Jule B. Keitz was a mayor of Grandview Heights that wanted to get things done. He ran and won election to the office in 1947 because of his stand on the issue of "wrapped garbage".  He appealed to the citizens to approve his program saying " Grandview housewives can wrap garbage without costing the city or taxpayers one extra penny".  Keitz won the election and proceeded to get an ordinance passed making it illegal to place glass, metal or other injurious materials in garbage cans. After being sworn in on New Year's Day in 1948 the new mayor wasted no time getting his pet projects accomplished. Pictured here the mayor is shown with Grandview businessmen Don Hennen and C.L. Deyo who donated $1180 to buy street signs for the streets of Grandview. 175 signs were erected at street intersections, where the names were formerly marked on the curbsides.  Mayor Keitz sought re-election four years later and lost to A. K. Pierce, who pledged "no city income tax, now or ever". Wrapped garbage was no longer the issue it previously was!

The Carey Roof Company of Cincinnati, Ohio placed this endorsement advertisement in the November 2, 1925 edition of the Columbus Dispatch.  It featured the drawing of Frank Lindenberg's home at 1122 Cambridge Blvd. Lindenberg had replaced his wood shingles with the company's new, "big-sized  asfaltslate" shingles (they were touted as "the shingle that will never curl") and was evidently quite pleased with them. Note that Marble Cliff, which was incorporated in 1901, was still being referred to as "Arlington" in 1925. In some publications. The northern half Marble Cliff was platted in 1888 and named "Arlington Place" and the name was apparently still being used informally. This historic home (designed by famous architect Frank Packard and often referred to as the Tarpy mansion) is in the center of the Tarpy Woods Park and is now owned by the Alex and Lacey Picazo  family.

The Jeffrey Mining Company hosted an annual golf tournament at the 'Arlington Hunt and Golf Club', which was actually called the Arlington Country Club at the time in 1917. It was renamed as the Aladdin Country Club after it was sold to the Shriners. In 1896 the Arlington Country Club moved into the quarters designed for them by noted Columbus architect Frank Packard.The two-story clubhouse was on four acres of land, and included a track and stable facilities for the riding club. It was due south of present-day No. 10 Arlington Place, and the clubhouse sat on the edge of the bluff facing the valley below. An additional 12 acres were acquired after 1896 to accommodate the 9-hole golf course. In 1914 Arlington Country Club members were asked to cooperate in the organization of a new 18-hole club, and were offered $125 per share for their stock and made first in line for membership in the newly designed Scioto Country Club, which opened in 1916. The Arlington Country Club property was purchased by the Shriners and remained in existence until 1925. The clubhouse survived for some years, sometimes vacant, and sometimes as a private residence.

"White is the snow, crisp is the day, and all is fun in a tinkling sleigh." Robert Jones, Norman Brown, John Bogen and William Connor provide the "man power" for the sleigh ride carrying Theodora Hannus, Jacqueline Soule, Mary Anderson, Sue Burghalter and Juanita Thompson, all GHS seniors having fun during the winter of 1949. This picture and quote was taken from the 1949 Highlander of Grandview Heights High School, which was dedicated to the citizens of Grandview Heights "who have always stood squarely behind our schools". With enthusiasm as their keynote the class of 1949 Boosters was composed of the entire student body. They planned and carried out assemblies, Club Tropicabana (the winter dance), the April Talent Show and conducted the annual magazine campaign. The redecorated school building of 1948-49 inspired a new format for the 1949 Highlander, and co-editors Sylvia Edmundson, Norman Brown and the rest of the staff worked tirelessly to create the new look for the yearbook

Several noted professional photographers resided in Grandview in the early history of the community, including one of the founders of Grandview, George Urlin and his partner John Pfeifer. Fred A. Behmer started working as a photographer in 1901 when he was 16 years old, working for Baker Art Gallery and later the Columbus Star, a weekly tabloid published by the Wolfe family. His famous work includes photos of Company B of the Ohio National Guard deployed at Camp Willis in what is now Upper Arlington. For over fifty years, Behmer was the staff photographer for Jeffery Manufacturing charged with documenting the company's activities and the service of Jeffrey employees. Behmer was the first photographer to record OSU football away games for publication in the next morning's paper. According to his granddaughter Pat Behmer Preble, he dried the photo plates on a potbelly stove on the return train trip from the game so that they would be ready for the newspaper. This photo shows Behmer (left) and an unidentified friend dressed for the annual Field Day celebration in 1916.

