to build, but then in 1955, they gave it to the state of Ohio.

Well, 1925 puts it right in that kind of revival period when a lot of European styles and historic styles were being brought up again and reinterpreted.

There's a lot English character to this place.

What I've heard is a lot of young men who served in World War I, when they came back to their home and maybe made some money, what they wanted to build was one of those grand homes that they experienced in Europe.

And so that's sort of, I think, the inspiration for this house.

But it's a Jacobian revival and it's got the great beams and the stone.

Yes, a lot of carved stone, the big heavy front door, it has that English country house feel for sure.

And it's one of the first houses, Parkview was one of first streets when they laid out backslates.

Great.

Well, I'd love a tour on that.

Let's go see.

Just look at this beautiful door.

It's a wonderful door.

I think there are many oak trees in that door.

There are.

It is beautiful.

It's very thick, yes.

Big heavy brass work, it's wonderful.

Yeah.

Oh look at this hallway.

What a great entry.

So the arrangement is you've got a generous entry hall.

Yes.

Wonderful stairway and then major rooms to either size and those are sort of the major public rooms aren't they?

Right, they are.

Yes, and so this room here is the dining room, and we use the dining a lot.

In a way, it's sort of Mike's office.

And when he first was elected, we had a lot of legislators for breakfast, just a few at a time.

And just to get to know him, we have a lot business leaders here when we're trying to attract business to Ohio.

It's also, we do a lot of family meals around there, too.

So it's just a great room together around.

So this really serves as a residence, but it's almost a ceremonial facility as well, you might say.

We use it as our residence during the week, and then we go home on weekends mostly, or wherever our grandkids are.

Well, of course.

You know, I'm always looking at the architecture of these places and the details of the big heavy beams, the wonderful woodwork in the stairway.

You've got some paintings on the walls.

The large one there on the staircase was done by Howard Chandler Christie who was actually born in Ohio.

He did the signing of the Constitution in the U.S.

Capitol.

Yeah, he was a major U.S.

Artist, that's for sure, and he lived well into the 20th century, as I recall.

Just tell me about the Charis.

Well, actually, the chairs were designed by William Seale.

And William Seales was a great historian and architect, did a lot of work on the White House, worked on our state Capitol.

Janet Voinovich sent him up like a banana box full of buckeye branches.

And so he had these chairs all around the room that are actually carved, the buckeyes are carved.

And then we call it the Buckeye Suite.

Let's go into the living room.

What a nice room.

This is a beautiful room.

You know, the Kasichs did not live here during their administration, but Karen Kasich did a lot of things to restore the house to its original colors, put comfortable furniture in, along with the antiques.

It's just a beautiful and very comfortable room.

I want to point out the chandelier.

It was made by Cleveland Rose Ironworks, like a fourth generation company.

Did you see the quatra foils around it that pick up the design?

Right.

Right, that patterned ceiling is just wonderful, of course, the patterned walls, and I see a painting and I recognize that person, that has to be Elijah Pierce.

That's Elijah Piers.

The wood carver.

I'd really like to take you into the study, okay?

I'd like to see it, yes.

Yes.

There's amazing pictures here that happened actually in this house.

This is one of my favorites.

There's John F. Kennedy and his brother Edward with the governor.

That's great.

This is a picture of Martin Luther King.

He visited here as well.

And this is Jim Rhodes in Ronald Reagan.

Unmistakable people.

And kind of the story behind that is that Ronald Reagan wanted Jim Rhodes to endorse him.

And so he endorsed him on this day right here at this house.

The press said, why did you endorse him today?

And he said, well, yesterday would have been too early and What a wonderful space, so much diamond paned glass, it's just great, the English character is just.

It really is beautiful.

And we furnished it with a lot of different pieces, like these chairs were made in the Mansfield Reformatory, you know, which was built in the 1870s.

And it was a reformatory to give skills to young men, maybe young men who had been in trouble, and so to learn woodworking skills and other skills.

So they made these chairs and they actually made the picture frame on that picture there.

Well that's where the reform term came in.

The idea was you train them to do something to help society.

Great fireplace there.

It's just really beautiful when you have a fire going.

And so it actually works.

It actually worked.

We have five working fireplaces.

Well, it's such a comfortable space and the whole house is so comfortable, but I know the gardens are comfortable too.

So the gardens really represent different regions of Ohio.

So we'll walk through some of them, but we have the Appalachian Garden, and we have this tall prairie garden.

So I'll just give you a little tour of it.

That's great.

So Hope Taft, when she was first lady, established these regional gardens and so we have volunteer gardeners that come every Wednesday and help us, you know, take care of them.

