Jeff

That is interesting...where would these be at? I might want to check these out for some pix. Thanks! I wonder that too...considering the interest in this neighborhood one would expect a lot of studies. Perhaps the National Register application has a lot of this type of anaylses. It seems a number of the studies that are avaibale are not ciculating, so one has to go to the relevant library to read the stuff, not order it via computer. From me here is a sort of quick draft of what could be a homegrown tenenment vernacular, from what ive noticed driving around Cincy and Convington. The pix are from Cincinnati: Over The Rhine byJay Bachemin. Taking a look at this aeriel from central OTR: One can see a certain type of apartment or tenement house, with these long sloping roofs...probably from the 1860s /70s/80s. Compare these with these older buildings from the 1840s/50s....Walnut & 14th & Walnut and Mercer. ...which are very much in a certain Middle Atlantic/Ohio Valley vernacular style. You can find similar places in Germantown and in the Oregon. Here are some diagrams of a notional evolution of this townhouse style to the Cincy tenenement. ...an alternative concept which is just as likely.... ..again these are just looking at massing and form, not floor plans. I do think its interesting that the roofline is always running parallel to the street. Another view showing the evolution of scale and form, 1850s and 1870s houses in I think Pendelton? That 2nd Empire mansard roof style could be another local vernacular for Cincinnati ...and, for contrast, another Midwestern industrial city, Chicago, showing a different approach to narrow lots and high density. This area is probably as old as OTR in terms of building age. The Chicago tenements still, in some cases, have a vestigal front yard or space holding them back from the sreet line, while OTR is zero lot line facing the street. And the same area, perhaps at about the same amount of building coverage as OTR. There are a few flat-roof buildings here, but they are of a different nature than the OTR ones, and the predominant form is the roofline perpendicular to the street, keeping a fairly steep roof slope, though the buildings are as deep into the lot as the OTR tenements. ..OTR again, for comparison I sort of wish i lived closer to Cincy as I would be probably doing more research on Over The Rhine. Yet I suspect local preservationists and architectural historians pretty much have the place nailed down already. Perhaps the interesting thing here is to do comparison studys between, say, Cincy, Louisville, Chicago, Cleveland...comparing Midwestern citys ways of developing and building...how they are similar and how they differ, or something like that.

Here are some maps to illustrate what Jay Mecklenborg was talking about regarding the courthouse, how it was located out in the out-lots, not in town...near some of the first plats of the outlots. Two early maps with the location of the courhouse in red (second map is mislabeled and should be 1819, not 1822) And some close ups of the outlots and the initial platting beyond the orginal Cincy town plat 1815 1819 I think the location of the courthouse is somewhat unsual considering other "western" city plats often reserved a square for the near the center of town for courthouse (that was the case the in Dayton, though the square was subsequently replatted the courthouse remained one of the lots) ..and, from the theses, here is what Jay is describing:

I was the one who made that statement and the context was more in terms of white peoples negative stereotypes of blacks which led to white flight from urban Ohio and now, perhaps, leads to "white avoidance"? How much of this is out-and-out racism and how much is ignorance is a question, true. But this isn't what the thread header is about and I don't want to hijack the thread, just a clarification of the context of my statement.

...we'd have to figure out what Ohio skyline would work here...maybe rotating logos...cleveland/cincy/cols...on a loop...

