Walk down Sandusky Street on any given Tuesday and your eyes stay at street level. You know the storefronts: the coffee counter, the antique shop, the restaurant with the patio. What you don't know, because there's no reason to, is what's happening one floor up. Empty ballroom from 1890? Architect's office? Nothing at all, just dust and a window that hasn't been washed since the Clinton administration? Most days, downtown Delaware keeps that story to itself.
This Saturday, it doesn't.
Hidden Spaces, Main Street Delaware's annual walking tour of the upper floors, basements, and not-yet-open storefronts that sit above and behind the shops you already know, runs from 4 to 7 p.m. on August 22. Tickets are available through the Strand Theatre. It's a self-guided tour, so you set your own pace and your own route through however many of the featured buildings you want to see.
Why this tour exists at all
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only think of Hidden Spaces as a quirky August tradition: the reason Main Street Delaware runs this tour every year is that downtown has a genuine upstairs problem, and it's a good one to have. A lot of the buildings along Sandusky and William Streets were built for a downtown that used the second and third floors as apartments, offices, or ballrooms, and a lot of those floors have simply sat there since, technically usable but functionally forgotten. The tour's own pitch to attendees isn't subtle about this. It frames the walk as a look at spaces someone could someday turn into a business, a residence, or a renovated commercial storefront, which tells you plainly that this isn't nostalgia programming. It's downtown Delaware taking inventory of its own unused square footage, once a year, out loud, in public.
That's a different kind of local knowledge than "there's a cute tour downtown this weekend." It means the buildings you pass on your walk to Bun's or the farmers' market have more going on above the awnings than the ground-floor tenant suggests, and once a year you get to see exactly how much.
What to actually do with your Saturday
The tour itself only runs until 7, but the smart move is to treat it as the start of the evening rather than the whole plan. Downtown Delaware sits inside the city's Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area, which means from 11 a.m. to midnight, daily, you can carry a beer, wine, or cocktail purchased from a participating downtown business between storefronts within the DORA boundary, roughly Central Avenue to Spring Street and Union Street to Franklin Street. Practically, that means you can walk your Hidden Spaces route with a drink in hand and duck into whichever bar or restaurant is on your way without committing to a full sit-down stop at each one.
A few places worth building the rest of the night around, all inside or a short walk from the DORA zone:
- Bun's Restaurant and Bar, on the square since 1864, still runs one of downtown's best patios and has been hosting live music most Wednesdays and Saturdays through summer. It's also added Saturday and Sunday brunch starting at 10 a.m., if your Hidden Spaces morning turns into an afternoon.
- Son of Thurman, the downtown Delaware outpost of the Thurman Cafe family at 5 N. Sandusky Street, is a straightforward burger-and-wings stop if you want something fast between tour buildings.
- Ohana Island Grill & Bar on West William Street brings Hawaiian plates and tiki cocktails to a part of downtown that didn't have anything like it before. It's small, so if you're going on a Saturday evening, expect a short wait and don't let that talk you out of the kalua pork.
None of this requires planning. It's the kind of night where you finish the tour, realize you're two blocks from a patio, and just keep walking.
The six weeks after this one
If Saturday feels like downtown Delaware waking up a little early for fall, that's not a coincidence. The next six weeks are the busiest stretch on the calendar, and Hidden Spaces is effectively the opening act.
The All Horse Parade comes through downtown on September 13 at 3 p.m., starting at the Delaware County Fairgrounds and heading east along Pennsylvania Avenue before turning south onto Sandusky Street and running straight through the heart of downtown. It's billed as the largest annual horse parade east of the Mississippi, and if you've never seen several thousand feet of downtown sidewalk lined for a parade route made up entirely of horses, wagons, and carriages, it's worth planning your Saturday around.
Then comes the main event. The Delaware County Fair runs September 19 through 26, and tucked inside fair week is the 81st running of the Little Brown Jug, the harness racing world's third leg of the Triple Crown of Pacing, held every year on the Thursday of fair week. More than 40,000 people show up just for that one race, which for a city of Delaware's size is less a local event and more an annual invasion, one that fills the downtown restaurants and reroutes traffic patterns for the better part of a week.
So this Saturday's tour isn't an isolated weekend of things to do. It's the first domino. If you're the kind of person who likes knowing what's coming before your neighbors start talking about parking, this is the week to start paying attention.
What this actually says about downtown
Step back from the calendar for a second. A city doesn't run an annual tour inviting residents to imagine themselves owning the empty floor above the coffee shop unless that floor is genuinely available and genuinely worth imagining something into. Hidden Spaces isn't dressed up as a real estate event, and it shouldn't be treated like one for the purposes of your Saturday. But it's a useful annual reminder that downtown Delaware isn't a finished product. The buildings are old, the upstairs spaces are real, and the city keeps handing out an invitation to picture what goes there next. That's a different kind of downtown than one that's already been fully built out and locked in place, and it's part of what makes walking around it, on this Saturday or any other, worth doing slowly.
Grab your tickets, walk it at whatever pace you want, and end up on a patio somewhere on Sandusky before the night's over. Then keep an eye on your calendar, because the parade horses arrive in just over three weeks.
If you're the kind of person who likes knowing what's actually happening in this town, not just the headline version, that's the whole reason MORE Ohio Team writes these. We live here too. Work With Us when you're ready to talk about anything more permanent than a Saturday walk.