We have our water gardens over here with lots of fish and a giant turtle spike and I do want you to notice this beautiful Tibor sculpture here.

Oh yes, Elfrid Tibor, the Columbus sculptor.

So this was given when the Celeste were here.

Mrs.

Celeste was from Austria.

And so because of the Holocaust, it's a fate to life.

And it's really a family.

Tibor was a holocaust survivor as I recall.

Yes, I think so, yeah.

Yes, I know he passed away some time ago, but he has very powerful works.

Dolly Lo's to walk around the garden.

There's always something new to smell.

This is kind of an interesting garden right here because these are sand dune gardens.

So, you know, we have sand dunes up by Lake Erie.

We do.

And actually the oak opening ones would be on the Western side.

Mm-hmm.

And the headlands would be on the eastern side of Lake Erie.

Yep, yep.

They have all the different plants that would be native in those areas.

There's a prickly pear.

Ha ha ha.

Cactus and they bloom they were blooming just a few weeks ago from Columbine.

There's all kinds of things but everything here Certain kind of bees that just live in the sand that don't live anywhere else so it's kind of cool and one of the things that I like to do because You know, my project has been the Dolly Parton imagination library and free books to kids We've put a lot of storybook trails in our parks and I thought we really need to have a storybook trail right here at the house That is a huge tree.

I was trying to decide which of the Dolly Parton books to use for a storybook trail.

And I looked at this tree and the hole there, I suddenly knew that it was the Tale of Peter Rabbit, because I know the rabbits live under that tree.

So it's just a great tree.

And so I start my storybook trial and take children through all the way around.

On each of the signs, it tells a little something.

You know, you read the story, it gives you something, you know, look at, look at the, the Willow Oak or look at the Buckeyes or something like that.

So we continue with the book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

And Mrs.

Rabbit says, you may go to the fields or down the lane, but do not go into Mr.

McGregor's garden.

And so we're gonna go to Mr.

Mcgregor's.

Of course.

So it says that she goes to the bunny bakery.

Right.

To get some brown bread and currant buns.

And so I made a bunny bakery, so I took a flower pot and my brother helped me actually showed me how to glue all the stones on it and put the brick on it.

So I made it a bunny Bakery.

And when my little grandkids come here, they love to play in the bunny bakery.

So I love bringing kids here to the gardens, uh, for lots of reasons.

Here, we talk about this Buckeye tree.

It's like all the Buckeys on the ground.

Lots of Buckeyes here, and the kids love picking up these Buc-eyes.

Everybody does.

And so this tree in front of us, this is actually a descendant of a Johnny Appleseed tree.

It was actually made from a cutting from one of the last ones that Johnny Applesee planted going through Ohio.

And this area around here is actually medicinal garden.

Pioneers use a lot of these plants for their medicines.

Some of our volunteers who are experts in these plants and so they take care of this garden.

This is kind of fun this year.

We got a seed from one of the prize pumpkins at the Circleville Pumpkin Show.

And so we're growing a pretty big pumpkin there.

That's a lot of pumpkin.

So it gets a lot of tender love and care.

Yeah, it has its own.

It has its own little house.

I'm impressed.

This garden here is a very special one because this is Mr.

McGregor's garden.

We usually have spinach and carrots and radishes so that when little kids come through here, they can actually walk through the garden.

What a great idea.

So the kids love just walking through there.

Oh, I'm sure.

That's great.

We planted like a three sisters garden here.

We had corn, we had squash growing around that and beans growing up the corn stalks.

That's what the native Americans planted in their gardens.

You know, it's a very healthy combination.

So they figured out that these plants help each other.

They help each other and cook together.

They're very nutritious.

Well that was quite a garden tour.

Well, there's a special guard.

It really is.

It really represents all different parts of Ohio, different climates, we have different things growing, and our story of all of our volunteer gardeners who come and work here is really, I think, impressive.

It is.

It is and I'm glad it's such an important part of the governor's residence.

You know I think back the house is 100 years old, it's been the governor's residence for 70 years now.

You're part of a long string of people who cared for the place and it made a difference in the place, improved it when it's needed it, but I imagine something like the garden is almost like what it was meant to be.

The amount of acreage you have here and the stories you can tell.

We've enjoyed watching the gardens grow.

I think what we've enjoyed most is bringing people in, you know, bringing guests in.

I tell people when they come to my house here, this isn't my house, this belongs to everyone in Ohio.

And I love to show them the house and I love the show in the gardens.

Well, and it's a wonderful teaching aid as well.

What you've done for children especially is the most impressive.

Thank you for a wonderful tour.

Thank you.

It was good to meet you, give my best to the governor.

And thank you for, have a great day at the governor's residence here in Ohio.

Thank you.