When you have a question about the area and you're not sure who to ask, try OKI Wanna Know. Our regular feature tackling the odd, out-of-place, and minute. This week, we look at Cincinnati places that once were, with WVXU's Bill Rinehart.
If you made a list of things Cincinnatians love to talk about, alongside chili and high schools, there'd be neighborhoods. We've received several questions about some that may not be official, or even on a map.
Joe McChain asks about the name Brentwood. He noticed a number of businesses in and around Finneytown with that name and wondered what's up.
Jill Beitz is the manager of reference and research for the Cincinnati History Library and Archives. She'd looked up the answer after some friends asked the same question.
"Post World War II, there was a large development going in there just called 'Brentwood Village,' " she says. "They were hoping to build enough houses and then to have shopping and restaurants and everything that would be separate from Finneytown."
Beitz says there are a lot of houses, but the independent village never really took off.
Kenwood, Dillonvale and other subdivisions
Eileen Crowe asked where the name Kenwood comes from since the neighborhood and the mall are in Sycamore Township.
Beitz says the answer is similar to Brentwood's story, but Kenwood is older. She found references to it in the mid- to late-1920s.
"It was just a little area between Madeira and Montgomery that was unincorporated and a subdivision named Kenwood went in," she says. "By the early '50s, about 800 families lived there."
She says Madeira tried repeatedly to annex the subdivision, but voters mostly said no. Madeira did eventually get a piece of south Kenwood.
After I-71 was built, Beitz says the community exploded.
"Once that highway went through, people wanted to live there, businesses wanted to be located there, because it was a great place to get to," she says. "Early on, it was very rural and that's what people liked about it."
There's another nearby neighborhood that started as a subdivision. Original plans for Dillonvale in the mid- to late-'40s indicated Dillon Builders planned to construct more than 600 single family homes. Today, the Sycamore Township neighborhood covers less than a square mile, with a population of about 3,400 people.
Faxon Hills, Warsaw get swallowed up
Ann Rueve found another neighborhood on Google: Faxon Hills. She wonders if it's real or a computer glitch.
Jill Beitz says she'd never heard of Faxon Hills, but yes, it's real.
"It started as a subdivision. It was also post-war. There were two Faxon brothers, and a Faxon father's family business," she says. "One of the brothers ran the offices and sold the homes and things, and the other was the construction manager. So they were putting this development in Hyde Park."
Beitz says there are likely other neighborhoods in the area that started as subdivisions, but have lost their unique identity as they were swallowed up.
The same thing happened to a lot of villages: they were annexed.
"And there's Warsaw Avenue. Well, Warsaw used to be a community there, and now all that's left is the road name," she says. "There used to be a place called Home City and the ice factory was there. So Home City's been absorbed into Saylor Park but we all know about Home City Ice."
Sausage Row, Rat Row and other disappeared Downtown 'hoods
Cameron Frueh wonders if Sawyer Point was home to woodcutters and laborers.
According to Cincinnati Parks, Sawyer Point is named for Charles Sawyer, who was a member of Cincinnati City Council, served as Ohio's lieutenant governor, and was secretary of commerce in the Truman administration. So, no.
But, there were neighborhoods on the banks of the Ohio River and around Downtown that are all but forgotten.
"Bucktown was down on the river, it's basically where the Freedom Center is now. It was predominately an African-American neighborhood, although there were a number of Irish that lived there," Beitz says. "Right near that was also Sausage Row and Rat Row."
But those were nicknames for Cincinnati neighborhoods and not subdivisions or villages of their own.
"The first few places settled were Columbia, which is Columbia Tusculum and North Bend," Beitz says. "Once they got serious about it, they realized where Losantiville was, was the best place to be. It was higher ground. It was right across from the Licking River; they had a good view of the river. So that's where the fort went in. And that's why everybody settled there."
Losantiville was eventually renamed Cincinnati.
If you think about it, if North Bend, Columbia or any of those other communities grown faster, the Bengals and the Reds could today have a name on the jersey other than Cincinnati.
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