Here's my first photo tour.  It's of the Old Orchard nabe of Toledo, just north of the university.  Check out the rectilinear grid!  Here are the rough nabe boundaries:  Central Ave to the north, Secor Rd to the west, Bancroft St to the south, and Cheltenham Rd (more or less) to the east.  It's pretty much a nabe where it's rewarding to open your eyes.  This is just before all the leaves sprouted on the trees.

 

http://maps.google.com/maps/mm?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=41.669834,-83.615699&spn=0.022889,0.039997&z=15

 

some of the pix may be tilted, sorry for the amateurish quality!

larger pix are available on flickr, pm me if interested

 

^i should post that one to "homes i feel sorry for"

UT

LOL, my in-laws place is in there.

 

 

 

i'm glad they didn't call the cops on me

I used to live at Kenwood Gardens back in my UT days - always appreciated the beauty of walking/rollerblading through Old Orchard on my way to class, except for those few concrete flat-roof "mod" boxes that some builder unfortunately plopped in the neighborhood - the style has not aged well, to say the least.

^there are some more north of central that i should take photos of soon.  they REALLY have not aged well.  also my neighbor's house across the street is one of those. 

Very comfortable place.

What can you say, it's a cute hood.

It is probably in my top three or four neighborhoods in the state. I used to ride my bike through there when I was at UT, on my way to Cricket West and Thackeray's.

Whenever we are up there we make sure (if the weather holds) to go for a walk and just admire the homes. It truly is a great place.

its a nice nabe.

 

btw great first photo tour!

I guess this would be part of Scott Park?

The neighbors around UT don't actually much like students. Toledo was way ahead of most of Ohio is trying to undermine the ability of college students to live as they wish off campus. They strictly enforce the three unrelated rule. Liquor patrol works with UT-PD and TPD on undercover ops in the parties to the East and to a lesser extent South of campus.

 

Besides Kenwood Gardens and University Apts, there isn't a lot of traditional student housing in Old Orchard. There is some seriously ghetto student housing to the south of campus. The east side attempts to be more upstanding, though I'm not sure where that stands today.

Old Orchard is heavier on the grad student/resident physician population than undergrads.  By the looks of the housing stock (quite a few impressive properties), it's geared more toward those who have already "made it."  There is a seamless transition from an architectural standpoint when crossing Secor Rd into uber-snobby Ottawa Hills.  There are, however, some more blasé, average suburban looking homes (with vinyl siding, etc) for "regular folks," and for student rentals. 

I am a bit familiar with the area.  The one thing I found odd was there is really no historic retail district or higher end shopping district with trendy restaurants etc in the area.  There is Old Orchard, than Ottowa Hills to it's immediate west and UT to the south if I remember correctly, and nothing but suburban style stuff between.  Really, to me it was an area of nice hosues, but that was about it.  I didn;t understand why. 

Toledo has all kinds of messed of retail development. Essentially, the city ceased growing for fifteen years from the late 20s through the mid-40s and then grew enough until the early 80s and then stopped again. Toledo never really turned over its fifties and sixties development in the way some other cities did, for good or ill.

 

As you get out toward OO and OH, it was laid out as speculative development, rather than organic growth (i.e. no space for retail).

 

Central Ave. to the north of OO developed as a key center of retail in the 1950s (Toledo's Swifton Commons for the Cincy folk). See the ancient Sears and Elder Beerman at Central and Secor. The place where Costco is now was that the good retail, but it looks nothing like it did even at the turn of the millennium.

 

Franklin Park became the center of retail, which is only about 10 minutes from OO and less going the back way from OH, which drained most of the energy from the Central Ave. shopping area.

 

As a homeowner oriented city (part of the reason Toledo has maintained its population even as its economy has continually withered), it has never seen much in the way of intense retail and multi-family development that one finds in a neighborhood retail district. Another way of saying this is that Old Orchard (and Toledo) followed a car-driven development pattern more fully and at a earlier stage than most other cities in Ohio.

