UNIVERSITY DISTRICT PHOTO ALBUM- Images of our neighborhood from the past 150 years: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

In honor of those sons of The Ohio State University who have answered the call to the colors in the year 1917

This plaque, affixed to the Class of 1892 boulder, was dedicated 100 years ago this December 19.

At a somber Christmas tree-lighting ceremony on a dark December night, where President William Oxley Thompson compared the Great War to Christ's birth as greatest events in history, the plaque was dedicated to the Buckeyes who had already died in the war and the hundreds in training for or in route to the slaughter in France.

Probably no year has seen as many changes in the neighborhood as 2017: Big new buildings going up at E 7th and High, 10th and High, 16th and High, Lane and High, and Northwood and High; University City mall being completely remodeled; new buildings opening in the Gateway II development; and the pending ouster of Adriatico's Pizza on E 11th. To all those changes, add this one. On December 22, after 64 years in business, textbook store S.B.X. at 1806 N. High St. closed its doors for good. S.B.X. was a victim of the university's High St. redevelopment plans and a changing textbook market.

December 30, 2017- It's wintertime in Buckeyeland!

January 12, 2018- Girls going to the movies at Gateway Film Center on a frigid, snowy January night.

C. 1900 ghost sign for grocery and bakery on side of 2598 N. High. Fainter sign for shoe store below.

Snowy South Oval on a January early morning in 2018.

The view from inside Evans Auto Repair, corner of N. 4th and E. 11th. Fixing Weinland Park’s cars since 1966.

43202 on a wet, gray February 2018 day. North side of the Lucky's strip mall on N. High south of Olentangy St. Built in the late 1970s, in the face of strong opposition from Glen Echo neighbors, it housed a Kroger supermarket and Super X Drugstore. Decades later, it was home to a Goodwill thrift store, a Chinese buffet, and a homeless camp out back. In the early 2010s, upscale grocery Lucky's Market moved in.

Word is these two old commercial buildings on N. 4th St. will soon be demolished to make way for new builds for the new people moving into the neighborhood. When they go, so will the Hope Mural, an icon of Weinland Park. Painted in 2008, the cherished mural depicts presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by words from a Martin Luther King speech. Obama's election was an occasion of great pride and joy in the mostly African-American neighborhood. Voter turnout broke neighborhood records and Weinland Park voters selected Obama by more than 4:1.

I lived in the Harrison West neighborhood before it gentrified, back when it was a blue-collar Appalachian enclave. Thirty years on, the people who live there now have no recollection of what the neighborhood used to be like or of the lives of the displaced people who lived there for 50 years. I wonder if that's to be the fate of Weinland Park. Will its long-time residents be erased like the mural that expressed their hopes?

DEMOLISHED NOV 1, 2021.

February 25, 2018- Old Campus confronts The Future. Long-time Pearl Alley institution Mama's Pasta and Brew in foreground. Encroaching new development beyond. This will probably be Mama's last year.

Back