The Blue House on Vine St. / Van Roberts Pl.

I first noticed the house when visiting the Wyoming Avenue Farmers Market’s old parking-lot location, next to the railroad crossing. It was bright blue, and looked as if it had not been altered much since it was built in the late nineteenth century. Last year it was lost, due to years of deferred maintenance combined with its less-than-ideal location adjacent to the railroad tracks. Up until the time it was demolished, from the outside it looked much as it did when it was first built—a modest home for a family headed by a dedicated public servant. For 24 years, the home's owner, Fred Bracker, was Village Marshall and Patrolman for Wyoming, and he and his family lived in the house at 520 Vine Street for more than 50 years. (The street was later renamed Van Roberts Place).

Source: Google Maps Street View

Frederick Bracker (1858-1934) was the son of German immigrants who were innkeepers, first running a hotel in Cincinnati, and sometime before 1860 moving to manage a hotel in Glendale. Fred’s first occupation was as a painter. In 1880, he married Mary Ann McArdle (1856-1941), daughter of Irish immigrants, whose father was a “common laborer,” according to the 1870 Census, when her family lived in Hamilton, Ohio. Fred and Mary Ann had five children, Eva C. Bracker (1882-1975), William A. Bracker (1886-1952), Mary Ann Bracker (1890-1965), Frank  M. Bracker (1892-1967), and Charles F. Bracker (1894-1961).

The Bracker family lived on Vine Street in Wyoming in 1887, according to the 1887 Hamilton County Directory. They purchased the lot where 520 stood in 1888. County Auditor records indicated the house at 520 as built in 1890, but that date might be off by a couple years.

The residents of Wyoming elected Fred Bracker to be Marshal of the Village from 1884-1908 and he was also employed by the village as a patrolman most of that time. During his time as Marshal, Bracker was Wyoming’s point person for public safety. He dealt with crimes that ranged from loitering and pickpockets, to theft, burglary, domestic violence, suicide, and murder. Over the years he also assisted with other emergencies such as fires, train derailments, and streetcar and automobile accidents. His name appears in dozens of articles in the Cincinnati Enquirer that reported on crime and accidents in Wyoming. Here are selected few.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, 28 April 1907

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, 14 December 1899

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, 14 December 1900

After leaving office, Fred returned to the occupation of house painter. The 1910 Census reports other residents of this block as laborers at manufacturing plants, machinists, a carpenter, a locomotive engineer, and a widow who was a washerwoman. Most of the residents rented their homes; the Brackers were one of only a few families who owned their homes in this block of Vine Street. Many of the families were headed by men and women whose parents had immigrated to the United States from Germany and Ireland.

In 1920 Fred’s occupation was listed on the Census form as a painter of locomotive engines, and the children of the family all had jobs. The daughters, Mary and Eva, were seamstresses in a mattress factory – likely Stearns & Foster, in Lockland.  Frank was a clerk for the railroad and Charles worked in a tailor shop. William, a machinist, had married and moved out of the home, but still lived in Wyoming.

By 1930 the other sons married and moved away from home, but lived nearby. As of the 1930 Census, William was in Lockland and a millwright in a soap factory. Frank lived in Reading and was a clerk for a railroad. Charles lived on Wilmuth Ave. in Wyoming and had a dry cleaning business (Becht’s Dry Cleaners). Eva and Mary Ann continued to live with their parents; Eva still worked as a seamstress in a cotton mill, but Mary Ann ran a confectionery store, and later was a cook in a restaurant.

Frederick Bracker died in 1934, Mary Ann McArdle Bracker died in 1941, and the house was inherited by her daughter Eva Bracker. In 1944 Eva Bracker sold the property at 520 Vine St./Van Roberts Place to Claude Johnson.

Source: Cincinnati Times-Star April 30, 1934

Claude Johnson (1904-1985), an African-American WWII veteran, had grown up in Wyoming and Lockland. His father came to the area from rural Kentucky, but his mother’s family had long roots in Wyoming--his great-grandparents came here in the late 1860s from Tennessee. After WWII, Claude Johnson owned and operated a convenience store in Lockland. While he owned 520 Vine Street/Van Roberts, Claude spent some time living in it, at times rented it to others, and his widow, Helen Graham Johnson, lived there for a few years after Claude's death.

The neighborhood originally known as  ”Greenwood,” located north of  Wyoming Avenue and straddling the railroad tracks and the Wyoming/Lockland border, was one of the few suburban Hamilton County neighborhoods where African-Americans were able to live in the early twentieth century. Within this neighborhood, black residents, comprised in large part of successive generations of families and friends, developed their own supportive community that included schools, churches, service organizations, and other institutions.

How the streets got their names: Springfield Pike

Roads have histories too!

If you are headed north on Springfield Pike, and look to your left, while you are waiting at the Wyoming Avenue stoplight, you will notice this little monument, in Centennial Park. It is a plaque attached to a mile marker from the Hamilton, Springfield and Carthage Turnpike.

Native Americans had trails extending from the Ohio River up the Mill Creek valley long before Europeans settled the area. With American settlement, one path was widened, first called the “Great Road” or “Old Wayne Road” after General Anthony Wayne. Later, a straight “shortcut” road was established from Carthage to what is now Glendale; in 1817 logs were laid side by side along this way to form a corduroy road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corduroy_road .

To enable further road improvements, the General Assembly of the State of Ohio incorporated the “Hamilton, Springfield and Carthage Turnpike Company,” per the request of Thomas Smith, Henry Morse, Anthony Huts, John Gaston, John McGilliard, Hatfield Williams, Jacob A. Riddle, Alexander Pendery, Andrew Smalley, Archibald Burns, Jonathan Foreman and Thomas Wright, of Hamilton County, and Obadiah Schenck and Wilkinson Beaty of Butler County. They were to issue stock shares for the company. As you can guess from its name, the road extended from Carthage, north to what was then called Springfield, but is now named Springdale, and then on to Hamilton, Ohio.

The state also gave the company the right to lay out the road and improve the road bed, compensating the adjacent landowners for any damages. The road was to be no more than 80 feet wide, with at least 25 feet of width improved with stone, gravel, wood, or other materials to create a firm and even road, with grade of no more than 4.5 degrees. Every five miles along the road was to be a gate where toll fees were collected at the following rates, as enumerated in the state act:

Source: Files of the Wyoming Historical Society.

As you can see from the toll schedule, the turnpike was used for farmers to bring produce, and cattle, sheep, and hogs, to market in Cincinnati.

At the turn of the century there were two new kinds of traffic on Springfield Pike. In 1901 a streetcar line, the Cincinnati, Glendale, and Hamilton Electric Railway, laid its tracks on the Pike through Wyoming. It provided service until 1932.

But it was the automobile that quickly became the vehicle most used on Springfield Pike. As early as 1905, there were efforts to keep traffic going through Wyoming on the Pike at a reasonable speed – 12 miles per hour.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer September 14, 1905.

In 1915 Springfield Pike was designated as part of the Dixie Highway , a route to get motorists from Michigan to Florida, established by the Dixie Highway Association, a group of individuals, businessmen, and local government with the goal of facilitating automobile travel. Here is a link to a great webpage about the Dixie Highway in Ohio.

My Own Old House (part 2) The Golden Family

Click here if you would like to read part 1, about my house in the 1870s.

It is difficult to discover for certain who lived in my house through the 1870s and 1880s. House numbers had not yet been assigned in Wyoming, so I can only make educated guesses (by process of elimination) about who likely lived in the house, when looking at U.S. Census records and City/County directories. I know its owner, Joseph Jewett was living on Springfield Pike and rented out this home.

The earliest residents I can document living in my house on East Mills Ave. (originally Wiley Ave.),  are the family of William Franklin Golden (1853-1882), his wife Anna Herbert Hickman Golden (1852-1889), and sons Clifford Clark Golden (1879-1915) and William Franklin Golden, Jr. (1882-1918), based on the 1880 Census. (I found record of the Fay family living across the street later in the decade, and am assuming they didn't move).

1880 U.S. Census Form

William was the son of Isaac Golden a grocer/baker who lived and had a shop on Elm Street in Cincinnati as early as the 1840s. However, he died when William was only nine, so William spent his youth living with relatives, including with his older, married sister’s family in Green Township.

Anna’s father was a Cincinnati-based wholesale tobacco merchant, Henry "H.J." Hickman, who moved from Kentucky to Cincinnati and then to Avondale. Anna demonstrated a lot a bravery as a young woman, when a burglar invaded her father's home (see article below).

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer February 27, 1877.

Anna and William were married in January, 1879. On the 1880 Census, instead of having an occupation, William was listed as living “on income.” This may have been due to illness—William died in 1882 (in Wyoming, probably at home) of tuberculosis, just a month before his second son, William, Jr., was born. He was buried in his father’s family plot in Spring Grove Cemetery, in Cincinnati. I wonder where the family's income came from, as on the 1870 U.S. Census he was a 16-year-old farm laborer. Maybe Anna’s father helped them out—in 1880 he was living in Avondale with two servants in his household, or maybe it was their siblings.

Anna Hickman Golden, William Franklin Golden, Jr., and Clifford Clark Golden.
Source: Bruce Black

The family likely moved out of Wyoming soon after William's death. Sadly, Anna died in 1889 in Wooster, Ohio of pneumonia, leaving her sons, aged 10 and 7, orphans. Anna was buried in her father’s family plot in Spring Grove Cemetery.

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer March 30, 1889.

As of the 1900 Census, the two boys, now young men (21 and 18), lived with Anna’s sister, Grace Hickman, in College Hill. They both served in Company C, First Infantry, Ohio National Guard in the first decade of the 20th century. Census and death records indicate that later Clifford was a teamster and William was a driver for a rag collector.

Ultimately, like their father, both Clifford and William died of tuberculosis, both at age 35. Each spent the last weeks of their lives in the Cincinnati Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Price Hill, which is now the Dunham Recreation Center.

A video about the Tuberculosis Sanatorium:

A newspaper article about the sanatorium: http://www.examiner.com/article/day-26-price-hill-s-dunham-from-tuberculosis-hospital-to-recreation-center.  And another link to its current use as a recreation center http://cincyrec.org/search/facility.aspx?id=44.

Clifford was buried with his mother in his maternal grandfather’s plot in Spring Grove Cemetery in 1915. However, at his death in 1918 William, Jr., was buried in Cincinnati’s Potters’ Field in Price Hill—the cemetery for the poor and indigent, located near the Tuberculosis Sanatorium. Which makes me wonder why? Did he have no family around to facilitate his burial in Spring Grove? Or had he in some way alienated them? Or did he not want to be buried there? Or did no one from the Sanatorium even bother ask?

An article in City Beat about Potters' Field: http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-21868-price_hill_potters_field.html

Coming up next in my house's history -- a family of artists...

Wyoming's Early "Leaf Picker-Upper"

Wyoming must have been an early innovator in leaf collection. In 1941 the Milwuakee Journal published a photo of this "leaf picker-upper" developed by Fred Gedge, at the time Wyoming's public service inspector, and who later became city manager. From the house in the background, it looks like this picture was taken on Wilmuth Avenue. I wonder if they were making compost with them back then, too?

Source: Milwaukee Journal November 5, 1941
via Google News.

Before Crescent Park

Today, if you walk east on Worthington Avenue to where it ends at Crescent Avenue, you arrive at Crescent Park, a pleasant green space in the middle of a residential neighborhood—a playground and pee-wee sized soccer field surrounded by attractive landscaping. 

But if you look up, you notice that power lines extend across the southern portion of the park, disappearing behind a berm and some evergreens. Behind the screen of landscaping are railroad tracks, remnants of pavement, and the base of a now-removed crossing signal, all marking the path a road used to take through the park, across the tracks, and into the neighboring village of Lockland. Which raises the question, if the road is gone, what else that used to be here has disappeared, and why?

This was the heart of the Village of Wyoming from 1880 until the mid-twentieth century.  Sanborn Insurance maps show that the Wyoming-Lockland train station was located on the northeast corner of this park, and much of the rest of the land was covered by two buildings: a three-story Masonic Hall, built in 1887, facing north toward Poplar Avenue and a two-story commercial building fronting on Worthington Avenue to the south, built by Charles Woodruff in about 1875; the two were known collectively as “The Woodruff Block,” by the mid-twentieth century.

 The railroad and train station spurred Wyoming’s growth in the late nineteenth century. While the community was initially settled by owners of neighboring Lockland’s early industries, when the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad began passenger service to Cincinnati in 1851, reducing travel time to downtown from all day to half an hour, it became possible for upper-middle class commuters to establish a suburban residence in Wyoming. Travel though the station was a daily routine for many Wyoming men who worked downtown. The station was also where goods for local delivery were unloaded. It was logical that this confluence of supply and demand would lead to the establishment of stores and businesses in this prime location. 

Woodruff Building c. 1908
Source: Wyoming Historical Society

Woodruff Building, c. 1980
Source: Wyoming Historical Society

Woodruff Building c. 1981
Source: Wyoming Historical Society

Woodruff site today - Crescent Park

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the buildings of the Woodruff Block were home to the post office, a general store, a drugstore, a bakery, paper supply, doctor and dentist offices, a flour mill and later a feed mill. True to its name, the Masonic Hall housed that organization, as well as the Woman’s Exchange. For a time there was a roller rink within one of the buildings. The area where Poplar Avenue extended in front of Masonic Hall and the Railroad Station was paved, and a fountain was installed. In 1900 the village’s first telephone was installed in Mr. Dehmel’s Drug store in the Woodruff Building; calls were taken and delivered by messenger for ten cents.

Masonic Hall with Railroad Station at left
Source: Wyoming Historical Society

Masonic Hall during demolition, c. 1980
Source: Wyoming Historical Society

Former site of Masonic Hall

So what happened? Why did this hub of activity decline? Part of the answer is transportation innovations. In the 1890s streetcars were extended to Wyoming and Lockland, providing a less expensive alternative to commuting by train. These lines were located several blocks away from the Woodruff Building and Masonic Hall, on Springfield Pike and Anthony Wayne Avenue. Then in the 1920s automobile ownership took off, increasing the number of travelers on the main roads, rather than by rail. This meant that potential customers were no longer walking by the Woodruff Block on their daily commute; instead they were driving along Springfield Pike and Wyoming Avenue. New commercial buildings were erected on both these roads in the early twentieth century. The Masons also moved their meeting place in 1923, to a freestanding building at Wyoming and Grove Avenues. While I could not pinpoint when passenger service ended to the Wyoming-Lockland Station, the building was abandoned by the railroad in 1942, and later demolished (“B & O to Abandon Wyoming Station,” Cincinnati Post, Aug. 27, 1942).

All of the Masonic Hall and the second floor of the Woodruff Building were converted to apartments in the mid-twentieth century. However, by the early 1970s the cost of maintaining and upgrading the buildings was more than rents would cover. In an attempt to manage the redevelopment of this site, it was purchased by the City of Wyoming.

The city worked for almost a decade to find a buyer to rehabilitate and repurpose the buildings. While over the years there were individuals with interest in renovating the buildings for continued residential and office use, or even as a restaurant or dinner theater, no one could obtain adequate financing for the project, which by 1981 was estimated to be about $670,000. Local residents pushed for preserving the building, offering to donate money to continue efforts to keep it in its “mothballed” state. But these efforts were unsuccessful, given the state of deterioration of the building and the lack of faith of lending institutions in the viability of a project at this site. City Manager Rand Forester was quoted as saying “It’s in a questionable location near the railroad tracks. Maybe it’s not developable” This is complete change in attitude about the site from its heyday at the turn of the twentieth century. Now a site near the railroad tracks was considered burdened by the noise of warning signals and the vibration of the passing trains. (“Building Faces Demolition,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 23, 1981)

The buildings of the Woodruff Block came down in 1982, and were replaced with a park. Local historic preservation efforts of the 1980s, while unsuccessful at the Woodruff Block, led to the restoration of many neighborhood homes, as well as businesses along Wyoming Avenue. The green space became valued for the amenity it provided to the community. In 2000, as the Wyoming School District searched for a site for administrative offices, the City offered this site at minimal cost. However, neighbors strongly protested any change to the lot “that has been used as a park for years.”  A nearby resident was quoted as stating “We have so few areas in Wyoming for public space, and this park fosters community…We think it should stay and we are fighting for it.” (“Wyoming Schools Want Lot, Neighbors Want Only a Park” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 3, 2000)

View of buildings from Lockland, where Worthington Ave. crossed the railroad, c. 1980
Photo Source: Wyoming Historical Society

While the city’s comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance still presumed this site would eventually be redeveloped for office or commercial purposes, local residents, many newcomers to the community, had lost the memory of the role the block used to play as a commercial center. However, they considered the new use, a park, to be ideal. In 2000 open space and recreation areas were considered the most appropriate focal point of community, where a hundred years earlier it was transportation and commercial hubs where a community came together. Ultimately, public pressure prevented the construction of school board offices on the site. City policies eventually shifted to match residents' views. In 2006 the City of Wyoming purchased two commercial buildings on Crescent Avenue south of Worthington and adjacent to the railroad. They demolished these structures and closed off the Worthington Avenue railroad crossing in order to expand the park. 

My Own Old House (part 1)

The house that captured my heart when we moved to Wyoming dates from about 1874/1875. Its footprint appears on a map published in 1875 by the Wyoming Land and Building Company (WLBCo) in a flyer advertising the lots for sale in their subdivision, the former Archibald Burns farm. At that time, the street was named Wiley Ave., after Burns’ grandson. This home and one across the street were built while the lots were owned by the WLBCo, and were sold to men who were partners in that enterprise, but who lived elsewhere in the community.

1875 Map--house is on lot 4, at the bottom, on what was then called Wiley Ave.

The house’s brick construction is unusual for the period in Wyoming. Most other Wyoming homes built in the late nineteenth century were wooden—many of the early real estate investors and developers in Wyoming were members of the Stearns Family, which owned the Lockland Lumber Company. The stickwork in the house's gables is quite elaborate, and is very similar to that found on several homes of the same general style and floor plan (but built of wood) in blocks to the south, in what was the Village of Hartwell (now part of the city of Cincinnati). Were these homes all the work of the same carpenter/builder?

I have many unanswered questions about the early history of my house. Why did the WLBCo build it? It is not likely that it was a “model home” as we see in subdivisions today. In the 19th century, it was not the subdividers, but lot buyers who contracted for home construction. Was it built to earn money for the WLBCo through rents? A place for lot purchasers to live while their own nearby home was constructed? An example of the kind of construction WLBCo owners hoped to see on adjacent lots?

In 1878, four years after the house was built, Joseph F. Jewett (1835-1922) and Cecilia E. Jewett (1842-1914) purchased it. He was one of the partners in the WLBCo. They lived on Springfield Pike, and Joseph Jewett was also partner in a Cincinnati company that manufactured paper and cloth bags, primarily intended to hold flour and grain.  He was characteristic of many of the early residents of Wyoming—prosperous men who had lived in Cincinnati and continued to run businesses there, but who decided to move their family to one of the quickly growing suburban enclaves outside the city.

It is difficult to discover who lived in the home through the 1870s and 1880s. House numbers had not yet been assigned in Wyoming, so I can only make educated guesses (by process of elimination) about who likely lived in the house, when looking at U.S. Census records and City/County directories. In upcoming posts I will have more information on the first family I can document living in the house, and then several of those who followed.

Wyoming Through My Window

So, what is this blog all about, you might wonder. Let me parse the name.

Wyoming

No, not the state. Not the valley in Pennsylvania, and not the cities in Michigan, Minnesota, or Delaware (and there are probably more). I am writing about Wyoming, Ohio, where I have lived for the last eight years. It is a suburb of Cincinnati, a neighbor of Lockland, and home to the Cowboys.  Its streets are lined with an amazing variety of architecture and historic homes. And it is a wonderful community of neighbors.

My Window

Most of the windows in my house are 130 years old. Double hung sash, balanced with weights on ropes. Once upon a time there were interior shutters on all of them for privacy, and to keep out the hot sun, but now all that remains are indentations where the hinges used to be. The sashes are are made from old hardwood, and are in excellent condition – the wooden storm windows, maybe as old as the house, have helped with that. Most of the windows still have their original, wavy glass panes, the kind that make the world wobble just a bit when you look through them.

Through

Ever wish you had a magic mirror? Or window? That would transport you to another time and place? I think we all have. Maybe our destinations are different. Mine is to the past. When I look through the wobbly glass panes, and squint my eyes just a little, I think I can glimpse a fleeting image of who and what was here before. There are hints in the buildings, the trees, the patterns of the streets. We aren’t the first, and won’t be the last, to head out that road to work, to play in that yard, or to sit in a chair by that window and watch the leaves fall, the flowers bloom, and the neighbors stroll by in the evening.