We’ll start this Saturday's run at Bethlehem Temple Learning Center on the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Rockford Place. We’ll run up Hamilton and pass LaBoiteaux Woods on the left (there is going to be an Underground Railroad trail tour at LaBoiteaux on Sunday and I would love to go if I can get my chores done!).
From there we’ll veer off onto Ridge Drive to look at the Twin Towers Retirement Community, which was built in 1908 as the Methodist Home for the Aged.
On Belmont, we need to take a quick detour on Pasadena on our right to check out the Old College Hill Post Office, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Despite extensive research (20 minutes on Google) I could not determine why this structure is on the National Register. I did see that it was sold to a private owner in July of last year for the whooping sum of $4000.
Once we’re back on Belmont we’ll pass Aiken College and Career High School and then the College Hill Town Hall, which is a Samuel Hannford building and also listed on the National Register.
Belmont is also the location of Laurel Court, a Gilded Age mansion, built by Peter G. Thompson in 1907. Thompson was the founder of Champion Paper Company, of Hamilton, Ohio. The Champion Paper Company was a looming figure from my childhood—an immense factory on the river. The layoffs that hit the company in the 1990s marked my first personal awareness of a changing economy. Every once in a while I’ll have a dream of being lost in an industrial maze and I know that the images my unconscious draws from have their roots in the Champion Factory on North B Street.
(Hamilton's Champion Paper Factory)
On our tour, we’ll also spend lots of time on Hamilton Avenue and North Bend, which are the neighborhood’s main thoroughfares. Not having spent much time in College Hill, this will be a good chance to see what businesses and restaurants might draw us back.
For a clickable map with mile markers, visit my saved route on USA Track and Field.
-Kayla
No comments:
Post a Comment