The fathers and sons banquet for residents of Grandview Heights, Marble Cliff and Upper Arlington was held annually at the Deshler Hotel. This 1921 photo shows the fathers and their sons having dinner in the hotel ballroom, while the mothers and the boys' sisters were allowed to view the event over the railing from the balcony. According to the April, 1921 Norwester, "In view of the youth of many of the sons, smoking was abstained from, but in spite of this [it] was a huge success." The Deshler Hotel (inset right) was built in 1916 at the corner of Broad and High in downtown Columbus. It was later owned by Dr. Adrian Wallick and his brother. Adrian "Doc" Wallick was a dentist and lived with his family in the former Sheldon Mansion in Marble Cliff (inset left). The Deshler was joined to the American Insurance Citadel (Leveque Tower) in 1927 by a bridge, called the Venetian Bridge, to allow hotel guests to access the 600 rooms of the Deshler that were located in the new skyscraper. The Ionian Room in the Deshler was a popular restaurant and lounge throughout the 1930s, and it was also the home of the Crystal Room restaurant and Gray Drug.

In the early part of the 20th century, the quarries on the west side of what is now Grandview and Marble Cliff provided limestone for various applications. Slabs were quarried and transported for buildings, such as the Ohio Statehouse, Orton Hall on OSU's campus, and residences all over Columbus. Stones were used in fences and walls in both public and private rights of way. Much of the stone from the quarries was crushed and used as flux in furnaces and lime kilns in the region, and for roadbuilding. Early roads used a procedure called macadamization, named after a Scottish engineer named John Macadam, who developed the process. His approach used crushed stones bound with gravel on a firm base of slightly larger stones spread over compacted soil. The road was slightly raised in the center, providing a camber that allowed rain water to drain off. The National Road, the first macadamized road in the U.S. was completed in the 1830s. Later macadamization techniques filled the gaps between the limestone surface stones with a mixture of stone dust and water, providing a smoother surface for the increased traffic using the roads. The automobile created a problem, as the cars raised the dust and created gaps again, so tar was spread over the stones to bind them together in a process that is still used today. Most main roads in Grandview and Marble Cliff were macadamized roads, first surfaced around 1901. Bradley Skeeles related in his memoir (on our Society website) that Third Avenue had tar added to the macadamized road in 1907 when he was six years old. This public domain photo (not in the area) shows the limestone being laid on a road in 1900.
macadamized-road

IIn 1922 Bishop James Hartley of the Columbus Diocese established Our Lady of Victory Parish. The Parish was bounded by the two rivers, McKinley Avenue, and the northern boundary of the Diocese, and included 65 families. Bishop Hartley (inset, middle) approved the purchase of 4 acres in Marble Cliff at the corner of Roxbury and Cardigan Avenue, which was the property owned by Sylvio Casparis and then the Merkle family. The twenty room Casparis house was used to house the parish school, and the convent and chapel of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. A second building on the property was used as the rectory for Father Thomas Nolan, the first pastor. By mid-1923 the parish had grown to 108 families, and a new chapel designed by George McDonald was built on the site. The current rectory and the building for the OLV Academy were built in 1931. The new addition to the church (inset, left), also designed by McDonald, was built in 1957, and was an attempt to incorporate the English Gothic architecture that was evident in the rectory. Bishop Michael J. Ready (inset, right) was to dedicate the church in 1957, but suddenly and unexpectedly died a day and a half before the ceremony was to be held

