A Trip to South Cumminsville
Siezing the nice day by the face, I pedalled over to South Cumminsville for a visit. I was looking for the old "Lucky Circus Grounds" mentioned by Sparky09 in the comments in this article about the circus poster exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Cumminsville was established around 1800 and extended west along the northern banks of the Mill Creek westward to where it ran down along the western banks of the Mill Creek. Train tracks crossed the town and the area to the north was sometimes called Northside and south of the tracks was sometimes called Southside. Cincinnati annexed Cumminsville in 1873. More roadways cut through between the regions and sometime or other, when Cincinnati started to recognize official neighborhoods (1960s ?) the separated community was named Cumminsville and South Cumminsville. In the early 80s Cumminsville changed it's name to Northside.
Obviously, the center of the neighborhood wound up in Northside and along with weird new traffic patterns connecting to South Cumminsville got more and more obnoxious. South Cumminsville was mostly residential and the blighted areas along the highways & ramps gave way to factories, warehouses & parking lots. The residential areas are just kinda "what's left". Some new housing went in in the early 2000s. Dunno how that's working out. To get an idea of how things have changed, check out this "interactive" map contrasting the area in 1869 & now.
I entered S Cumminsville along the clusterfuck intersection where Spring Grove meets Elberon & Colerain.

Leaving Northside - an old Crosley plant
Then I entered an industrial wasteland.
Sparky09 said he lived in a house at the end of Roll Avenue and across the street were the fairgrounds. Roll is amazing. It was probably lined with houses along the whole 2 block stretch. Maybe 30-50 houses. Now there are about 6. You can see lot after lot with steps, retaining walls & foundations but only a few houses. At the end there is a dip and the Lucky Circus Grounds are now the Carl F Hille Memorial Field.


Sgt. Hille was a Cincinnati police officer in 1942. He was an avid baseball player and organized numerous sports activities in the police department but his life was cut short when he died in an explosion in the line of duty.

The last house on the right
Dunno if this is the house Sparky09 lived in but it sits at a high point with the field below it in the front and the west fork of the Mill Creek behind it. A circus in the field below in the summer at night would have to have been magical for a kid. Like everything else around there, tho, it was all pretty dilapidated.

This house is for sale
The next street over, Dawson, with a junkyard at the end, was a little more populated. This 5 bedroom, 120 year old gem at 3620 can be had for a cool $20,000.
Oddly enough there was a posting on South Cumminsville almost exactly a year ago on the cincinnati.com blog, 52 Neighborhoods.
It references a Building Cincinnati post from 2007. That post discusses eminent domain in revitalizing the neighborhood. From what I saw, buying up some of the abandoned industrial property might be kind of lucrative.
Anyway, here's some more pics. Click on the thumbs to see a larger image in a new window.