NEIGHBORHOODS

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A-to-Z Guide to Greater Cincinnati:
"Best Place to Live in North America"

Community spirit is strong

Cincinnati has 52 neighborhoods of them, and residents of each can boast about something special.

Ernie Earls in South Fairmount will talk about "Shooters Hill." He wants it on the National Register of Historic Places because that's where Annie Oakley outshot Frank Butler.

Gerry Kraus brags about North Avondale-Paddock Hills; centrally located, ethnically and racially mixed and lots of good neighbors.

Dorothy Ellis has lived in the East End all of her 77 years. And won't live any place else because she said she has the best view of the Ohio River.

Attorney Robert Manley prefers downtown. He lived in Mount Lookout, East Walnut Hills and Clifton, but thinks the true neighborhood spirit is downtown.

And so it goes. Each neighborhood, from Westwood with 36,096 people to California with 571, claims its own identity.

Everything's waiting downtown

He has lived in a condominium on Ninth Street for nine years.

The 3,846 residents who live downtown are in the hub of Cincinnati's entertainment center. Mr. Manley is within walking distance of the Aronoff Center for the Arts, music and memorial halls, Taft Theater, the stadium and newly opened night clubs and restaurants.

"I can walk to the public library and I am within walking distance of flagship churches of all denominations," Mr. Manley said.

Bringing different people together

"It is the diversity of races, people, income levels and houses that make Walnut Hills something special," said The Rev. Mr. Atkinson, a retired minister who heads the Walnut Hills Area Council.

"We are reviving the city's oldest business districts at McMillan and Gilbert and Lincoln and Gilbert. We are pretty centrally located to downtown. And talk about diversity, we have it: Cadillac and bicycle owners; the well-to-do and food stamp recipients; colleges and night clubs. Street crime we don't like, but street ministry we cherish."

Walnut Hills was the next stop for African-Americans uprooted by urban renewal in the West End in the late 1940s and 1950s. The oldest black business districts in the city was at Lincoln and Gilbert.

North Avondale-Paddock Hills provides about the most evenly balanced neighborhood of blacks and whites in Cincinnati. Its population of 6,461 includes 2,742 whites and 3,577 African Americans. There are 58 Asians and 84 classified as others; 48.9 percent own homes, 51.1 percent rent.

It is where Marvin and Gerry Kraus would rather live. "When we found the house we wanted, we also learned that it was what we wanted in racial diversity. When we moved here, we felt we were making a commitment to live in an integrated neighborhood," Mrs. Kraus said.

If you mention integrated living, ask Noel Morgan about Kennedy Heights, a neighborhood that advertised for African-Americans to move in 30 years ago when it was less than 15 percent black.

Mr. Morgan can tell about it. He's lived their 20 years among the 6,054 residents; 4,615 blacks and 1,395 whites.

The neighborhood holds an annual progressive dinner, a fund raiser for the neighborhood council, which brings together most everyone who lives there.

Residents look upon it with pride.

"It's clean. It's integrated and it's active," Mr. Morgan said.

A room with a view

Some 2,424 residents - about two-thirds renters, one-third homeowners - believe the view and the Ohio River are a part of their history and diversity in housing is a part of their future.

"I have been here all my life and I don't think I could live any place else," Mrs. Ellis said.