| Golden Lamb | |
| Location: | Lebanon, Ohio |
| Coordinates: | 39.4336°N -84.2083°W |
| Built: | 1815 |
| Architect: | Ichabod Corwin |
| Added: | January 12, 1978 |
| Refnum: | 78002204 |
The Golden Lamb Inn is the oldest hotel in Ohio, having been established in the Warren County seat of Lebanon in 1803. The present four-story structure is built around the 1815 rebuilding of the inn, maintaining its colonial architecture. It is known as the Golden Lamb because that image appeared on its signboard for the benefit of the illiterate.[1] At various times it has been known as the Ownly Hotel, the Bradley House, the Lebanon House, and the Stubbs House.
On January 12, 1978, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Golden Lamb.
Because of Lebanon's position on the highway between Cincinnati and Columbus, many notables have visited the inn. The Golden Lamb has been visited by twelve American Presidents: William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.
Other famous guests to visit the Golden Lamb include Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Daniel Webster, Thomas Corwin, Clement Vallandigham (who infamously shot and killed himself accidentally in his hotel room at the Golden Lamb, while attempting to prove that a man, whom his client was accused of shooting, shot himself accidentally), Cordell Hull secretary of state for President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who went to school in Lebanon at the National Normal University), Robert A. Taft, Dewitt Clinton, and Lord Stanley, who later became prime minister of the United Kingdom. More recently, on September 8, 2008 Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates senator John McCain and Alaska governor Sarah Palin spoke at the Golden Lamb.[2]
In 1926, Robert Jones, grandfather of Senator Rob Portman and husband of Virginia Kunkle leased the Golden Lamb. In 1927, he refurbished it and redecorated it with Shaker furniture. In 1969, Mr. and Mrs. Jones leased the Golden Lamb to the Comisar family, who owned and operated the now defunct five-star Maisonette restaurant in Cincinnati. The Golden Lamb Restaurant & Hotel continues to be owned by the Portman Family of Ohio.