(not sure to post this in the pix or city discussions thread...maybe more here since these arent really "pix" but maps) Y'all might recall those psuedoanalytical pix threads I posted of Dayton's Oregon District and South Park neighborhood. Well, it turns out other people are doing something similar and I am not a "lone nut" interested in this stuff. Apparently there is this area of research called "Urban Morphology" that looks at the development urban form of cities. This seems to be happening mostly in Europe (as those cities are so much older so there is more history to effect developement), but there is this happening in the US too. I think this movement influenced the architect Aldo Rossi, whos book on the "Architecture of the City' influenced what I was doing with those Dayton threads. I ran across a few books on this urban morphology stuff...one of the best is Built for Change, Neighborhood Architecture in San Francisco, which was pretty close to what I was doing w. Dayton, looking at the evolution of urban vernacular architecture as well as the street and lot plans. For Ohio, for one of my favorite neighborhoods, I found this absoultley fabulous masters theses, via Ohiolink.... The Rise Fall and Regeneration of Over-The-Rhine: A Morphological Study by Daniel Brian Ferdelman[/u] ...his masters theses for a Master of Community Planning from UC, 1997. This is one damn fine study and book! There was a ton of computer graphic and computer mapping involved, and Mr Ferdelman details how he went about digitizing an old insurance map of 1855 and subsequent Sanborn Maps to develope a comparison over time of the built form of OTR. Ferdelman also apparently did a bunch of research in the County Recorders Office on how OTR was platted, yielding a platting history of the neighborhood, with discussion of how these plats differed, etc. The concept here is that urban form can be "broken downt into three interrelated elements: town plan, built form, and land use. Typo-morphology is the study of the urban form by understanding typical space and structure configurations and their change over time. The complex interplay of economics, society, and politics through time results in the built form or "townscape". (page 1 of the thesis). @@@@@@@@@@@ So what I did was scan some maps and graphics from the thesis for y'all to look at, and maybe if you like it you can check out this book from the library, if you have access to an academic library or Ohiolink. Over the Rhine in 1855, 1891, 1956 and 1991. The date labels are mine, as these where big 11 x 17 maps that I had to cut off. What makes this so impressive is that Ferdelman used different sources at different but managed to create comparable built form maps using computer mapping/CAD... And a map of what survives from 1891... Then some comparisons of the Central Parkway/Canal area through time, showing how the street wall around the old canal was eroded way by parking lots and such ....and the drastic break in the urban fabric caused by the widening of Liberty Street in the 1960s. Libertys angle is because the street follows a section line from the rectangular coordinate survey, while OTR streets are projections from the orginal city plat, which follows the river bank. And a 11 x 17 map showing the outlines of building destroyed to widened Liberty. I always wondered why this street was so wide...well, apparently it wasn't that way in the beginning. One of the conclusions of the theses is that much of the demolition in OTR came not from neglect or obsolesence but from government action. Here are some more maps showing how OTR developed out of the outlots in the orginal Cincinnati plat. The north-south streets projections from the town plat into the outlots. This city lot/outlot system was also used in Dayton, Lexington, Columbus, maybe Louisville. Don't know about Cleveland. Since the north-south streets where fixed in the original plat, the east-west streets where more a product of the outlot platting, resulting in jogs and discontinuities. OTR's street system is not a true grid, like downtown Cincinnati. There are also more maps showing the different patterns of platting in the outlots, as well as a big 11 x 17 map showing the platting history, based on the research at the recorders office. Probably for me the most interesting was this one small map, showing "building replacement". Apparently OTR was orginally built out at lower building density or land coverage, and built out at 2 to 3 stories, mosty in wood (but with some brick). Between 1855 and 1891 the neighborhood was rebuilt at a higher density in brick and stone, with taller buidlings (though this rebuilding might have been going on already in 1855?) ...and a close-up of this map..outlines are 1891, shaded 1855. One wonders if OTR looked back then more like the Oregon or German Village, as some of the footprints and arrangements on lots resemble somewhat what remains in Dayton. Also, this recycling or building subsitution process might have been happening in the Oregon, too, as that neighborhood was platted in the 1820s through 40s, yet not much remains from that early platting era, with survivals starting more in the 1840s and 1850s. Some more maps of parts of OTR, enlargments by me of the built form maps, of parts of Over The Rhine, showing how the neighborhood increased in density in the 35 years or so between 1855 and 1891. This subsitution process is in itself interesting as the OTR we know is not the orginal neighborhood (what did those early buildings look like?), and also, that the original neighborhood, being largely in wood and still fairly dense, was sort of a big firetrap. One can surmise Cincinnati was lucky it did not experience the fate of Chicago, 1871! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this introduction to this theses. I think OTR could bear more study, too (Ferdelman said he had to narrow his these focus because of time constraints). There are some books out on the place, but they aren't quite that analytical as this one was. One good one with pix is Cincinnati: Over The Rhine by Robert J Wimberg, published by the excellent Ohio Bookstore (on Main in dtwn Cincy), which has dates along with some of the pix, so one can sort of chart the (re)building of OTR.

Well, ColDayMan has said Dayton is a little Detroit.

Monte you are a special case..a member of the defense community who really appreciates cities. I wish more are like you, because that would mean more people moving into Dayton proper and restoring old houses or moving into downtown lofts or housing, and patronizing events and places in the city. It seems the local defense community is pretty relentlessy suburban or wanting to live in small towns or mini-farms. Sure, their actual job is probably something very cutting edge and high-tech, but the ethos is sort of small town/rural, or thats the lifestyle they aspire to, or their preferred environment. I go to a lot of things in town, not just going to see bands, but things like Cityfolk and peforming arts events from the Ballet, Opera, etc. In the program one can see who the donors are..the buisnesses as well as individuals. There are precious view with rank after their name, and the base never shows up as a corporate or government donor. I figure it is pretty much the same with the civilan and contractor workforce. This is a contrast with places like Lexis-Nexis or NCR, where they are corporate sponsors, and in the case of Lexis-Nexis the workers there are asked to volunteer to work that Cityfolk Festival.

