I was born in Cincinnati near Mariemont, but I spent most of my childhood just across the river in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. "Cake Town" is about as middle-America as you can possibly get, a cozy bedroom community strung along the top of a steep ridge overlooking the Ohio River, best known for its excellent public schools and its streets of tidy, well-kept houses. The type of place where you want to wake up on Christmas morning.

 

For me, it’s always refreshing going back there. Almost every spot in the city has some sort of childhood memory associated with it. No matter where I’ve been and what kinds of sordid ordeals I’ve been going through in my life, I feel like I can always go back and find Fort Thomas pretty much just as I had left it.

 

Most of my extended family and a few old friends in the Cincinnati area still live either in or near Fort Thomas, so the town typically serves as the hub of my activities during my periodic visits back home.

 

Prior to my most recent visit, though, it occurred to me that I hardly had any photos of the city, so I made a special point to remedy that oversight with my new digital camera. Here are some photos of some special places around my hometown, taken during the week of June 20-26, 2009.

 

Ridgewood Apartments, where we lived when I was a toddler. My memories of living here are extremely vague.

 

The house I grew up in, near the cul-de-sac on Arlington Place.

 

Bellaire Place in the northern part of Fort Thomas. My grandparents lived in a modest bungalow on this street, which was the hub of many family gatherings.

 

The main sidewalk to Samuel Woodfill Elementary School, which is where I began my formal education in 1980. I must have walked up that sidewalk a thousand times.

 

The city recently announced plans to replace Woodfill School with a new building, so I decided to get a few photos of the old building before it meets the wrecking ball.

 

The side entrance to Woodfill School, and the spot where I saw hail for the first time. A severe storm was approaching as school let out, and my third-grade teacher offered to give me a ride home. We stepped out this door just in time to see a baseball-sized hailstone explode on the sidewalk right in front of us. We wisely decided to take shelter within the school.

 

Down the hill from Woodfill is the site of the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, where 165 people perished in the third-deadliest nightclub fire in US history. I was too young to specifically remember the event, but it's one of those things that continues to haunt the area.

 

This roadside historical marker was finally erected sometime within the past year or so. Until then, there had been no formal memorial at the site.

 

The driveway to the Beverly Hills Supper Club site, now cracked and overgrown with with weeds. The former building site remains vacant, and will likely stay that way for a long time.

 

For many families in the area, the grief has never stopped burning.

 

The Midway business district, which grew up around the old fort and now serves as sort of a secondary downtown to Fort Thomas. The area was named after the carnival midway at Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition.

 

Known to locals simply as Fort Thomas Pub, this little neighborhood bar has been a local institution for decades. As a kid, I remember riding in the car past here at night, and being mesmerized by the neon signs in the windows.

 

The old Fort Thomas Armory, now a gymnasium for the park district. This building served as a makeshift morgue for victims of the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire.

 

Former military housing, now nicely restored as private homes.

 

The stone walls and wrought iron gates are a common sight around town.

 

The Fort Thomas water tower, namesake of Tower Park, which occupies the grounds of the former Army installation. Arguably the city's most famous landmark.

 

The two cannons in front of the water tower were already over a century old when they were captured by American soldiers during the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898.

 

The entrance to the reservoirs downhill from the water tower.

 

South Fort Thomas Avenue

 

The old Mess Hall in Tower Park, now a community center. I remember the building being in fairly decrepit condition at one point, but it has since been nicely restored.

 

The ball field at Tower Park, with the old Mess Hall -- now a community center -- in the background. This is where Fort Thomas has their annual July 4th fireworks.

 

A short distance from the Mess Hall is a side street that contains some abandoned officers' houses. I think plans are underway to restore these houses, and turn one of them into a museum for the city.

 

A sign sternly warns visitors to stay away from the structures.

 

Abandoned officers' housing in Fort Thomas

 

Being the largest house at the end of the street, this was presumably the Commanding Officer's quarters.

 

More abandoned officers' housing

 

A little statue of the Virgin Mary is the only thing that remains inside this house.

 

One of several gracious old homes that line South Fort Thomas Avenue.

 

St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church occupies a handsome edifice near the center of town.

 

A fairly typical house on South Fort Thomas Avenue.

 

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church on South Fort Thomas Avenue.

 

Christ Church. This was my family's old church.

 

It's been at least 25 years since I last walked through those doors.

 

Fort Thomas is the classic "streetcar suburb". The former Green Line played an important role in the development of Fort Thomas, and today's TANK bus routes through Fort Thomas still carry the old streetcar route numbers.

