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OKI Wanna Know: More questions and answers about Northside curiosities

An ornate brick building on a cloudy day.
Bill Rinehart
/
WVXU
The Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Company switchboard building in Northside was built in 1924.

Our feature OKI Wanna Know is your chance to ask the question that's been gnawing at you, and you weren't sure where to find the answer. There have been lots of questions about Northside, and we tackle another handful with WVXU's Bill Rinehart.

In the last edition, we learned about a street in the neighborhood named for an aggressive Revolutionary War general. "Ap" is a Welsh prefix meaning "son of," and we learned who Mr. Dooley was.

Some of the most common questions we get are about street names. Like this one from Jeremy Sicking:

"Why are there two similar streets named 'Blue Rock' that intersect Colerain Ave? Blue Rock Road intersects Colerain in Mt. Airy and Blue Rock St. intersects Colerain at Wesleyan Cemetery in Northside. Neither Blue Rock comes close to intersecting each other."

Looking at the map, one has to wonder if Colerain Avenue was originally called Blue Rock.

Chris Henson with the Colerain Historical Society says it wasn't. He says Blue Rock Road was originally Blue Rock Turnpike with two toll houses. And he says it did not reach Northside.

Megan Fitzpatrick with the Northside House Tour Committee says it's one of several local language oddities.

RELATED: Who are Northside's Mad Anthony and Apjones streets named after?

"One's Blue Rock Road, and one's Blue Rock Street, so they are different names," she says. "But that's not uncommon around here, too. My grandparents lived on Birney Lane, which depending where you are on it is spelled differently."

If you're curious, north of Salem Road in Anderson Township, Burney Lane is spelled B-U-R-N-E-Y. South of Salem, it's spelled with an I.

Megan Philpott has a two-part question. First she asks whether a Northside park is Parkers Woods, or Parker Woods. She has seen it with and without the "s."

A directional sign on the side of a rainy street in a residential neighborhood.
Bill Rinehart
/
WVXU
A sign on Hamilton Avenue points the way to "Parkers Woods."

Rocky Merz with Cincinnati Parks says "no S." Parker Woods is the official, correct spelling.

However, Megan Fitzpatrick, and Maya Drozdz with the Northside Business Association, aren't 100% sure.

"Language shifts. Language is ever evolving," Fitzpatrick says.

"And also, maybe because it was originally Parker's Woods, that would be correct, too," Drozdz adds.

Both call it Parker Woods.

A sign next to a wet sidewalk that leads into the woods.
Bill Rinehart
/
WVXU
A sign at an entrance into the park correctly calls it "Parker Woods."

The land once belonged to Alexander Langlands Parker. Which leads us to Megan Philpott's second question:

His name is Langlands, with an "s." Why doesn't nearby Langland Street have an "s"?

Alexander Langlands Parker was a grandson of the original landowners.

Alexander and Janet Langlands, according to a history of Cumminsville, came to the area around 1822.

They begat Margaret, who married Frederick Parker, and together they had Alexander Langlands Parker.

An 1891 map shows the street as Langland. Not Langlands. An 1884 street guide also lists it as "Langland."

The Cincinnati Hamilton County Public Library has short articles from the Cincinnati Post and Times-Star between 1961 and 1963 about Cincinnati street names. They were collected by Ray Steffens, and are available online. One article in the series says Langland Street refers to the original Alexander Langlands, but it doesn't say where the "s" went.

Megan Fitzpatrick may have found the missing "s" in another colloquialism.

"Krogers! Are you going to Kroger or are you going to Krogers?" she says.

Which brings us to another part-of-speech question about a body of water that borders Northside.

Ben Griffin asks "Why is it called 'the Mill Creek' and not just 'Mill Creek?' "

For the answer, we turn to the creek experts. Mill Creek Alliance Executive Director Dave Schmitt says it's something that has been debated within the organization for some time.

"We have researched this and found that if we're following proper English form and grammar, when you're speaking about a river or a stream, they do consider it correct to say 'the Mill Creek,' or 'the Ohio River.' "

RELATED: Why Does Kentucky Own The Ohio River?

Schmitt says he thinks it sounds better without the "the."

Tina Schlaechter has our final question. It's about a building at Hamilton Avenue and Westmoreland. She says it's beautiful, and wants to know what it's used for.

It says on the front, "The Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Co," which became Cincinnati Bell, which became AltaFiber, which still uses the facility.

Maya Drozdz says the building is lovelier than it needs to be, thanks to the architect. Harry Hake designed a number of buildings for the phone company, including those in Norwood, Westwood, and Harrison, and the massive Art Deco structure at 7th and Elm.

He designed a lot of familiar structures, including several Cincinnati police and fire stations.

"The old Crosley Field, Queen City Club, Western and Southern Building on East Fourth," Drozdz says. "The Madison Public Library is another one."

Hake died in 1955, but not before seeing his son and grandson also become architects.

Bill Rinehart started his radio career as a disc jockey in 1990. In 1994, he made the jump into journalism and has been reporting and delivering news on the radio ever since.