I like some of those education proposals.

UO? Urge Overkill?

^^ the whole place is alien, as far as Im concerned. The Dayton Deathstar.

Great, just what Dayton needs, more suburban conservatives.

^ yes, i had thought Salem was more industrial than really that deep rural poverty appalachia of the stereotype. That is what happens. If there are no jobs people leave town to look for them. That's why I left Kentucky. I can sort of appreciate "the magnet" concept, as getting back close to kin in Kentucky is why I ended up in Ohio. Appalachia in Ohio, driving through it, didnt seem as grindingly poor as some areas in Appalachian Kentucky that I recall from the early 70s. Of course, getting off the main roads one can no-doubt encounter areas like Mecklenborg mentioned. I don't know if I mentioned it before but a good book on the Kentucky side of Appalachia is Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry Caudill. It is sort of a history of the region, up to the 1960s.

That Theatre Guild project could be interesting. I've not been to their peformances but work-of-mouth is they do some good plays.

Vermillion seemed like an little lake port to me when I drove through many years ago. Lorain would be an appopriate home to this museum as its big industry was shipbuilding. A lot of those lakers where built in a shipyard in downtown Lorain.

This neighborhood is pretty small...looks like just a few blocks...but eight churches? Wow.

Capital Plaza. The tower (a state office building) is the focal point of a windswept plaza and sunken shopping center (when it was first built...not sure if its stlll there), with a small convention center on the other end. The hotel came much later. The inspiration was probably Empire State Plaza in Albany (AKA The Albany Mall) ..both designed by the same architect, Edward Durrell Stone. Kentucky at that time had a GOP governor, Louie Nunn, who apparently was trying to imitate John D Rockfeller, the gov. of NY who sponsored the Albany Mall. So Frankfort got a cut-rate version Stone (or his office) also did a dorm complex in Lexington, the Paducah City Hall, and a state resort park over at Kentucky Lake or Lake Barkley (I forget which). And yes that tower is pretty much out of scale compared to the rest of Frankfort, esp. the older part of town it sits in.

This applys to all the cities in Ohio, I think.

This is interesting as some of these comments are the gripes I have about Dayton, especially an after-the-show restaurant. There are little places downtown one can stop after the show for cocktails, but it would be nice to have a restaurant. As for Cincinnati, I always thought the Piatt Park area would be a good place for little late-night piano bars or small bistro-style restuarants. If OTR ever gentrifies the area around Music Hall and the Ensemble Theatre..the southern part of OTR...could become a good spot for after-the-show spots. These are good numbers!

Well, since Mr Schuster doesn't like seeing the homeless people on the street maybe he could make a big contribution here.

It would primarily run on the abandoned ROW that travels through Norwood, Silverton, Blue Ash, and north of I-275 all the way to Lebanon. Unlike any other abandoned ROW around town, this one travels directly through healthy neighborhoods for its entire length without any significant dry spells. It would travel through the major secondary employment centers of U of Cincinnati, Xavier/Norwood, and Blue Ash. These are the major secondary centers of employment in the metro and so no other transit lines have the same potential for reverse commuting and two-way traffic. If you go on Google maps, the line is drawn on there even though it's inactive. Switch between it and the satellite image and you'll see why this line is ideal. "I-75" light rail has not been desribed specifically but would parallel any one of the three active lines that travel parallel to I-75 north of the lateral. None of these lines travel through residential areas steadily. It would be almost strictly a commuter line with less midday and reverse traffic than the I-71 line. I agree, the northeast line would make more sense.

The Old State Capital is a great little gem of American Classical Reivival. Frankfort also has a claim to culinary fame as this was where Bibb Lettuce was developed. A local, Paul Sawyer, became an American impressionist painter. Frankfort and the surrounding country was a frequent subject, and Sawyer prints are found in many a Kentucky home But heres another separated at birth

Seperated at Birth

Doesnt Columbus have pro sports already? I thought they bought the Hartford Whalers and moved them to that arena in the Arena District?

So Highland Square is within the city limits?

i have to agree with daytonblue. I really admire the collecive brainpower here, and that you all have the combination of ability and character to make it through college, not once but twice as I see a lot of you have multiple degrees. As someone who only had a brief two year (really one and a half year) brush with college I have a lot of respect for people who are able to make it through and earn that degree.