 

The central business district of Fort Thomas. It was a Sunday afternoon and the temperature was sweltering, so there wasn't much activity.

 

Highlands High School, the pride and joy of Fort Thomas. I didn't attend school here (I went to high school in Florida), but my father and many members of my extended family are Highlands alumni.

 

Typical houses along North Fort Thomas Avenue.

 

Many more photos from my Cincinnati trip to come... Stay tuned.

 

Great shots, I love Ft. Thomas.  It is terrible how the Feds are dragging their feet on turning over the homes there to locals for re-use.

Wow, I love this:

Thanks!

Pretty nice; looks like a great place to grow up.

Wow, thanks, I didn't know all this existed in Fort Thomas. I'm going to have to check it out someday.

Nice to see Fort Thomas represented :) I love biking along the main drags there... never that much traffic and the hills are fantastic.

Thanks... Fort Thomas is a great place. I never appreciated how special it was until I ended up moving elsewhere.

 

The rest of the photos from my Cincinnati trip can be found here. That page includes links to albums I've set up on Facebook. Sorry for not posting them all directly on UO like I did with the Fort Thomas pics, but with 470 photos, it would have taken forever to do all the coding.

Looks like a nice little streetcar burb.

 

    Tell me if this is correct. This is the story I heard.

 

    Fort Washington was an U.S. Army fort in Cincinnati. Cincinnati was chosen for the fort location because it was on the river yet high enough to be out of the flood prone area. Fort Washington was important to protect Cincinnati from the Indian menace in the early days and is a significant factor for the early success of Cincinnati.

 

    Fort Washington however attracted prostitutes, and upon complaints from the citizenry, the fort was moved across the river to Fort Thomas, and the prositutes moved across the river to Newport. Fort Thomas eventually faded out of importance and Newport held it's tradition through the 1980's.

 

    True?

Not quite.

 

Cincinnati's Fort Washington was replaced by the much larger Newport Barracks in 1803. After the Civil War, the Barracks lost their military importance, in addition to being subject to regular flooding. The Secretary of War selected the hilltop site of what was then a sparsely-populated area known as the Highlands District for a new military installation called Fort Thomas, and all personnel and equipment were transferred to the new fort in 1894. (The old Barracks site was ceded to the city of Newport the following year.) Alexandria Pike was the first road through the district, followed by Dayton Pike and Fort Thomas Avenue. What is today Memorial Parkway was formerly a private right-of-way for the streetcar line.

 

Mineral waters were discovered in the area, so a number of hotels and resorts were built during the following years, and the streetcar line from Newport further accelerated development (hint, hint). One of those old resorts still operates today as the Highland Country Club, and the streetcar ended near what is today the Campbell County YMCA building. (Today's #11 Fort Thomas TANK bus route roughly follows the old streetcar route, and still carries the old Green Line route number.)

 

Newport attempted to annex the Highlands District in 1912, but couldn't muster the votes needed for the annexation to pass. The city was formally named and incorporated as Fort Thomas in 1914. The US Army still operates a reserve center on the grounds of the old fort, and there is also a large VA nursing home on the property. The remainder of the property not occupied by housing is now Tower Park.

 

A number of outposts and artillery batteries here hastily constructed in the surrounding woods during the Civil War, but never saw combat. I don't think there is any physical evidence remaining of those installations, but a few local street names hint of their former locations.

 

Archeologists found about 500-600 Indian graves in the vicinity of what is now Highland and Newman Avenues, possibly the result of a 1749 battle between the Cherokee and the combined force of Shawnee and Miami Indians.

 

(My sources: Wikipedia and Pieces of the Past by Jim Reis, published in 1988 by the Kentucky Post)

Hm, so this is what Ft. Thomas looks like.  I had always heard it was nice, and actually have some friends that live there, and they describe it as being like Hyde Park or Mt. Lookout.  By the looks of these pictures that doesn't seem to be an accurate comparison, but it does look like a great neighborhood.  For being a lifelong Cincinnatian, my knowlege of NKY is pretty pitiful.

I think the Mount Lookout comparison is a fair one. Although Fort Thomas probably isn't quite as affluent as Mt. Lookout -- and certainly not as affluent as Hyde Park except maybe in a few pockets at the far north end of town -- the housing stock and urban scale are very comparable. The former military housing near Tower Park predates most of the rest of Fort Thomas, and isn't really typical of the rest of the city. Most of the houses in Fort Thomas seem to have been built between the 1920's and the 1950's.

Its great to see a Kentucky suburb represented.  I wish there were more