I find myself in Toledo very often since my grandmother lives there.  I was able to sneak away for a couple hours and do a mini tour of the city.  I only took pictures of the area around Toledo University and some pictures by the mouth of the Maumee River because of the rain.

 

Indian Hills

 

This is a small neighborhood I found tucked right next to the University of Toledo. 

 

Here is a link to a neighborhood map put out by the city:

http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Indian-Hills-Toledo-OH.html

 

 

I'm not sure what happened here...

 

 

Ahh the infamous UT Tower (What's the name by the way?)

Now for a neighborhood of this quality I'm very disappoint by the lack of a quality commercial district.  I find this true with most of urban Toledo.

 

Old Orchard

 

Here is the link to the neighborhood boundaries..

http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Old-Orchard-Toledo-OH.html

 

 

 

I believe this photos are in Old Orchard but there is a chance they're from Ottawa Hills.  I got a little turned around.  Please correct if I'm wrong Toledo formers

 

 

Here are some pictures just West of the Old Orchard neighborhood on Kenwood Blvd.  I was impressive with the extensive boulevard system in this neighborhood.  But much less impressive with the 1960s and 70s ranch housing stock so I didn't take any pictures of them.  It reminds me of some of Springfield's neighborhoods.

 

Now back to Old Orchard along Kenwood Blvd.

 

Here is The Toledo Hospital.  It's located just North of Ottawa Park.

If you look real closely you can see the store of David at the top of the building

 

This was just a cool house a stumbled upon in the neighborhood..

 

Here a picture from Woodlawn Cemetery.  Beautiful place!

 

Shots of the Mouth of the Maumee

 

 

Why is the UT tower infamous?

Great picks. I think these pics show the degree of pride that Toledoans still have in their city. You don't need to be wealthy to appreciate the significance of basic maintenance of beautiful housing stock like this. Part of the lack of commercial districts is that so much of streetcar suburban Toledo was developed immediately on the cusp of the Great Depression and so there was often a couple decade lag between the building of the housing and the serious development of the commercial areas - which means a lot of these commercial areas (esp. near the University) are still basically first generation commercial development - Churchill's Grocery stores are a great example.

 

I know they tore down the post-war dorms that sat in the middle of the campus, but from pictures I've seen they were little more than barracks. The original dorms are still standing as far as I'm aware - though they are now the History and Poli.Sci/Philosophy Buildings (Tucker and Scott) and the all girls dorm (Mackinnon).

The big era of poor quality investment came in the late 50s and into the 60s, when the University tried to grow on the cheap without access to state funds or a good debt rating.

 

The crappiest bldgs. are the Education or Health Human Services Bldg, Bowman-Oddy (the new part is fine), Snyder Memorial, and sadly the theater building. McComas Village is craptastic too.

Thanks for the tour.  Its nice to get another Toledo photo thread.  Pretty decent looking residential areas.  Many brick wall/slate roof english cottage examples.  I personally like this style.  And this house style also looks very much at home in a leafy green residential neighborhood setting.

 

dmerkow mentioned about the pride of place and the maintenance of beautiful housing stock that is apparent in these photos.  And I couldn't agree more.  One thing I look for with older houses is the condition of the gutters and downspouts.  The condition of gutters can be a leading visual indicator of the maintenance of the neighborhood housing stock.  (Attached porches too - in other architectural styles)

 

If you own a house, you know that gutters need constant maintenance.  This is magnified in older houses due to their age and sometimes an unusual gutter/downspout arrangement.  It can be easy to defer maintenance of gutters and say you'll get to it next spring.  And then spring rolls around and you'll get to it in the fall.  And so on.  Until finally the gutters get clogged, water backs up into the roof and walls of the house.  Ice dams form in the winter with more water infiltration.  And then you've got some major expensive repairs! 

 

So if you look at the gutters and downspouts on these Toledo houses, they look very well maintained.  With some very elaborate arrangements too.  And the rest of houses doesn't look bad either.  :wink:

Nice homes.

The problem with UT is that it developed in the streetcar suburb era and thus the area is half-assed urban, half-assed suburban. Had they kept the university downtown, things would have been much different, but alas, almost all big cities trended towards the relocation model at some point.

