Illustration by Lars Leetaru
I live in South Cumminsville. A few doors away from me are people who have about four chickens in their yard, squawking and pooping, etc. I’m sure this was legal in Cincinnati long ago, but is it still? All I ever hear about chickens is how filthy they are. Should I report these people? —CHICKEN HAWK-TUAH
DEAR TUAH:
The Doctor has much to unpack here. Worrying about sanitation several hundred feet from your home borders on OCD; you may want to have that looked at. Should you wish to anonymously report your neighbor to the authorities—which makes you both a chicken and a rat—you will be disappointed. Hosting chickens in Cincinnati is completely legal, provided that the rules of Board of Health Ordinance #00053-11, “Fowl, animals and vermin,” are followed:
Minimum property sizes are specified for various populations of chickens, which allow only one rooster per 15 hens. (Dude!!!) Shelters must be 10 feet from all property lines and built to certain standards. Chicken poop must be collected at least once per day and placed in approved containers. Noises and foul odors (insert foul/fowl pun here) must not annoy neighbors.
Armed with this information, please feel free now to sneak onto your neighbor’s property in the dead of night with your tape measure and odor detector. Let us know how things turn out.
You recently wrote about a long-ago amusement park in Oakley that nobody remembers. Evanston also had a big forgotten amusement park, but ours was famous for never opening! Old people talked about it when I was an Evanston kid, but I can’t find anything about it now. Can you? —DON’T PARK HERE
DEAR DON’T:
Imagine living in a nice, quiet neighborhood like Glendale or Villa Hills. Now imagine new neighbors arriving, bringing roller-coasters and a three-ring circus, all surrounded by a canal with singing gondoliers. That’s what residents of Evanston were told to expect in January 1905 when a New York company declared that construction would begin on Dreamland in 12 days.
Reaction was instantaneous. Evanston citizens were so opposed to Dreamland that they voted—remember, we’re talking about Cincinnati in 1905—to ban alcohol sales in most of the village. That put three saloons out of business, but it killed a major revenue source for the park. More legal barriers were hurled at Dreamland, plus offers from other amusement parks to buy off the owners and send them away. This legal roller-coaster lasted for about a year until the investors gave up.
Had Dreamland succeeded, the birth of both Doris Day and King Records could not have happened where they did. And all of it would have been obliterated by Interstate 71, which in its own way has become Evanston’s three-ring circus.
Right by Spring Grove Cemetery on Groesbeck Road, there’s a sign for “The Willows at Spring Grove,” a pet cemetery and dog park I remember being promoted a while back. But the place is abandoned and overgrown. Were any pets ever buried there? If so, what’s happened to them? —DOG GONE
DEAR GONE:
The Willows at Spring Grove, we should mention, was not affiliated with Spring Grove Cemetery. Its builders simply appropriated the nearby prestigious name, much like Oakley’s shopping mall that named itself Hyde Park Plaza. The pet cemetery’s site on Groesbeck/Gray Road was where the old Coors Dairy complex had once been (not affiliated with Coors Beer or Hyde Park Plaza). Cincinnati old-timers fondly recall when Coors Dairy employed “milkmen” who delivered glass milk bottles to families with children who looked suspiciously like them.
The Doctor finds scant evidence that The Willows Not Affiliated With Spring Grove ever officially opened. There was a big announcement and promotional video in 2009, but little else afterward. If you click through the Google Maps image history of the entrance, you’ll see some nice paths and dog statues in 2011, but then images of increasing neglect and overgrowth. For some reason, the sign has remained. If any pets were actually buried there and abandoned, it must mean that the developers have never seen movies like Poltergeist and Pet Sematary.
Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, radio personality and advertising prankster. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities here.
