How Columbus came to inspect its houses: building, plumbing, wiring and smoke

Columbus did not decide one day to inspect what its people built. The offices arrived one at a time: a permit issued by the City Civil Engineer before there was any inspector, an inspector of buildings appointed in 1892, plumbing inspection in place by 1895, wiring handed to the building office in 1923, and a smoke division that lapsed and came back. This page dates each office by the ordinance, the charter section or the state act that made it, as the City of Columbus and the State of Ohio printed them, and says where the record runs out.

Last updated September 2026 · The City of Columbus's own annual reports, its City Bulletin, its 1896 codified ordinances, its printing of the 1914 charter and the Ohio State Board of Health's reprint of the 1896 plumbing act were read September 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

What this page answers, and how it dates an office

Who in Columbus looked at what was built, and from when? Not one date. Offices grew up between about 1890 and 1923, each dated here by the record that made it, named in the sentence; a report or a roster records an office but does not create one. Almost every record here has one publisher, the City of Columbus writing about itself, so the city is named in every sentence resting on it; where two of its documents disagree, both are printed.

The page does not say which building code any one house was built under; the building code page takes that up from the codes' own adoption records. What a bathroom remodel needs from the city today is on the Columbus permit page.

The permit came before the inspector

The oldest permit record here belongs to an engineer. The City of Columbus's annual report for the year ending March 31, 1890 prints, inside the Report of City Civil Engineer, a table of the building permits issued the past year by that office: 997 permits, counted ward by ward across the city's fifteen wards. The same office recorded 752 permits to tap the main and lateral sewers.

Neither that volume nor the next mentions an inspector of buildings at all, so as far back as the record here reaches, the building permit was an engineering office's record, not an inspector's. The city's 1905 building code and the ordinance it repealed are dated on the building code page; which ordinance first required a permit is not settled here. A permit counts buildings, not the parts they are made of: what the windows and glass in a Central Ohio house have been, era by era, is on the windows page.

The inspector of buildings

The office appears in the city's own annual report for the year ending March 31, 1892, where the mayor tells council that the Board of Public Works had recently appointed an inspector of buildings, doing good service in the way of preventing the erection of unsafe buildings in respect to fire. That volume's roster names John T. Harris as Inspector of Buildings, with one assistant.

Council put the office in an ordinance the year after. The city clerk's report in the 1893 annual report prints a Department of Public Safety staffing ordinance, passed April 10, 1893, providing for one inspector of buildings appointed by the director, who shall perform the same duties as are now provided for the inspector of buildings in the said city. That wording assumes the office was there already. By 1896 the office had a chapter of its own in the city's codified ordinances, chapter 21, section 182.

For the building rules themselves that codification points at state law, printing sections of an act it dates February 23, 1888 at volume 85 of the Ohio Laws, page 34. That act could not be opened by any route tried, and an Ohio court report cites the same volume and page as an act passed February 28, 1888, so the date prints here only as the codification gives it.

The inspector's report for the year ending December 31, 1895 records a court contest in which a property owner claimed the Building Inspector law was unconstitutional and refused to pay the fee for a permit; the court decided against him. The city's report names the owner and this page does not.

Plumbing inspection

In the year ending March 31, 1891 Columbus had no plumbing inspector: the city health officer's report for that year carries a section headed Inspector of Plumbing whose whole content is a recommendation that the Board of Health appoint one. By the volume covering 1895 the office existed, with a wider title than plumbing alone, that report listing one of its own from the Inspector of Plumbing, Sewerage and Drainage. No appointment record was found, so no date for it prints here.

Ohio's act came the following spring, and the Ohio State Board of Health's reprint, the only reachable text of it, gives the title as an act to promote the public health and regulate the sanitary construction of house drainage and plumbing, and prints its own passage line, passed April 21, 1896; the title and the date rest on that one publisher. Its section 3 puts a board of examiners in every city, in each town of five thousand inhabitants or more, and in each town with a system of water supply or sewerage, and seats the president of the board of health and the inspector of buildings on it by virtue of their offices, alongside three practical plumbers. Columbus's own 1896 health report records the same seating.

Section 5 tells each board of health to appoint one or more inspectors of plumbing, subject to the approval of council, and closes that clause allowing for the case where such appointment has not already been made. Section 6 is where the plumbing permit comes from: rules within six months, approved by ordinance of council, and no plumbing work done without a permit, except for repairs or leaks.