 

Also, I was studying historic aerials of UT, and a lot of historic dorms and other buildings were torn down. They looked incredibly impressive, very Ivy-League. Why were they torn down? No clue. Even the layout of the central green has changed drastically.

 

The big tower is called University Hall, and it's easily one of them most impressive academic buildings in Ohio, if not the most impressive. That building alone gives light on the architectural quality of the school in the pre-WW2 days. Sadly, a good chunk was erased. UT became sort of a mess. It lacked vision for a long time. Finally, things are changing, but now there's no money to do anything.

 

I believe this photos are in Old Orchard but there is a chance they're from Ottawa Hills.  I got a little turned around.  Please correct if I'm wrong Toledo formers.

 

If there are sidewalks, you're in Toledo city limits (Old Orchard). If there are no sidewalks, you're in Ottawa Hills.

 

Now for a neighborhood of this quality I'm very disappoint by the lack of a quality commercial district.  I find this true with most of urban Toledo.

 

You've got to go to the ghettos. Urban commercial districts in Toledo trend towards the poorer parts of the city, meaning streets like Main, Starr (honestly, East Toledo has some great stretches, though gritty as hell), Lagrange, Broadway, Sylvania, Detroit, Phillips, some parts of Monroe, etc. Unlike Detroit (the city, not the avenue in Toledo), there is still a surprising amount of functionally urban commercial activity hidden away in Toledo's less than savory neighborhoods. Outside the core, it can be totally random at times, hence why I say hidden. There's no rhyme or reason to Toledo. Some big city streets like Lagrange still have a lot of urbanity while other big city streets like Dorr have been decimated (which also has resulted in the lack of a good student commercial district at UT). Monroe is a mixed bag. There's some urban commercial activity in it's pre-WW2 parts, then it turns into a suburban mess in the annex area.

 

Neighborhoods also have some of their own little clusters, think Birmingham and Ivy League. There's even a random pocket on South Detroit near the old Bowsher. That one is incredibly random and is home to a busy Marco's. The issue is that Toledo lacks yuppies and hipsters, thus it's tough for any higher-end retail to survive. This is becoming true for the whole metro area. A lot of areas that look wealthy aren't actually wealthy. It's just Toledo has a lot of impressive housing stock still standing from its heyday. Old West End proves this beyond measure. It's a remarkably ornate neighborhood, but it's not wealthy. Toledo is weird like that. Somehow, a lot of the high-end housing was saved and subdivided, but the retail sector sunk because there's not enough money anymore.

 

What happened in the wealthier parts of the city (as if anything in metro Toledo is really wealthy anymore) is that the city was able to annex areas in the west side and southwest side to develop as mall-centric retail/commercial hubs. You see this with the Franklin Park, Westgate, and Southwyck neighborhoods. Toledo saw the suburban tides coming down the pike, and figured it might as well develop a couple malls inside its city limits. To do this, they had to annex undeveloped land. Over time, these malls took the middle class dollars to the annex areas. Hence why I say much of the commercial urbanity in Toledo is now in the lower class neighborhoods (though we're almost all lower class in some ways). Basically, there is a lack of middle class commercial districts in Toledo because that money is at Franklin Park. And like all money in Toledo, that will be gone sooner rather than later. The whole region is sinking.

Good stuff! and very honest too...  Toledo strikes me as being as Mid-West, Middle Class and Middle of the row as possible. 

 

Are there some intact urban neighborhoods by Phillips and Sylvania?

Great picks. I think these pics show the degree of pride that Toledoans still have in their city. You don't need to be wealthy to appreciate the significance of basic maintenance of beautiful housing stock like this. Part of the lack of commercial districts is that so much of streetcar suburban Toledo was developed immediately on the cusp of the Great Depression and so there was often a couple decade lag between the building of the housing and the serious development of the commercial areas - which means a lot of these commercial areas (esp. near the University) are still basically first generation commercial development - Churchill's Grocery stores are a great example.

 

I know they tore down the post-war dorms that sat in the middle of the campus, but from pictures I've seen they were little more than barracks. The original dorms are still standing as far as I'm aware - though they are now the History and Poli.Sci/Philosophy Buildings (Tucker and Scott) and the all girls dorm (Mackinnon).

