[3] The District features homes designed by several distinguished architects, including Charles Firestone,[4] Herman Albrecht,[5] and Louis Hoicowitz.

[7] The Ridgewood Historic District is an area of residential buildings extending east and west of Market Avenue North, a major north-south artery, in the City of Canton approximately 20 blocks from the center of town.

[10] The District is typical of other such residential areas in that its homes are relatively large, set back from the street and enhanced by mature overhanging trees and lush plantings.

Its buildings are architect-designed for the most part and demonstrate the enormous variations of shape, skin, and sensibility that characterize the European Revival styles favored by a number of architects working in this period.

Georgian Revivals Both feature pedimented entries with fan lights, dentilled cornices, shuttered, double-hung sash windows, brick skins, and other elements appropriate to this type.

In spite of variations such as these, however, the District has the unified, slightly Europeanized flavor characteristic of other developments of its period, and represents the best in elegant American suburban architecture.

The Ridgewood Historic District is significant in that it is the only residential development in the City of Canton built in this period and featuring the architect-designed Revival style buildings popular in the early 20th century.

The largest portion to the west of Market was once farm land held until 1918 by members of the Martin family, though the parcel had been annexed to the city in 1905-6.

The east portion, originally called the Bellwood addition and farmed by residents of the Stark County Poor House, was annexed to the city in 1911.

Residences built from 1930–1940 closely reproduce the variety of materials and surface quality displayed in the earlier Colonial and Tudor Revival style houses dating from 1920–1930.

The later buildings – post WWII, 1950s to the present, still retain the basic Colonial and Tudor Revival styles, but the richness of their surface quality is expressed to a lesser degree.