A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

store. Its next door neighbor was Henry Stegner’s Meats. His slogan was ‘Some people keep the best...butwe sell it.’ Goodies Restaurant occupied later the building. Sue Caruso had a fruit store between Stegner’sand the Palace Market which Philip Steinman ran. He stayed open until 10 P. M. Selling ‘importedgroceries, cheese and select meats.’ His motto was ‘we supply the table.’When you look beyond the facades added to buildings, such as the Ruthellen flats, you get a truepicture of the intermix of stores and dwellings before the 1930’s. Early construction had the buildingsconform to lot lines. With the coming of sidewalks and paved roads buildings set back from the streetchose the opportunity to add store fronts and incorporate the original building with a new commercialventure. So it was with the Ruthellen building when the facade fronts were added. Soon after theadditions the Kock Grocery and Albert Hardert rented space in the newly available stores. Hardert had aconfectionery.Between the Ruthellen ‘new’ facade and the Hollywood Theater building one can observe the twostore frame building with living quarters above. The building follows lot lines but is at an angle to thestreet with a small patio in front. The two stores are separated by a center entrance for the flats above.Oscar Lemkuhl had his barber shop in the south store and Ella M. Miles ran a dry goods store in the northsection.Across the street from Brill’s Furniture store at 5920 Hamilton Avenue, Herb Doll had his bakery.An auto agency, one of three in College Hill, was to the north of the bakery. Here is what is now Brill’sCherry House Annex furniture store, Webster & Brown sold Ford automobiles.In the two story frame house, just south of a glass front building where 50 years ago Albers SuperMarket was then located, George M. Hoffman had his photography studio. The address, then as now, is6031 Hamilton. His phone number, Kirby 0423-R was a party line. Across the street at 6024 in a brownbrick building, Charles Zimmermann had his poultry market. In another small shopping enclave betweenElkton Place and Kroger’s in the Dixon Building there were two more grocery stores, two meat shops anda bakery.Louis G. Allgeier, known to his customers as ‘Louie-the-butcher,’ had his shop at 6110 HamiltonAvenue in the Junior Order building. He sold ‘high grade meats and poultry’. Next to him was KatherineBaldauf’s bakery with Ernest E. Eckert operating a meat shop next to her in what is now SchwartzJewelers. Eckert’s neighbor, who shared the same store front, was the Burke Grocery Company. Andlastly in the progression of stores was Multner Brothers grocery. They also sold meats, fruits andvegetables proclaiming in their ad ‘where your dollars have more cents.’ They did business from what isnow Bacall’s Cafe.The College Hill post office in 1930 was on the southeast corner of Ambrose and Hamilton Avenues,later moving to 6120 Hamilton where Angert’s Appliances is located. A succession of building and loaninstitutions---Star, Society Bank, Ameritrust---had offices in the remodeled corner vacated by the postoffice.Thirty years after the turn of the century and not yet 100 years since Freeman Cary created his firstschool, College Hill still had much vacant land and lots. The east side of Hamilton Avenue from AmbroseAvenue to Elkton Place was still vacant. Herman Mergard, Jr. had yet to build his bowling lanes. Acrossthe street George Hoffman’s neighbor to the north was in the next block. Hoffman lived in the house at6031 Hamilton and his neighbor to the north was John J. Dupps, Sr. at 6031 Hamilton. To the south ofHoffman’s two story frame house, still standing, were vacant lots before Hobart Flemming’s Restaurant at6013 Hamilton. The building can be identified as standing alone at one time. Now vacant, it issandwiched on the north by an also abandoned building that was Desh’s Cleaners and on the south by anewer structure, once Renner’s Plumbing shop.To further illustrate the amount of land available for development in 1930 we walk the west side ofHamilton Avenue to the north of North Bend Road where South and North Dixon Circle, Peaslee andHarbeson now exist. Here George T. Harbeson had his plant nursery and at a point across from LarryAvenue, William Kraft also had a plant nursery. Harbison advertised in the Ladies Society recipe booklethis ‘Peony and iris farm’ and noted cut flowers were his specialty, selling ‘gladioli, peonies, daffodils, irisand narcissi.’244