From Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
Over the years, Cincinnati has accumulated some interesting episodes involving land, property and real estate. Here, you will find a random dozen of some of the more peculiar examples.
In The Beginning . . .
It is often forgotten that Cincinnati was founded as a real estate gambit by a trio of developers out to make a profit. A famous old print of “The First House Built in Cincinnati” includes a surveyor hard at work, laying out the city grid so the land rush could begin. Mathias Denman, Robert Patterson and John Filson comprised the syndicate organized to entice buyers to the as-yet untouched woodland soon to be briefly known as Losantiville. They offered an “in-lot” of half an acre near the river, plus an “out-lot” of four acres to any settler paying $1.50 for survey and deed. Cincinnati, in other words, began life as a subdivision.
Battling Plats
Of the founding triumvirate, John Filson was enlisted as surveyor, until he mysteriously disappeared one day while traipsing through the woods. The indigenous tribes got blamed and Israel Ludlow recruited to replace Filson, assisted by Joel “Jo” Williams. In 1802, both Ludlow and Williams filed nearly identical plats of the town. Williams’ plat differed from Ludlow’s mostly where Williams claimed the “Commons,” now known as the Public Landing, as his own personal property. The debate between the two surveyors, according to Jacob Burnet, “was marked by great warmth,” including fisticuffs. Ludlow’s plat prevailed, although the citizenry followed Williams in referring to Second Street as Columbia Street for several decades.
Symmes’ Shell Game
Denman, Patterson and Filson acquired the land that became Cincinnati from a New Jersey judge and Revolutionary War veteran named John Cleves Symmes who bought 300,000 acres of Southwest Ohio land on condition that he set aside an entire township to support a college. By 1805, Cincinnati’s citizens wanted to know which township Symmes was going to set aside for education. Symmes said it was Millcreek Township, and later Springfield Township, both of which were heavily settled. The federal government sent a commission to investigate. Symmes told the commission that the college township was really Green Township, but the federal inspectors concluded that Western Hills township was, “too rough for farming and too wild for any civilized uses.” The feds eventually identified a college township in Butler County, thus setting the stage for Miami University’s founding in 1809.
The Uncommon Commons
Joel Williams’ scheme to snatch the Public Landing did not sit well with the residents of Cincinnati. The Commons, as it was known—all the land south of Front Street between Main and Broadway—was a convenient location for wharf and warehouse activities. In 1807, Williams erected a brick building at the northwest corner of the landing and then erected a fence around the whole thing to assert his ownership. The city sued and Williams, described by Judge Burnet as “quite illiterate and unusually careless,” lost, with the court declaring that the Public Landing was “publicly given and set aside by the proprietors as a common, for the use of the town forever.”
From Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
The Vanishing Five Acres
In 1819, the city appointed Joseph Gest as official surveyor and Mr. Gest enthusiastically rushed out to acquire brand new surveying equipment, insisting on his own custom-made paraphernalia. Sources differ on whether Gest’s quarter-furlong pole or his imported British brass ruler was to blame but, for the next 25 years, Gest tacked on an additional inch for every 64 feet he measured. When spread over the four or five square miles of downtown Cincinnati, that minuscule error adds up rather quickly. In 1986, a modern surveyor estimated that all of Joseph Gest’s miscalculations, pushed onto a single plot, would total more than 200,000 square feet, or about five acres of missing property. Instead of re-measuring every single piece of downtown property, the county now inserts a footnote into the affected deeds, acknowledging the adjustment, known as the “Gest Standard” that must be applied to accommodate Joseph Gest’s historic boo-boo.
Interminable Litigation
In addition to setting aside townships to support education, the very early land grants in the Northwest Territory required land set aside to support churches. That included Section 29 of the now-defunct Storrs Township in Lower Price Hill. Ethan Stone, a blind banker, leased Section 29 from the State of Ohio in 1810 and renegotiated that contract in 1821 into a 99-year renewable lease. What this meant, in real estate terms, is that no one who owned a house in Section 29 also owned the land their house sat on. All tenants paid rent into the Ethan Stone Trust. Stone died in 1852 and, in his will, directed the income from Section 29 to several religious charities. Every 10 years, the residents of Section 29 voted which church would receive the income. Disputes over Stone’s will dragged on and on and were not finally resolved until the dissolution of the Ethan Stone Trust in 2019, making this the longest open trust case in Ohio and possibly the lengthiest court case in the entire United States.
