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My mother lived at 1860 Langdon Farm in 1957-1958. She was in her late twenties at the time. Her name is Doris Hagerty(her husband was Don). She took a sewing class at the the college taught by Edith Klump. Is there anyone here from that time?
I lived at 1926 Langdon Farm Road. I lived there my entire childhood until age 18. I have older brothers, Andrew and Smoky Stark and an older sister Karen. Andrew and Karen graduated from Woodward and Smoky attended Walnut Hills. We have wonderful memories of Swifton area.....sleigh riding at Roselawn park, Circus and hockey games at the gardens, Bond Hill library, going to White Castles on Reading Road/AvonDale, Pasquales Pizza/butcher shop at Swifton Shopping center. Growing up with the following familys....Kahlstrom (Lainey and brothers), schaeffer (Tammy), Flowers (Donna and brother), and Reed (Vicky and brothers/sister)
I grew up in Golf Manor, and was born in 1964. I was friends with Vicky Reed (she lived on Dale Rd.?). When they started bussing in 70's, Vicky went to Losantiville Elementary. That's where we met. Where did you go to school?
It turns out that the Swifton Village apartment complex was owned and managed by Donald Trump and his father from the early 60s until 1972. Just google "Swifton Village" and you'll find a link to an Enquirer article, among other things. The article says Trump quickly increased the occupancy from 400 to 1200 (full occupancy).
I find it interesting because I used to go hang out with my cousins who lived on Snowhill Drive in the late 60s. I don't know if that was part of Swifton Village or not. They lived at the end of Snowhill Drive, on the left side. By the way, looks like the street has been renamed Faith Drive; Mapquest corrects the name for you, but still shows "Snowhill" on the image.
Like the OP, I recall a small playground with swings and teeter totter, and recall climbing onto the roof of the garage. So maybe the complexes around there were all similar. But it's all kind of run down now, or so it was when I stopped by in the 90s.
We lived for a short time in a townhouse complex on Glen Meadow Lane when I was a toddler in the mid-60s. My earliest memories are from there. We used to get groceries at Swifton Shopping Center, don't remember what store, but I do remember the yellow Top Value stamps, and filling booklets with the stamps in order to accumulate points. Some other stores had S&H Green stamps.
The OP also mentioned a statue in Eden Park with a wolf and two children. This is from the story of Romulus and Remus (check Wikipedia, it has a photo of same or similar statue).
I graduated from Woodward in 1961. The president of our junior class (in 1960) was a black student. There weren't man blacks, but there were some, and the school was in no way segregated.
I remember when Kroger was situated at Swifton Shopping Center. In fact it was the premier center before Western Hills. There were some beautiful stores there and there was a chinese restaurant that had the best food. But as time went on, Kroger moved to the then newly Hillcrest Plaza, then Walgreens moved into where Kroger was. Later it moved to Hillcrest also. Swifton Village had very few blacks in it because it was considered moderate to middle class apartment living. My late mother moved to it when it was renamed Glen Meadows Apartment. The management continued to keep it very livable. But sometime in the late 90s, it was renamed Huntington Meadows and it began to go down real bad. I don't know why when low income families move in, management and maintenance begins to go down also. She moved in 1987 to Kennedy Heights where she passed away in 1990.
Swifton Shopping Center continued to keep alive but soon, more and more stores folded. Allen Temple bought the property and renamed it Jordon Crossing. There were concerts there in the walkway for a few summers and the last one was in 2007. Now that Kroger and Walgreens have moved from Hillcrest, what little businesses left in both are just barely surviving. Even though Woodward has become a technological career school, most of the students don't hang over there like their fromer friends did.
There were a couple of other chain restaurants, Rally's and Burger King, but due to illegal going ons at those places, they were close down. Now the only other one is Capt D's.
The homes that stand where Huntington Meadows was look like retirement village. You don't see any children or toys outside that would indicate any young families live there. Mostly people who are "boomers" that have retired or senior citizens who are still capable of living alone.
Hopefully that area including Hillcrest will be part of the redevelopment process. I heard that the reason why Kroger moved was they got a deal from a computer high tech company for the land. Also plans were to build a tech factory on the site of Jordon Crossing, but no official word has come out.
Yes, Donald Trump's father was the supervisor of custodians at Swifton Village back in the 50s. In fact Donald donated a sizable amount to the management of the Village in the late 90s while it was still Swifton Village Commons in order to maintain it, but nobody never saw that money nor knows what was done with it, but have suspicions that management pocket the money.
Many of the Cincinnati Public Schools didn't actually begin to become integrated until the '61 and so on. I know I went to Hughes in '63 and we were the third generation of blacks to attend.
Many of the Cincinnati Public Schools didn't actually begin to become integrated until the '61 and so on. I know I went to Hughes in '63 and we were the third generation of blacks to attend.
Please, Huh?, come again. If it did not start until '61, how were you the 3rd generation in '63? Were you speaking of 3rd year?
Sorry, I meant to say "3rd year". But I have been told by a co-worker that there were a few blacks at Hughes prior to 1960 that came from Samuel Ach Jr High, which was in Avondale. I attended Ach from 1960-1963. Western Hills was one of the last to integrate. But there really was no problem for students back then to attend school. We attended our neighborhood schools and that's why it appeared that students were attending either all white or all black schools. Didn't need to bus all over the place to get a good education. We also rode the metro. Now when I went to Burdett Elementary, we rode the yellow buses. I was living in Avondale and even though South Avondale was just 5 minutes away, due to an election, students who lived on one side of a boundary had to go to Burdett and others went to South Avondale.
Does anyone remember Stowe School or Jackson Primary PS 28 in the original old west end??
