The Cincinnati Neighborhood Guidebook by Nick Swartsell

Author:Nick Swartsell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2022-11-10T18:17:12+00:00

Mount Lookout:

The Lights of My Neighbors

Rob Pasquinucci

The flyer arrived along with the first pile of mail at the new house—a note promoting the Mount Lookout Luminaria event coming that weekend. Our Christmas tree was hastily displayed in the corner of the living room, and decorations were still being unpacked, but seeing the streets of our neighborhood lined with candles in white paper bags that night was special, and it was the first of many moments we’d have where we found ourselves falling in love with our neighborhood.

While it’s a few miles from the city’s core, Mount Lookout has been a part of Cincinnati since the late 1800s. At the time, the area was countryside, where Catawba grapes used to make wine grew.

Much of today’s neighborhood was part of the Kilgour estate. The Kilgour brothers were part of the Mornington Syndicate, the group who developed Mount Lookout, Oakey, and Hyde Park. Around this time, the Cincinnati Observatory moved to its current location in the neighborhood, allowing generations to look at the night sky on starry nights. A branch railroad line linked the neighborhood to more developed parts of Cincinnati in 1872. That line terminated where Mount Lookout Square is today.

As a history nerd, I love living in a place with a past that lives on in the present—from stately homes on tree-lined streets, to buildings that line the square and, of course, the observatory.

Our house has a phone niche—one of those little built-in shelves where the phone would sit. I found a period-correct phone to put in there. I like to imagine families that lived here before us gathering around that phone to reach out to loved ones on holidays before phones were something we all have in our pocket. One of Bell System’s original central office buildings is a large and beautiful colonial-style structure on Delta Avenue. I believe at one time it housed the many mechanical switches that were required to place a call in a more analog world.

I dug up archive photos of our street from the University of Cincinnati archives and found not much has changed in seventy years. The light poles look different, and SUVs have replaced chromed behemoths with tailfins, but the homes are the same.

Before moving here, we already had memories of Mount Lookout. My wife and I had our first date at Ruthai’s Thai restaurant, we took our wedding photos at Ault Park, and a friend who lives in the neighborhood held some amazing parties at his home. In the summer, we’d make our way to the concert series at Ault Park and were already fans of the Fourth of July fireworks celebration. But moving here did more than put us within walking distance to things we already loved. It gave us a chance to meet and make friends with the great people who live here.

Among the first neighbors we met was a guy known as the mayor of our street. I’m not sure how he got that title, but he served us

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