 

Edited to add, I'm mostly discussing the development of West Toledo rather than entire city.

The other areas of high-end homes in Toledo (Old West End, Beverly... uh... am I missing any others?) also lack retail, or any other destination.  What gives?  I am from Cleveland and when I moved to Toledo I was expecting SOMETHING similar to Coventry, or a concentrated area of "cool stuff," like a venue and some restaurants and stores, bars, what have you.  I am convinced that it just doesn't exist here.  Downtown would be the only area with potential. 

 

Along the lines of West Toledo being more homeowner oriented and suburban in nature, much of the area is covered by suburban school districts:  Sylvania and Washington (which is the city's "other" district).  I also think the strong tradition of Catholic education kept many families within the city limits, and the Toledo Public Schools limits. 

 

afterthought:  I guess Maumee has bars and stores and restaurants that are in a downtown setup (ie not a strip mall), but it's not somewhere that I would ever hang out.  I'm more of a Wesley's person. 

Toledo's system of trolleys was quite extensive- one of the most extensive of any metropolitan area at the time. Even Bryan (50 miles away) had a line into the city!

 

But the more important question is - did it have a stop in Stryker along the way?

The urban legend I heard from a native Toledoan is that the big Dorr retail corridor was bull-dozed in the late 60s at the mere rumor of a riot in the area and that's why Dorr looks like an inside-out boulevard to this day. I was mostly referencing the Toledo west of say Detroit or maybe Douglas/Westwood.

 

By and by, it's good to see Toledo finally get some UO attention.

any retail or bars in a concentrated area don't have to be upper class, just maybe a little bit more hip.  a lot of the nightlife here consists of sports bars in strip malls. 

 

there are some retail remnants on Monroe north of OO. 

 

does anyone have an idea what's in store for the vacant lots fronting Bancroft between Meadowwood and Cheltenham?  hopefully not more parking.  It would be a good place to start on something more university neighborhood-oriented.  I bet the neighbors on the cross streets would throw a NIMBY fit, though. 

 

yeah, i felt the need to represent toledo some. 

They are owned by the university. There has been talk of various buildings getting built there over the years. How is the 'retail' corridor between Westwood and Wyndhurst looking these days?

That used to be UT's bar district, but they were already out of business when I came to campus in '96. It had the only walkable coffee shop to campus in the late 90s, Maxwell's Brew.

Maxwell's is still there, Gator'z (awesome spelling bro) - a college venue i've only seen from the outside, a 7/11 gas station, a hair salon, and a caribbean restaurant are there.

 

other area coffee includes Brewed Awakenings on central, Biggby at cricket west, Starbucks at the reconfigured westgate.  a new coffee place, Caffeini's, is opening in a new construction MIXED USE (!) building directly across from Rocket Hall on Secor.  I should snap a shot of it, there's no parking lot in front!

No. Scott Park is a good distance southeast of UT's main campus, though you can easily walk between the two campuses. Old Orchard is directly north of UT's main campus.

 

Scott Park is a branch campus about a mile away from the main UT campus. The student neighborhoods overlap between the two campuses, but Old Orchard is basically the only UT neighborhood north of campus. It's all by itself and has its own retail/bookstores/amenities as a result. There's a small corridor on Bancroft (not pictured here). Old Orchard is not a party neighborhood by any means, though a good number of students live there. It's just too pretty to have fun I guess...

 

Going by UT Neighborhood boundaries, Scott Park actually starts at Dorr right on the south end of campus. But yeah, Old Orchard is part of the larger neighborhood of Ottawa and not Scott Park.

Rocket Hall (SWAC), what a silly name for the old grocery store.

Rocket Hall (SWAC), what a silly name for the old grocery store.

 

I preferred "Value City campus", back when the classrooms shared the strip mall with the food stamp office, the wig store, and Kash n Karry.

I think the scariest bar I ever spent time in was in North Toledo near the old Cheerios (I think) plant.

yeah i saw Enon at Frankie's last month, first time i've been there.  it was pretty dope.