Columbus recorded the arrival in its own words, saying the examination of master and journeyman plumbers had been made part of the duties of the Department of Health. Its Report of the Inspector of Plumbing for the year ending December 31, 1896 gives 794 plumbing permits and 757 sewer permits, 1,551 together, against 1,928 inspections, and counts the fixtures they covered: 896 water closets, 559 wash bowls, 415 bath tubs, 704 kitchen sinks and 7 shower baths, 2,830 in all.

One thing Columbus did not follow was the act. The state made the board of health the appointing authority, but the city plumbing inspector's reports for 1896 and 1901 are both addressed to the Inspector of Buildings and describe the work as done in connection with your division of the Department of Public Safety, so inspection of plumbing here sat with the building office. Who regulates and inspects plumbing in Ohio today is on the Ohio plumbing code page.

Wiring, and the office that never existed

Columbus never had an inspector of electric wiring. The work went to the office that already inspected buildings: Ordinance No. 34,574, to regulate the installation of electrical equipment and to repeal Section 101 of the Columbus code of 1919, was passed and approved November 19, 1923 and printed in the city's own City Bulletin.

That ordinance is how the national wiring standard reached Columbus houses. Its section 2 required electrical wiring, apparatus and appliances to conform to the latest edition of the national electric code of the national board of fire underwriters. The city adopted no year, only whichever edition was current, so from 1923 its wiring rules changed when the national standard changed and no local vote marked it. Which editions Ohio's house code has named, and from when, is on the wiring page.

The inspection it wrote in is a familiar one: notice to the division of building regulation before work started, nothing covered before it had been inspected, and a certificate from the inspector of buildings on approval. It reached old houses too: where pockets were opened in walls, floors or ceilings for wiring, the flooring and pockets must not be replaced until an inspection has been made. What it repealed, Section 101 of the Columbus Code of 1919, was itself Ordinance No. 31,200 of February 10, 1919.

Electrical permits appear as their own line in the building division's counts for 1923, where the 1918 report had listed building, plumbing, sewer, street, junk shop, sign and banner permits and no electrical permit. The 1923 figure is not legible on the page, so none prints; the city's 1924 report, the first full year under the ordinance, prints 11,623 electrical permits against 6,288 building permits. By 1947 the city issued 7,469 electrical permits against 4,111 building permits, out of 19,790 of all kinds.

The smoke office, and what became of it

Columbus's smoke ordinance of 1913 is dated by number and passage date, from the City Bulletin, on the heating page. Its authority was over how a fire was tended: the city's reports for 1918 and 1923 print, inside quotation marks, that the smoke inspector supervised the ignition, stoking, feeding and attending of steam boiler and other furnace fires. It was also a permit office: no new or reconstructed plant for producing heat or power could be used until a certificate had been obtained from him.

Its record was a register of plants: in 1918 the city's Division of Smoke Abatement recorded 732 power and heating plants, made 287 inspections, investigated 36 complaints and gave 42 warnings. The coal those plants burned came in by rail; the field, the mines and the company towns that sent it are on the Hocking Valley page.

The office then lapsed and returned, and no ordinance doing either was found. The city's own account of 1936 to 1939 says an advisory commission sitting with the smoke inspector was reestablished in November 1937 by appointment of the mayor. The reports for 1947 and 1953 both say the division of smoke abatement was re-instituted in 1946, and by 1953 a section of that division's report runs under a heading on air pollution control other than smoke. When the office ended is not stated by anything read here.

The health department was inspecting houses first

The oldest house inspection in Columbus is the health department's. In the year ending March 31, 1891 the sanitary police investigated 17,388 nuisances and abated 16,213 of them, by the city health officer's own report for that year.

It never stopped. Fifty-six years later the city's division of sanitation recorded 9,773 sanitary inspections of dwellings, 4,128 of tenements and 1,558 of rooming houses in 1947. That side looked at something different: the city describes its division of housing and sanitation as having charge of nuisance abatement and of the condition of yards, sewer, vaults and water supply, rather than the pipes inside the walls.

The charter of 1914, and what it renamed

Columbus wrote a home rule charter in 1914; the city's own printing says it was adopted Tuesday, May 5, 1914, and its section 235 sets two effective dates: January 1, 1915 for nominating and electing officers, and January 1, 1916 for establishing the departments, divisions and offices themselves. Section 97 made it a Division of Building Regulation, one of five divisions of the Department of Public Safety; section 127 kept health apart, in a board of health of five members.