Orphan Plots
You probably can’t blame Joseph Gest for this. In 1897, Cincinnati’s Title Examiner, in a thorough review of the tax duplicate, realized there were small plots of land scattered throughout the city with no known owner. One was a narrow strip along the west side of Sycamore Street south of Eighth, once the city’s wood market when kindling was essential for cooking and heating. An open court in the West End, in the center of the block bounded by Freeman, Gest, Clark and Pine streets (and now buried underneath I-75) was another. The city announced it would convert the orphan lots into tiny parks, but dollars spoke louder and all were sold to developers.
Cut On The Bias
In August 1900, the Cincinnati Decennial Board of Equalization – they recalibrated the property taxes every 10 years—noticed a most peculiar plot of land in the square bounded by Central, Wade, John, and David streets in the West End. It was roughly 400 feet long, 50 feet wide and ran diagonally from the southwest corner of that block to the northeast corner, cutting the block into two triangles. At the time, the catty-corner lot was occupied by an old frame house on the Central Avenue side and a decrepit stable on the John Street side. The Decennial Board assumed that the weird lot had originally been laid out as a street but never paved. The mystery was solved the next day when the owner, one Peter C. Bonte, visited the Board offices. Long ago, that property was used by the Bonte family as a “rope walk.” This was back in the days before machinery for the purpose existed and ropes were made by men walking up and down a gradually thickening strand, twisting fibers as they went. To make long ropes, one needed a long building—a rope walk—and they could fit a longer walk onto a diagonal plot of ground. An 1831 map of Cincinnati includes at least four rope walks, none diagonal.
From Robinson’s 1884 Atlas of the City of Cincinnati
St. Bernard vs. Elmwood Place
In 1940, the City of St. Bernard attempted a sneaky landgrab. Unsatisfied with the tax revenue from the huge Procter & Gamble Ivorydale complex, the city fathers spotted the Central Steel & Wire Company and the Cincinnati Butchers’ Supply Company in nearby Elmwood Place. Ohio law allowed any Ohio city to annex a portion of an adjacent village providing two-thirds of the voters in that area approved. Elmwood Place is a village and St. Bernard is a city and there were only four voters in the whole contested area—the family of Jerry Helm. Mr. Helm, employed at Central Steel & Wire, lived at 421 Township Street with his wife Emily and their two daughters, Jeanette and Louise. All four—apparently at the behest of Mr. Helm’s employer—signed a petition to approve the transfer. Success would have meant a significant loss in tax revenue for the village. Feisty Elmwood Place went to court and prevailed. Though a little worse for wear, the property, and the tax monies, still belong to the village.
A Fusty Old Tradition
Alvin F. Harlow, in his delicious 1950 book, The Serene Cincinnatians, describes how real estate traditions persist in the Queen City long after their utility has faded.
“Penetrating several yards into a downtown block, then turning at a right angle for a few feet more and halting, walled in everywhere by buildings, is a little concrete-paved passage, unnoticed by thousands who pass its iron-gated entrance daily, and of whose meaning, even of whose existence, few people are aware. In the pre-sewer long ago, it was an easement, an access to eight of what the Earl of Chesterfield called necessary houses in the middle of the block, used by adjacent businessmen. Though it has been totally useless for decades, so dearly do the property holders still cherish these rights that when an effort was made a few years ago to buy that quarter of a block for building purposes, the value set on this little lane blocked the deal.”
Well, Well, Well
Harlow also relates a similar tale about another downtown square in which a well had been dug around 1800. All the homes and shops surrounding that shaft employed its water for drinking, and all adjoining property owners retained rights to that water legally incorporated into their deeds, even though the well in question had been abandoned and covered over since at least 1875. Nevertheless, when a developer proposed to erect a twenty-story building on that spot, the sentimental value of those venerable water rights forced the project to be abandoned.
How Long Is Forever?
Do you remember when Cincinnati City Council swapped the Public Landing? Before 1960, going all the way back to the very earliest maps of the city, the Public Landing lay south of Front Street between Main and Broadway. Today, the Public Landing lies between Broadway and the Taylor-Southgate Bridge. When did it get up and move two blocks east? Remember the court ruling against Jo Williams, declaring that the Public Landing was set aside for the town “forever”? Neither did City Council in 1911, when they decided to let a railroad trim off the northern edge, while warehouses nibbled at the perimeter. Nor did Council in 1967 when they voted to build Riverfront Stadium on the original Public Landing, creating a “New Public Landing” as if no one would notice—and no one did.
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