I remember when Kroger was situated at Swifton Shopping Center. In fact it was the premier center before Western Hills. There were some beautiful stores there and there was a chinese restaurant that had the best food. But as time went on, Kroger moved to the then newly Hillcrest Plaza, then Walgreens moved into where Kroger was. Later it moved to Hillcrest also. Swifton Village had very few blacks in it because it was considered moderate to middle class apartment living. My late mother moved to it when it was renamed Glen Meadows Apartment. The management continued to keep it very livable. But sometime in the late 90s, it was renamed Huntington Meadows and it began to go down real bad. I don't know why when low income families move in, management and maintenance begins to go down also. She moved in 1987 to Kennedy Heights where she passed away in 1990.
Swifton Shopping Center continued to keep alive but soon, more and more stores folded. Allen Temple bought the property and renamed it Jordon Crossing. There were concerts there in the walkway for a few summers and the last one was in 2007. Now that Kroger and Walgreens have moved from Hillcrest, what little businesses left in both are just barely surviving. Even though Woodward has become a technological career school, most of the students don't hang over there like their fromer friends did.
There were a couple of other chain restaurants, Rally's and Burger King, but due to illegal going ons at those places, they were close down. Now the only other one is Capt D's.
The homes that stand where Huntington Meadows was look like retirement village. You don't see any children or toys outside that would indicate any young families live there. Mostly people who are "boomers" that have retired or senior citizens who are still capable of living alone.
Hopefully that area including Hillcrest will be part of the redevelopment process. I heard that the reason why Kroger moved was they got a deal from a computer high tech company for the land. Also plans were to build a tech factory on the site of Jordon Crossing, but no official word has come out.
Swifton Village was only renamed one time, when it was redubbed "Huntington Meadows." Glenmeadow Lane has always been an entirely separate complex. That cluster of brick boxes is west of the high school and south of Seymour Ave. It's still the original buildings from probably sometime in the 1940's. Rentals there are advertised in the Enquirer from time to time ("...take a dip in the sparkling pool...") but I think all or part of the development is open to Section 8. Last year someone was killed there in a home invasion robbery. The crime was reported as "not random," which signals both that the community is largely safe AND that the caliber of tenants may not be the highest.
I, also, think it's sad but not surprising that the upkeep of apartment buildings and communities is in proportion to the tenants' income level. Fingers of blame are always pointed in both directions. Residents complain that the place looks a mess, then the manager/landlord retorts that they "try hard" but the residents trash the place. Some degree of truth usually holds on both sides of the argument.
Swifton Village was deliberately segregated even if none of their ads said so. It had nothing to do with its residents' earning "moderate to middle-class" incomes. Whether as deliberate provocation or not - who knows and who cares - an AA employee of GE applied to rent an apartment in 1968. Litigation was started when he was turned down cold. Once he prevailed and moved in, those among the paler population who couldn't handle that started to leave, no matter that they might've been situated four blocks away. This all began happening at the same time "blockbusting" was getting underway in nearby Bond Hill. Realtors would point to the disturbances a short distance down Reading Rd as a way of frightening homeowners into selling "before it's too late." Some White residents ignored the scare tactics and a few (now of course elderly) remain in Bond Hill to this day. But a great many bailed out. And the deliberately lowered property values meant that homes were available to more people who didn't necessarily put high priority on maintaining their property. The dual aftereffects of desegregating Swifton Village and blockbusting Bond Hill were felt acutely for many years. Here again the fingers of blame are pointed in both directions: "This was such a nice area before 'they' moved in and sent the crime rate up," vs. "We saved to buy a good house on a quiet street, then as soon as we moved in there were For Sale signs all around us. The kids are getting into fights every day and our living-room window was smashed again last night." Some degree of truth holds on both sides of these arguments too. But I'm going to stick my neck out (hardly for the first time in C-D) and point to White racism as the root cause of the social upheaval in that area.
No matter what the cause, the effects are at long last seeming to be holding if not reversing. I'm interested in reading about "Villages of Daybreak," the successor to Swifton Village, because it was put up in hopes of bringing stability to the community in the form of middle-income home ownership. When the houses first went on the market, the city offered a 15-year tax abatement as further incentive to buy. Not known, at least by me, is how successful the venture has proven to be. Did speculators purchase the houses (some of them duplexes) and promptly become absentee landlords, perhaps even accepting the dreaded Section 8 voucher? Or are the places mainly owner occupied? I wouldn't put too much significance on there not being children's toys, or children, in evidence because of how society is in general today. Kids' lives are micromanaged, with many if not most dropped off at day care while their parent(s) go to work. Then at home - due to real or imagined fears - they're often kept inside to watch TV or play video games. This holds true every bit as much in Indian Hill as in Bond Hill.
It's also no real surprise that Woodward kids don't hang at Jordan Crossing the way their predecessors did at Swifton. When there are few or no stores that cater to them, and not many adults to annoy (if not worse), why go there? But I doubt anything's going to happen to the former shopping center itself. Much of the building has been remodeled into the Allen Temple AME Church and meeting/conference facilities. It doesn't appear that there's much retail space any more at all. And the big blue-backlit cross at the northwest corner of the building sends a clear message as to what the owner's priorities are for filling the structure.
I hadn't heard any of the talk about what may take over the Hillcrest strip mall across Seymour, but as with most things I'll believe it when I see it. The main impediment to progress thereabouts now is Club Ritz (somebody had to say it.) No one wants to shop, much less work or live, near a business with its deservedly sketchy reputation. Sadder still is how the same reputation has been attached to Bond Hill and Roselawn as a whole. The tough hurdle to clear will be shaking that bad rep.
After all that...has anybody driven along Seymour between Reading Rd and Cincinnati Gardens lately? I'm wondering if Lena's is still there, since the owner was crying poor-mouth and threatening to close.
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Donald Trump
