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In the fall, life for many in Columbus revolves around Ohio State University football, from the first kickoff in September to the last play in November. O.S.U.’s first home game took place at 2:30 P.M. on November 1, 1890. The Ohio State University played the University of Wooster on this site, which was then called Recreation Park. Just east of historic German Village, the park occupied the north side of Schiller (now Whittier) between Ebner and Jaeger in what is now Schumacher Place. The weather was perfect, and the crowd reportedly included a number of women, who cheered loudly. Nonetheless, O.S.U. lost to Wooster 64-0. Wooster, physically fit for the game, showed O.S.U. that training is critical to winning. The tradition of training continues. Today, on football Saturdays in Ohio Stadium on Woody Hayes Drive, the sound of an O.S.U. home game can be heard around the world.
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In 1817 twenty-two men, including future President William Henry Harrison, chartered Cincinnati’s first Episcopal parish, Christ Church. In 1835 members erected a Gothic Revival-style church on this site. The neighborhood evolved as the city grew with the influx of immigrants. Parish women raised funds to teach, feed, clothe, and shelter tenement families, and alleviate suffering during floods and disease outbreaks. In 1883 the women helped establish what became Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. In 1909 members opened the Late Gothic-style Parish House, a community center with kitchen, classrooms, library, auditorium, clinic, gymnasium, and bowling alley. By the parish’s centennial in 1917, music had expanded beyond worship to public concerts. In 1940 the annual Boar’s Head Festival of music and pageantry began. Since the 1960s, members have collaborated with local agencies to advocate for social and economic justice, a mission continuing into the 21st century. (Continued on other side)
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“Lifting As We Climb”: The Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (CFCWC) was organized May 6, 1904, during a meeting called by Mary Fletcher Ross at the Allen Temple A.M.E. Church. Gathering together eight existing African-American women’s clubs, the CFCWC sought to unite in their work promoting “the betterment of the community.” At a time when both government and private philanthropies overlooked the needs of Black Americans, CFCWC members helped to organize the city’s first kindergartens for Black children, taught in Cincinnati African-American public schools –including the Walnut Hills Douglass and Stowe schools—and raised money for the Home of Aged Colored Women. Since 1904, the Cincinnati Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs has ensured the civic and constitutional rights of all African Americans while meeting the needs of their city.
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Walnut Hills has been home to a significant middle- and working-class Black community since the 1850s. In 1931, African American entrepreneur Horace Sudduth bought 1004 Chapel Street and then the row of buildings across Monfort, naming them the Manse Hotel and Annex. Throughout the 1940s, hotel dinner parties could move to the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs house next door for dancing. A large addition to the Manse in 1950 created its own ballroom, 24-hour coffee shop, upgraded Sweetbriar Restaurant, and more guest rooms. It appeared in the Negro Motorist’s Green Book between 1940-1963, providing local, transient, and residential guests both catered meetings and top entertainment during the last decades of segregation. It closed in the late 1960s when the economic need for a first-class segregated hotel disappeared in the age of Black Power.
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Sarah Mayrant Walker was born enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina, and sent to New Orleans as a young girl to study under a French hair specialist in the art of hair and scalp treatment, and goods manufacturing. Brought to Cincinnati around 1840, she used her networks to build a hair salon empire that catered to elite and wealthy women. In 1859, Sarah single-handedly desegregated the Cincinnati streetcars when she successfully sued The Passenger Railroad Company after a conductor refused her passage and pushed her off the moving car. As a result, Black women and children could ride inside a streetcar while men could ride on the platform. She and her husband, Peter Fossett, founded First Baptist Church of Cumminsville circa 1870. Both are buried in the Union Baptist Cemetery.
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One this site, December 10, 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Union merged with the trade unionists of the Knights of Labor to create the American Federation of Labor. Delegates elected Samuel Gompers president and dedicated the Federation to improving the life of America’s working men and women. The A.F.L. recognizes November 15, 1881, as its anniversary date to honor the origin and legacy of F.O.T.L.U.
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The Dominican Sisters of St. Mary of the Springs founded Ohio Dominican University on this site on October 5, 1911. It was incorporated that year as the Ladies Literary Institute of St. Mary of the Springs, a “literary college and institution of learning for the general education and training of girls and young women” and authorized to grant college credit. The name was changed to the College of St. Mary of the Springs in 1924 when the founding Sisters expanded the collegiate curriculum to grant the four-year degree of Bachelor of Arts. Following a decision in 1964 to admit men, the name was changed to Ohio Dominican College in 1968. With the addition of graduate degree programs, the name was changed to Ohio Dominican University in 2002. Today, the institution serves traditional and adult students, reflecting the Dominican belief in lifelong learning.
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Philip T. Snowden, owner of a fancy dry goods and millinery, built the Italianate-style residence at 530 East Town Street in 1852. The house was part of the fashionable University Place addition on the east side of the city. From 1862-1864 Ohio’s governor, David Tod, lived here. Columbus philanthropist David S. Gray purchased the house in 1870 and his family held it until 1922. One of the city’s premier architects, George Bellows, Sr. rebuilt the house in 1872. From 1923 to 1940, the house was the headquarters of the Columbus Women’s Club. In 1951, the Kappa Kappa Gamma fraternity for women acquired the house as its national headquarters. (Continued on other side)