Run 52: Hartwell

Grandma and granddaughter donning church dresses load the van with boxes for Sunday school; a jogger makes her way through the business district; a fast food worker sprints to the bus with his umbrella tucked away; caution tape surrounds a restaurant and news vans park out front.
 

This is Hartwell, described here as the "Gate to Cincinnati":

 

After driving up 75 and dealing with a little bit of traffic, we parked at Kroger and got ready to run, but not before one last photo in front of the Wendy's where Kayla had once dined. Ah the memories!

As soon as we crossed Vine Street and left the business district, we began to discover that Hartwell has real character. Meandering along Parkway Ave we found a tree lined street with ornate Victorian homes and nicely kept lawns.  

 
Uniquely configured, Parkway Ave. forms an oval and in its center is a sort of “faith island,” which is home to several churches.The Methodist Church was designed by famed Cincinnati architect--Music Hall and City Hall--Samuel Hannaford.

Further evidence that Parkway Ave. is a focal point can be found on the Hartwell neighborhood sign which depicts the Parkway oval.

We followed took Woodbine off of Parkway and explored several more residential blocks, which offered a wider variety of designs and materials, including a white stucco.

This vacant lot was a rare sight and the natural grass even made for a nice photo op. Note Kayla's excellent form, which suggests that her days of injury are behind her.

Railroad tracks split Hartwell in half, but it isn't readily apparent if there is a "right side" of the tracks. Rather the neighborhood is pretty uniform.

Along Compton, almost in Wyoming, we came upon the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor covenant, which had a lot to offer.

Here we found: grassy hills, a graveyard filled with simple markers, and a path lined with stone representations of the stations of the cross.

There was even a bit of religious humor:

Our last stop at FSP was a stone labyrinth.

From the Centennial Barn we retraced our steps along Compton and came out to the main business district on Vine Street. When I was studying the business district in preparation for our run, I was struck by the great array of restaurants within a small area. There was: Frisch's, Empress Chili, Dragon City, Lee's Famous Chicken, and Cosmic Pizza.

Then in a bizarre twist of events, just a few minutes after I told Kayla about the great food in Hartwell, I saw Cosmic Pizza on the evening news. Its parking lot was draped in yellow caution tape. The owner had been shot and killed in a Saturday evening robbery gone wrong. The assailant was on the loose.

I wondered out loud if we should go through with the run.  Although we hadn't spent much time in Hartwell this murder seemed so contrary to the quiet neighborhood that I had been reading about in preparation for our run.

And so we decided to run. We ran because we believed that Hartwell was the sum of its great sites and not a single tragic event. We ran because this project is about discovering this city as it really is, not based on what we hear on the news.

See the full route with mile markers here: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=517802