Section 113 gave the office its standing duty, and here two of the city's own documents differ. Its printing of the charter says the superintendent of building regulation shall enforce and administer all laws and ordinances relating to the erection, manufacture and repair of buildings and other structures. Its annual reports for 1918, 1923, 1947 and 1953 print a different sentence about a different officer: that the inspector of buildings enforces and administers all laws and ordinances relating to the erection, maintenance and repair of buildings in the city of Columbus. Those reports describe the office rather than quote the charter; the word maintenance is theirs, not section 113's.

By those same reports the division examined plans for construction, additions and alterations, examined plumbing plans, issued permits, collected fees and made field inspections. Its 1918 year ran to 1,824 building permits, 1,304 plumbing permits and 823 sewer permits, against 3,741 building inspections, 2,879 plumbing inspections and 1,400 sewer inspections.

Zoning, 1923

Columbus's zoning ordinance is No. 34,010. The City Bulletin's own note records it as introduced at a regular meeting of city council on April 2, 1923, and later ordinances amending the zoning map, with the city planning commission's report, give its passage as August 6, 1923. Nothing read for this page calls it the city's first, and two documents in the same volume date its public hearing differently, so no hearing date prints.

The city's 1923 report says the board of adjustment the zoning ordinance provided for was appointed that autumn and first met on October 18, 1923, and the city says that board heard appeals from and reviewed orders and decisions made by the Inspector of Buildings.

What a permit record shows today, and what it does not

The offices are one department now: the City of Columbus says its Department of Building and Zoning Services provides services including building permits, zoning reviews, code enforcement, engineering and street addressing. Its account of the permit record is that it lives in a portal, where application status can be tracked once a record is created and recent records can be found by searching specific dates, addresses and permit types; other public records go through the department's records section. Neither city page says how far back the portal reaches.

The county's record is a different one. The Franklin County Auditor describes its real estate work as valuation, ownership and tax, and its real estate page does not mention building permits at all. Outside Columbus the office changes with the jurisdiction: which Central Ohio counties and suburbs hold their own certified residential building department is on the building code page, and the houses of the three counties beside Franklin are counted on the Delaware, Licking and Fairfield page.

What the record does not settle

Four things stayed open. The state act the 1896 codification points to, at volume 85 of the Ohio Laws page 34, could not be opened by any route tried. Section 101 of the Columbus Code of 1919 was not read, so whether the city inspected wiring before 1923 is unknown. The city's annual reports between 1925 and 1946 were not read, so the year the smoke office lapsed is unknown and only its return in 1946 is on the record. And nothing read here dates the steps from the charter's Division of Building Regulation to today's department.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus, together with a Financial Statement of the Receipts and Disbursements, for the Year Ending March 31, 1890, 1890; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus for the Year Ending March 31, 1891, 1891; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Annual Reports of the Various Departments of the City of Columbus for the Year Ending March 31, 1892, 1892; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1893 City of Columbus Annual Report, 1894; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Internet Archive from the Ohio State University Libraries copy, Ordinances of the City of Columbus, Ohio: Revised, Codified and Consolidated, 1896; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1895-1896 City of Columbus Annual Report, departmental reports for the year ending December 31, 1895, 1896; read September 2026.
• Ohio State Board of Health, digitized by the Internet Archive, Annual Report of the State Board of Health of the State of Ohio, for the year ending October 31, 1896, 1897; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1896 City of Columbus Annual Report, 1897; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1901 City of Columbus Annual Report, 1902; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, The City Bulletin, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, The City Bulletin, City of Columbus, volume 21 (1923): Ordinance No. 34,574 as passed, 1923; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1923 City of Columbus Annual Report, 1924; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1918 City of Columbus Annual Report, 1919; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1924 City of Columbus Annual Report, 1925; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1947 City of Columbus Annual Report, with the City Manual, Columbus, Ohio, 1948, 1948; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Progress in Municipal Government, Columbus, Ohio, 1936 to 1939: An Outline of the Activities of Municipal Government of the City of Columbus During the Past Three Years, 1939; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 1953 City of Columbus Annual Report, 1954; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Charter of the City of Columbus, Ohio, adopted May 5, 1914, with amendments to March 1, 1933, published by order of the city council, 1933; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, Building and Zoning Services, undated; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, Get or Track a Building Permit, undated; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, Online Services (Building and Zoning Services), undated; read September 2026.
• City of Columbus, Ohio, Records Research (Building and Zoning Services), undated; read September 2026.
• Franklin County Auditor, Real Estate, undated; read September 2026.

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