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Raised and educated in St. Louis, author Fannie Hurst (1885-1968) was born in Hamilton at 918 Central Avenue, the home of her maternal grandparents. She was the daughter of Rose Koppel and Samuel Hurst. Already a writer as a student at Washington University (Class of 1909), Fannie moved to New York in 1910 to begin her career. Success came after repeated rejection. Stories for popular magazines brought her attention in the mid-1910s; by the mid-1920s she had become a best-selling, highly-regarded, and well-paid author. Between 1912 and 1964, Hurst wrote 18 novels, eight short story collections, and many other pieces. Hurst’s short story “Humoresque” (1919) and the novels Back Street (1931) and Imitation of Life (1933) were three of 32 films based on her writings. The film adaption of Imitation of Life received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture in 1934. (Continued on other side)
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The figure atop the Soldiers’ Monument has looked over Youngstown’s Central Square since 1870. Ohio Governor David Tod began campaigning for a monument for Youngstown’s fallen soldiers even before the Civil War ended. The community raised $15,000, and the cornerstone was laid in 1868. The memorial was completed and dedicated on July 4, 1870, with Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and Congressman James A. Garfield, both future U.S. presidents, attending the ceremony. Four cannons procured by Garfield formerly surrounded the monument. In 1951 the figure on the pedestal was accidentally damaged. A new statue of Carrara marble was commissioned, sculpted in Italy, and installed in 1955. The Bertolini Bros., a local marble firm, donated the new figure, which as patterned after the original, as their gift to the city.
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Landscape architect Howard Daniels designed the original portion of Green Lawn Cemetery in 1848. Noted Columbus architect Frank Packard designed Green Lawn’s Chapel mausoleum, the Hayden family mausoleum, and the Packard mausoleum. Spanning over 360 acres, the cemetery’s wooded setting provides a habitat for a variety of birds and other wildlife. The Chapel contains stunning stained glass windows and mosaic artwork by Tiffany & Company of New York. The monuments, obelisks, and memorials throughout the cemetery represent a wealth of artwork and a history of Columbus. As one of the oldest and largest cemeteries in Ohio, Green Lawn is the resting-place of many noted individuals who have made significant contributions to Columbus, Franklin County and the nation.
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Art Tatum was born in Toledo on October 13, 1909, the son of Arthur Tatum, Sr. and Mildred Hoskins Tatum. Despite being blind in one eye and only partially sighted in the other, he became one of the greatest jazz pianists of his era. To deal with his sight disability, he attended the Ohio State School for the Blind in Columbus from 1918-1920. He came from a musical family and had some formal training at the Toledo School of Music, but was largely self-taught. Influenced by famed Fats Waller, Tatum began playing his music on a local radio station at age 18 and then lived in Chicago, New York City, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, playing and recording extensively both as a soloist and in small groups. His ability to improvise set him apart as a musical genius. Tatum died in November 1956 and was named to the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1983.
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Thousands of Irish immigrants came to Columbus to seek personal and religious freedom. With the “Great Hunger” in Ireland and the completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the National Road, immigration to Columbus increased in the mid nineteenth century. They initially settled in the north side of the city in the swamp flats, where inexpensive land was available and work could be had on the railroads. Settlement spread to Franklinton, on Naghten Street, later known as “Irish Broadway”- part of which is now Nationwide Boulevard, and to nearby Flytown. The immigrants became domestic workers, civil servants, entrepreneurs, and served the city in police and fire departments. Others were leaders in government, law, medicine, and education. Their legacy continues today in the Irish-American population of Columbus, Ohio.
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On June 25, 1839, Greater Cincinnati Water Works became the first publicly owned water system in Ohio, when the city purchased a privately owned water company in operation since 1821. This purchase required approval of the voters of Cincinnati and authorization by the Ohio State Legislature. The Water Works, with two steam pumps at this site, three and a half miles of iron pipe, and 19 miles of wooden pipe, provided one million gallons of water per day. Front Street Pumping Station (ruins at this site) replaced earlier facilities and operated from 1865 to1907.
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Established as the Oxford Township Cemetery in 1880, this public graveyard replaced the original one at the corner of College Avenue and Spring Street. That earlier burial ground was abandoned when the railroad bisected it in the 1850s. New cemeteries were established including the privately incorporated Oxford Cemetery, the Catholic Mt. Olivet Cemetery, and this one, renamed Woodside Cemetery in 1931. Bodies transferred here from the original graveyard included those of early 19th-century settlers, who were reinterred in the “Pioneer Quad” at the south end. The cemetery includes veterans of the nation’s wars, including one from the 54th Massachusetts regiment of Civil War fame, and generations of African Americans, who comprised 20% of Oxford’s population in the late 19th century. Maintained by the township and then jointly by the township and city, Woodside became solely the city’s responsibility in 2002.
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Since opening in 1912, the West Side Market, Cleveland’s oldest continuously operating, municipally-owned market, has been an anchor to the historic Ohio City neighborhood. Built to replace the Pearl Street Market and the Central Market. All three served Cleveland’s growing population in the early 20th century, but only the West Side Market remains. Designed by architects W. Dominick Benes and Benjamin Hubbell, the 30,000 square foot space has a dramatic vaulted Guastavino tile ceiling and a signature clock tower that is 137 feet high. The Seth Thomas clock Company manufactured the clock. (Continued on other side)