The holidays are coming and with them, a heightened awareness of the mail: Did you get any cards? Where are your packages? Our feature OKI Wanna Know received a number of questions related to mailing addresses and decided to wrap them up into one episode and tie it with a bow.
Sam Fisher of Pendleton noticed something odd about his neighborhood when he was Googling a ZIP code.
"I noticed playing around in the maps, 45202 covers most of Downtown, but there's a single square missing," he says. "Right around Liberty and 14th Street, it looks like it belongs to the ZIP code further west that encompasses Queensgate and the West End. So I just wanted to know how that little block got excluded from the 45202."
As luck would have it, a friend of mine lives in that block:
"I'm Bill Johnson. I live in 45202 ZIP code."
How long have you lived there?
"I've lived there 16 years."
Has the ZIP code always been that?
"At least for 16 years."
So, it is 45202. We asked the folks at Google Maps about it. They declined an interview but said they looked into it and fixed it, so if you Google 45202 and look at the map today, you won't see the weird little island any more. A Google spokesperson also said if you know of another oddity, they'd like to hear about it.
But, not so fast! Johnson's landlord wrote in with more information. Joe DeLuco says "Actually Pendleton and nearly all of OTR used to be 45210 and was changed in the early 2000's and a lot of bills and important mail got lost in the shuffle for a while!"
He pointed us to a column by Cliff Radel in the May 2, 2002 edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer that backs it up. Radel wrote that as of July 1, 2002, Over-the-Rhine, (and by association, Pendleton) would no longer have its own ZIP code, and would instead join the 45202.
The reason for the change? Saving money. Radel reported it would save the USPS $250,000 because all of the mail could be sorted by machine, instead of by hand.
So it appears that strange little island existed on Google Maps because it once was a different ZIP code.
Why some houses on Fields-Ertel have two address numbers
James Bedingfield of Mason noticed something along Fields-Ertel Road, between Butler-Warren Road and Snyder Road.
"There are a bunch of houses that have two different addresses on their mailbox," he says. "One number starts in the eight-thousands, and one starts in the six-thousands, and I wondered why that was."
The post office isn't the only agency that relies on addresses. Public safety departments also need to know where they're going. Deerfield Fire Captain Patrick Strausbaugh says the two numbers shouldn't affect emergency responses.
"If they're calling from a landline, which not a lot of people have anymore, it'll get routed to that county's dispatch automatically," he says. "If it's a cell phone, generally it's going to get dispatched through the county that they're in, because they ping the cell towers."
There's a perfectly good reason behind the dual numbers and it's confusing. Fields-Ertel marks the border between counties. Some of the first people who lived along the road considered themselves in Warren County, and some said they lived in Hamilton County. And some of them received mail from two different post offices: one from each county. According to Strausbaugh, when county governments finally settled who lived where, some residents kept the dual number system.
"Just for simplicities sake, if they were using that address, they weren't required to change it."
Strausbaugh says there are some exceptions. The driveways at a few houses at intersections may have changed, forcing a change in address, and, there's a couple of numbers at one driveway that serve two houses.
Which came first: 'Cinti,' Cinci' or 'Cincy'?
Giovanni Rocco of Over-the-Rhine is daring to ask the question that has launched a thousand arguments.
"What is the origin of the abbreviation for Cincinnati? What is the origin of the 'Cinti' abbreviation?"
Rocco says he prefers C-I-N-T-I to Cincy — ending with either a "y" or an "i."
The manager of reference and research at the Cincinnati History Library and Archives went into the archives to try to find the original abbreviation. Jill Beitz says it's not clear cut, but "Cinti" appears to have come first. The oldest reference she found was in 1841.
"I first saw it in Cincinnati Gas Light and Coke Company, which was the precursor to CG&E, which was the precursor to Duke, and it was abbreviated 'Cinti,' " she says.
Most newspapers she says were happy to write out Cincinnati, although the city's name did get shortened to "Cin" in an 1827 newspaper article.
"Cincy" appeared in an 1889 article about an actor.
"He was from Cincy but he was performing in Chicago. However, that was written by the Chicago Sporting and Theatrical Journal, so I don't know if other places were calling us 'Cincy' before we were."
Other references she found include a bookie known as Cincy Jack, and a circus elephant named Cincy. Beitz says by 1895, most references she found used Cincy. She says one source that still uses Cinti? The post office.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service couldn't answer which came first or which was preferred, but she did say their automatic address readers are programmed to accept either one.
The Ohio Department of Transportation sometimes uses Cinti as an abbreviation. Spokesman Matt Bruning says it appears to be at the discretion of the sign designer. He says there are reportedly some signs that use Cincy.
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