Norwester Magazines

The Norwester magazine was published monthly from November 1917 through March 1922, chronicling early suburban life in the Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, and Marble Cliff areas. The Upper Arlington community initially published the magazine from 1917-1920 as part of their ideal to be "the finest residence district and the most cordial community in Ohio." For the final fifteen months of its publication, the communities of Grandview Heights, Marble Cliff, and Upper Arlington jointly published the Norwester. The magazine essentially served as the first newspaper to focus on the northwest suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, and it is a rich resource for historical, cultural, architectural, and genealogical information.

Each monthly issue featured, among other topics, local residents, homes, schools, sports, and daily activities. The magazine also included several first-hand accounts of World War I, received from local residents stationed in Europe. Additionally, it chronicled life on the home front as community members bought Liberty Bonds and war savings stamps, planted backyard war gardens, and debated the patriotic virtues of spending their money versus saving it.

The Norwester magazines and accompanying photographs were the first items to be digitized by the Upper Arlington Public Library when the library initiated the UA Archives program in November 2002. As a result, from the time the UA Archives website first launched on September 15, 2004, it has included approximately 2,000 pages of text and photographs from the Norwester magazine, the original community newspaper.

Tips for using this collection

• To browse a chronological list of all monthly Norwester magazines, go to the Browse link in the navigation bar at the top of this page.
• To view a list of articles in any Norwester magazine issue, click on the cover of the desired magazine, then go to its right-hand navigation panel and click on the Table of Contents page.
• To search for a name or exact phrase, click on the Advanced Search link to the right of the Search box at the top of each page, select the option to find results with "The exact phrase", enter the desired name or phrase in the box following this selection, and click Search. After opening a resulting magazine, use the navigation panel to the right to move from one search result to the next within that magazine.
• To adjust the zoom level, use the zoom and fit buttons located at the top of the image viewer.
• To increase the viewer area, click and drag its sizing handles at the bottom and right until the viewer reaches the desired size.
• To move an image within the viewer, click and drag on the image area.

For useful tips on searching all of our collections, remember to check out the Help feature near the top right-hand corner of each page.

Brought to you by generous contributions from: