Empty lots currently bracket Reading Road and opportunity beckons. The question on Bond Hill residents' minds is; what will our neighborhood become? A group of Xavier University students working under the auspices of the Urban Land Institute Al. Neyer UC Competition developed four proposals for to develop the Bond Hill Business District on Reading Road. Though these are only renderings and imaginings they suggest some interesting solutions to the question of what a vibrant business district in Bond Hill might look like again. Winning design, Submission No. 1, "Bond Hill...
Perhaps the single most important opportunity to stay engaged in the Bond Hill community is at the Bond Hill Community Council meeting. The meeting takes place the first Thursday of every month at 7:00 PM, at the Bond Hill Recreation Center, 1501 Elizabeth Place. If you (like me) weren't able to attend the March meeting, here are highlights: Cincinnati Fire Department Captain Britton reports that on March 19, 2018, the Fire Department will be closing out applications for the position of Firefighter. The application is online and testing will be...
Vickie Jackson says a few words often: "family", "community", "togetherness". Always together. Talking to the Vice President of The Bond Hill Community Council for two wide-ranging hours this past weekend, it's clear that her priorities are on rebuilding the sort of unity she found in Bond Hill, when she moved here as a child in the late 1960's. The community then boasted a number of restaurants and shopping establishments that she rattles off with ease but more than that she says, "Bond Hill was fun." Children played together easily with...
California Avenue & Reading Road is an intersection whose under-utilization and persistent crime have frustrated Bond Hill residents and stymied urban planners for decades but amazingly it was once home to an urban entertainment palace. In 1925, the modest clapboard structure that had first been The Five Mile House Inn, and then The Bond Hill House was expanded into the massive, timbered Swiss Garden, a lavishly landscaped nightclub studded with dance floors, dining rooms, fountains, strolling paths and formal gardens. The Swiss Garden emerged onto the Cincinnati nightlife scene with...
The Tudor style so predominates Cincinnati's seven hills as to become something almost invisible. Almost every historic Zinzinnati neighborhood has its fair share of brown-and-white Tudor homes and Bond Hill is no exception. But despite the fact that Tudor revivalism has fallen decidedly out of favor in a city now more enamored with everything Victorian, I still enjoy the diversity of the Tudor style. Today being a Gothically grey day, I set out to see what Bond Hill has to offer and found a range of cottages and castles ranging...
With bated breath, it was exactly three years ago today that I returned to Cincinnati -- and to Bond Hill. I had grown up just down Reading Road, in Avondale, but left Cincinnati for NYC in 1999. I fell in love with New York; got married in New York; got grown in New York; gave birth to my son in New York and tried my best to be a great mother in a 700 square foot one-bedroom apartment, in New York. But after 16 years, it was time to raise...
The only community in America named Bond Hill is in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Bond Hill is bordered by Paddock Hills, Carthage, Roselawn, Pleasant Ridge and the suburbs of St. Bernard, Norwood and Golf Manor. It is a small neighborhood, of less than 7,000 people by the count of the last census. And it is a black neighborhood, with over 90% of its residents being African American. The stories that are told about this neighborhood are mostly those of urban pathology: crime and low-performing schools; empty lots and abandoned businesses; people...
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