Six motorcycle patrolmen from the Columbus area pose with their Harley Davidson service bikes. Five are from the Franklin County Sheriff's office, and one is a Grandview Heights patrolman. Robert R. "Rancho" Livingston is second from the right, and his Harley is the far right one. Livingston was only 59 years old when he died in Mt. Carmel hospital of kidney failure in 1958. He had been with the Grandview Police Department since 1937, and was the chief of police for 14 years. Livingston came to Grandview at the age of seven and graduated from Grandview High School (where he was given the nickname "Rancho") in 1920. When Chief Livingston sought work with the Grandview Police Department in 1937, after  serving in the military, the only vacancy was in the Fire Department, and he worked there for a short time before he transferred into the Police Department. He and his wife Ella purchased their home at 1286 Wyandotte Road, next door to his parents' home at First and Wyandotte. He was well known by the citizens of Grandview and was not always in uniform, often recognizable for his trademark white Stetson hat. His grandfather founded the Livingston Seed Company, which was one of the first and most prolific tomato seed hybrid providers in the country. Founded as A.W. Livingston's Sons by Alexander Livingston in 1850, they branched out to Iowa, with his son Josiah (Robert's father) taking the helm of the Iowa operation. In 1898, it was renamed Livingston Seed Co. and Josiah moved back to Ohio to raise his family in Grandview. 

We wish you "Seasons Greetings from the Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society" this year by reprinting an historic greeting from a local resident. Edward and Cora (Gay) Bradbury and their children Alford, Irving, and Frances sent this Christmas card with a picture of their home to friends and family. They lived at 1297 Wyandotte Road until 1944.  In 1917 the county commissioners of Franklin County created the office of sanitary engineer and Edward Bradbury was made head of the new department. He designed or supervised numerous sewer and water systems, including the water supply system of Akron, Ohio, sewer or water systems for Springfield, Newark, Mansfield, Galion, Norwalk, and many others. In his capacity as sanitary engineer of Franklin County he designed much of sewers and water systems throughout the county. The Bradbury's son Alford was one of the seven students in the first senior class to graduate from Grandview High School in May of 1916. He was the first Editor in Chief of the Highlander, at the time the school paper rather than a yearbook. His picture was the first photograph ever to be published in the Highlander, appearing together with the disclaimer that Alford's decision not to publish his own photograph was overturned by the faculty advisor and the printer. The home is presently owned by the George and Laura Carter family.

This photo shows ruins of the Dwyer House (built in 1915) at 1198 Lincoln Road. The circumstances surrounding this particular fire (circa 1920s) are not known but early Grandview Heights and Marble Cliff experienced a number of fires that completely destroyed homes and businesses. The extensive damage of many of these early catastrophic fires was due, in part, to a reliance on volunteers, unpaved roads that when muddy were difficult to navigate, and inadequate equipment or hydrant pressure. 

Prior to the purchase of the City's first fire truck in 1924, a hose cart (inset), stored in the Henterscheid Grocery building, was hauled by horse or manpower to the location of the fire. In one early episode the team arrived at the scene of a fire only to discover that their new hoses were threaded in a reverse sense from those of the hydrant and could not be attached. The farmhouse at the scene on the east side of the city burned to the ground.

This 1900 square foot home at 1179 Broadview in Grandview was built in 1918 by William G. Jackson, President and General Manager of Jackson Realty Company of Columbus. Jackson lived on Cambridge Boulevard in Marble Cliff. The new house was probably sold immediately to John O. Gooding, Treasurer of the Jackson Realty Company, who moved here from Summit Street in Columbus. The Goodings were followed in 1923 by Maxwell and Sarah Bode, and then in 1926 by Thomas and Sarah Winters. Winters was an agent for Mutual Insurance Company. The home was purchased by Lawrence and Belva Looker in 1950, and they owned it until 1990. Their daughter Elaine is shown in this 1961 photograph pulling children in a sled in front of the home.

This house is representative of the classic American Foursquare architectural style that was popular from the early 1900s, built in urban and suburban neighborhoods until the early 1930s. The Foursquare gets its name from its from its simple, cubic shape and floor plan, with four large rooms on each of the two floors. Arranging the rooms in quadrants eliminated the need for long hallways and made efficient use of interior space. