Our feature OKI Wanna Know tackles your odd questions, sometimes with odd answers. This week, WVXU's Bill Rinehart focuses on one particular Cincinnati neighborhood.
Every now and then, we receive multiple questions about a single topic. This time, we got a bunch of different questions about one particular neighborhood, so we've rolled them all up into one and are taking a deep dive into Northside with two people who live there...
Maya Drozdz works for the Northside Business Association, and Megan Fitzpatrick is on the Northside House Tour Committee.
So many questions we receive are about street names, so we'll start there.
Herb Witte wants to know about Mad Anthony in Northside, and Anthony Wayne in Hartwell and Wyoming, and if there's a connection between the names.
Maya Drozdz points out there was also a local band called Mad Anthony.
"Anthony Wayne was an aggressive jerk, I guess, that's how he got the nickname 'Mad,' " she says. "He was a Revolutionary War soldier. Fort Wayne, Indiana, is also named after him."
Wayne was aggressive on the battlefield, picking up the nickname in the War for Independence. He was briefly at Fort Washington, what is now Fourth and Ludlow, Downtown.
"I know he went through this area, and ... I think it was Hamilton and Spring Grove were originally Native American trails that were then used by European settlers and then became roads," Drozdz says.
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There's a plaque at the corner of Mad Anthony and Knowlton that reads, in part, "General Anthony Wayne and his army encamped here in 1793." They were on their way to fight Indigenous tribes in the Northwest Territory, and grab the land for the fledgling United States.
Erica Rausch also asked about Mad Anthony, and about another oddly named street it intersects: APJones... or is it A. P. Jones?
Drozdz and Fitzpatrick weigh in:
"I feel like people pronounce it Apjones," Drodz says. "That doesn't mean it's correct."
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"I'm pretty sure it is Apjones," Fitzpatrick says. "And the only reason I think that is I just got back from a trip to Wales, and Ap means 'son of' and Jones is a common Welsh name. And I'm pretty sure that it's named after somebody named Jones who is the son of Jones, so it's Apjones, and I'm almost certain that's right."
The truth is... convoluted.
There was a man named Ludlow Apjones who lived in the neighborhood in the last part of the 19th century. He and his wife Anna are buried with his parents in Spring Grove Cemetery.
Both Ludlow and his father, Charles, were lawyers, and made names for themselves. The elder wrote a book of poetry. His son was one of the founders of the Ohio Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Cincinnati Society of Natural History.
A 1924 obituary for Apjones says the street is named for his father, Charles Jones. But his name is just Jones. There's no Ap.
Charles died in 1852. The first mention of an Apjones Street in Williams' Cincinnati Directory isn't until 1877. That's also the last year Ludlow Apjones is listed as a Cincinnati resident. He moved to Clark County, Ohio, where he died in 1924.
Another road in Northside caught the interest of Judy Roll: The Dooley Bypass. She wants to know who it's named for, and why it's there.
Spring Grove Avenue once intersected with Hofner, Hamilton, at what was known as Knowlton's Corner.
By 1914, the completion of the Ludlow Viaduct added to the congestion with cars, trucks, and transfer points for at least a half dozen trolley lines all meeting at the intersection.
A civil engineer named William P. Dooley Jr. designed a solution to the congestion in the late 1940s.
Megan Fitzpatrick says the new route was more efficient for thru traffic, by avoiding the crowded intersection.
"Well, it makes sense though to bypass Knowlton's Corner, because that's where you'd be coming in if you didn't take the bypass," Fitzpatrick says. "Knowlton's Corner has been a five- or six-way intersection since it's inception almost. So it would be a nightmare to get through there."
The bypass more closely follows the Mill Creek, and stays out of the middle of Northside.
Work on the bypass started in spring of 1948. It opened Oct. 10, 1949, less than two weeks after Dooley died.
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Not long after, City Council approved changing the name from Knowlton's Corner By-Pass to the William P. Dooley Bypass.
The projected cost was $300,000, but was completed for about $185,000 according to news reports at the time.
There are more questions about Northside, and we'll tackle them in the next edition of OKI Wanna Know.
