A Very Pleasant Locale…

College Hill, one of Cincinnati’s 52 official neighborhoods, is a very pleasant place indeed, covering about 3.4 square miles. Founded in 1813, it was originally called Pleasant Hill. Looking at the historic topographical map included here, it is a rather nice, upland area…and certainly would have been a lovely change from 19th century, dense, dirty, smokey, urban Cincinnati…It was renamed College Hill in the mid-19th century after two colleges were built there:

The first was Pleasant Hill Academy, which opened in 1833 and then, in 1846, became an agricultural school called Farmer’s College. The latter became Belmont College in 1885 but then developed into the core of the Ohio Military Institute by the 1890s.

A separate, second school, the Ohio Female College, was founded in College Hill in 1852 and operated until 1873. It was then sold to build the Cincinnati Sanitarium, the first private psychiatric facility in the country outside of the East Coast region.

College Hill was incorporated as a village in 1866 and later annexed to the city of Cincinnati in stages (in 1911, 1915 and 1923). The neighborhood is not to be confused with North College Hill–obviously so named because it is to the north!–and which was never annexed to Cincinnati.

The historic development of this delightful suburb was aided by the arrival of a railroad line in 1851 and horsecar service in the 1860s. To this day, it maintains a stately, academic air with its broad tree-lined streets.

College Hill is home to some very notable historic buildings, including Laurel Court, College Hill Town Hall, and the Old College Hill Post Office. College Hill Town Hall–a mixture of Green Revival and Renaissance Revival architectural styes– was built by Samuel Hannaford in 1886 and dedicated in January 1887. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 (NRHP # 78002075).

College Hill prides itself on its wide range of residential architectural styles. Rightly so, not only are there many Victorian Vernacular, Arts and Crafts, Colonial, and Tudor homes, there is also a smaller collection of large Queen Anne Victorian houses and Italian Renaissance homes. Most residential construction dates from 1890 through the 1930s. With affordable prices ranging from $15,000 for fixer-uppers to about $280,000 at the upper end, the neighborhood continues to be an attractive destination for historic home lovers looking for, well, a pleasant place to live. For more information on College Hill developments, check out the College Hill Community Urban Redevelopment Corp’s website at http://chcurc.com/

Our latest listing is a very nice Tudor stye home situated just north of the Hamilton Avenue/West North Bend Road intersection: 1527 Reid Avenue (MLS #1443597/$119,900). Built in 1933, this historic gem features plenty of its original details with the addition of some very tasteful updates. Check out the photo gallery to see for yourself!…