The big era of poor quality investment came in the late 50s and into the 60s, when the University tried to grow on the cheap without access to state funds or a good debt rating.

 

The crappiest bldgs. are the Education or Health Human Services Bldg, Bowman-Oddy (the new part is fine), Snyder Memorial, and sadly the theater building. McComas Village is craptastic too.

 

Would the residential development in the great depression explain the large amounts of housing developments without sewers and curbs?  I noticed a lot of these especially south of UT and others on the westside of Toledo

 

This reminds me of the housing stock around Detroit's Sherwood Forest.  I love the cylindrical entries. 

c dawg,

 

there sure are sidewalks in ottawa hills, mostly in the eastern part near secor, take a peek

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=ottawa+hills&sll=37.509726,-95.712891&sspn=33.313481,56.513672&ie=UTF8&ll=41.666204,-83.625913&spn=0.003855,0.010986&t=k&z=17

Thanks!

Are there some intact urban neighborhoods by Phillips and Sylvania?

 

yes.

huh I wish there was a photo thread on it..

The Tower is actually the tower that shows up on all Mead notebooks or so they told us. I know that the really ugly dorms behind Tucker/Scott were actually faculty and married student housing, but I can't remember if that was also the case for the Tucker and Scott. The south side of campus is fascinating. They were just finishing tearing down the neighborhood there when I first visited campus in the spring of 96. The Academic House and International House were new when I was there, I haven't been in the new massive one on the south side of campus. The east side of campus is Douglas/Westwood. Yeah a semi-active rail-line is there and Douglas is basically at expressway grade through the Savage Arena stretch.

UT peaked in the early 90s at just north of 25,000 students. It started downhill in the late 90s and bounced around south of 20,000 for a number of years. My sense that it was mostly a continuation of Secor Gardens. It was part and parcel of the area that was Food Town and other stores and became SWAC and now Rocket Hall. There was a lot of wooded land that had frequent criminal activity - a couple rapes and murders, a few exhibitionists/groapers and the like. CCUP owns a lot of land on the south side of campus. The tipping point toward more on campus happened while I was there in the late 90s - the Honors Program with the building of new dorms was key. Part of was the fact that UT didn't have the same rep outside the city as it does in. UC took a bigger leap, but yeah it was pretty dramatically transformed over the last twenty years. 9 years ago the east side neighborhood was still pretty mixed between students and Toledoans and the locals had little patience for the students. The southside was filled with really bad student housing. I would say most off-campus students lived up on Central in the apartment complexes or down off Byrne.

The neighborhood south of the tracks and north of Dorr that was leveled was a bunch of crappy little slab houses and cottages on streets that dead-ended into the railroad tracks.  I think it was far more of a hillbilly ghetto than a student ghetto.  When I was at UT from 88-92, the wooded area next to Parks had a dirt path along the south bank of the Ottawa River to get to the student housing on Secor (College Station or whatever it's called now).  I seem to recall at least one student raped along that path, which was unlit and unsafe compared with walking on the north side of the Ottawa River by the Law School and Performing Arts.

 

The university owns some land on the north side of Bancroft across from U Hall, but any attempt to develop it would meet with great opposition from the Old Orchard neighbors.  At the time I was a student, the Honors Program was housed in an unmarked house on Drummond, and other specialty programs were in similar houses on Cheltenham and Goddard.

 

When I attended UT, lots of students lived in the apartments northwest of Dorr and Secor, but many more rode the student bus service to apartment complexes around Airport/Byrne/Glendale, Hill Ave, Dorr/Reynolds, and Bancroft/McCord, as well as Kenwood/Central and Westgate areas.  The student population was/is just too spread out to support the kind of college-oriented retail that thrives at OSU and in small town campuses like KSU.

 

If a student oriented retail neighborhood is to develop anywhere at UT, I would think the best hope is at Dorr and Secor, where the University owns a mostly vacant strip of frontage along Dorr south of Rocket Hall - I could see that becoming street level retail with housing above. But the south side of Dorr, as I recall it, is a string of convenience stores, used car lots, and muffler shop places that is seriously flawed from an urban standpoint.