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

Chapter 45 North College Hill 17An area of medium sized farms, Mt. Healthy became a thriving country town while North CollegeHill was retained as farmland until the early 1900’s. Most of North College Hill was built between 1905 -1960.The village started to develop about 1905 when John Meyer, a saw mill owner, built a smallsubdivision on the south half of the old Johnson property, on the north side of W. Galbraith (Mulberry,Bising, LaBoyteaux etc.) and called it Meyerville. Meyer used his surplus lumber to build homes atmodest cost and required only a small down payment. Attempting to boost home purchases, Meyer built aProtestant church for the community at Noble and Galbraith - this was later purchased by the MethodistUnion and in 1908 James N. Gamble purchased it and presented it without debt to a small group ofMethodists in the community. The building was replaced in 1927 by the current church as themembership outgrew the original church size.In 1908 the Ohio Land Improvement Company of DeArmand, Knollman and Shiering, headed byClarence ‘Buck’ DeArmand, platted the Sunshine subdivision south of Galbraith Road (Simpson, Catalpaetc.) DeArmand called his subdivision Sunshine, a name that could be marketed easily. Promoting onbillboards that Sunshine was ‘up where the sun shines and money grows on trees,’ he also appropriatedthe song Up Where the Sun Shines, Nellie. Attempting to capitalize on the reputation of the then affluentCollege Hill, DeArmand later renamed the subdivision North College Hill to the everlasting confusion ofreporters. Just opposite from Rabbi Wise’s farm was the billboard ‘Up Where the Sun Shines - Houses $5down and $1 a Week.’ 18The area east of Hamilton Avenue was called the Clovernook subdivision. By 1916 the populationof 500 incorporated Meyerville, Clovernook and Sunshine into the village of North College Hill. Thecommunity retained its rural flavor until the 1920’s when water, gas and sewer lines were installed. Atthis time Hamilton Avenue was paved in bricks. The first mayor was John ‘Jack’ Williamson elected on6-20-16, and the early village council met at Williamson’s drugstore.An omnibus was the way passengers traveled until the railroads were built. In 1875 Robert Simpsonand John R. Davey organized the College Hill Railroad. The narrow gauge railroad passed through NorthCollege Hill in 1877 on the College Hill to Johnson’s Grove, Mt. Healthy run. It consisted of thelocomotive and two passenger cars. Running on two rails only 1 yard apart, it traveled into Cincinnatifour times a day. The trip took 1 hour and cost .60 round trip. Called the “Dummy Line” because theengine was enclosed by a body similar to those vehicles drawn by horses, the named stuck for manyyears, even after the styling of the cars changed. The narrow gauge ran until 1930, connecting with theCincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad at Spring Grove Avenue.After 1898 the railroad line only hauled freight, for it could not compete with the passenger nickelfare of the new electric interurbans that linked the industrial Mill Creek Valley to the suburbs until 1938.The interurban combined overhead electrical lines like those of a trolley with the speed of a train. Theoverhead lines were later used by trolley busses until the 1950’s.Until 1940 there was also a freight line that ran parallel to Simpson Ave. That is why Simpson is sowide in comparison to other streets. The engine was dubbed the Grasshopper and it ran betweenCumminsville and Mt. Healthy.One of the landmark cases that led to the repeal of prohibition was the Tumey case decision of the17 Autobiography, F. G. Cary; History of College Hill and Vicinity, Samuel F. Cary, 1886History of North College Hill, 1916 - 1966, Dorothy Mahlenkamp Old College Hill, Cincinnati Historical Society, 1982Once Upon a Hilltop, Mt. Healthy Area Sesquicentennial 1817-1967; Pioneer LaBoyteaux Family, Coleraine Pageant, Ruth WellsStockades in the Wilderness, Richard Scamyhorn and John Steinle; The Bicentennial Guide to Greater Cincinnati, A Portrait of TwoHundred Years, Geoffrey J. Giglierano and Deborah A. Overmyer, 1988;This is our City, Past and Present, The Story of North CollegeHill, 1966, Dorothy Stein18 Cincinnati Enquirer, January 17, 1971269