View allAll Photos Tagged Demolished
Some additional homes in the small neighborhood on the north side of Martin Luther King Drive near the intersection with Reading Road in Cincinnati's Avondale neighborhood. Most of the best examples of architecture in the neighborhood have already been lost, most of them being demolished in the last three or four years, leaving only a small taste of what once was a largely intact and well-kept section of homes that were smaller and more compact than those found elsewhere in Avondale. Constructed largely in the late 19th and early 20th Century, this area was historically working-class and lower-middle class, and remained largely inhabited until only a few years ago. Now, time is running short for these homes, with the city looking to redevelop the area as an Innovation district and the neighborhood being the site preferred for a new NIOSH research facility. The loss of these homes, however, is a loss for low-income residents who called them home, as many other low-income areas like this one are being hollowed out and replaced with mega-developments that have very little room for these people. The current political situation in the city is not conducive to addressing this issue, and change is needed.
N. Franklin Street & Estelle Warehouse demolished this past week. I took this photograph in 2007. It was my laptop screensaver for over a year.
This chimney is all that remained of the old Mansion known as Forest Hill, built in the 1880s by judge D. D. Davies for his family. The Queen Anne-style Mansion was the largest and most significant residence in this portion of the county, and is a building I built a model of, based on old photographs. The house was the home of the Davies family, whom were Welsh in ancestry, with the patriarch of the family himself being from Wales. The St. David’s-in-The-Valley Episcopal Church, located on the opposite side of the Cullowhee Valley from the Mansion, was built with funding from the Davies family in 1888, and was named after the church Judge Davies attended as a child in Wales. The house remained standing into the 20th Century, but at some point suffered a fire, evidenced by charred wood embedded in the bricks of the chimney, that destroyed it, with the ruins of the house remaining hidden in a grove of trees for decades until earlier this year, when construction began on a new housing complex for the growing student population at the adjacent Western Carolina University. The chimney became visible from the road, which drew my attention, but was knocked down in late September, with these photographs and some measurements I took being the only record of these remains before they were removed. Today, no trace remains of the Mansion, but the name lives on in the name of the surrounding subdivision and municipality, Forest Hills, and the legacy of Judge Davies, who helped fund the fledgling institution that became Western Carolina University, as well as the St. David’s Episcopal Church, which remains standing across the valley, and was recently restored.
The University Planning office burnt some money to make some sort of "improvements" to the corner of 13th & University. This student-built kiosk, a landmark for decades, was one of the victims.
DEMOLISHED!
Proposed Demolition
Secured
Structurally Sound
Contributes to the Holy Cross Neighborhood
Contributes to the streetscape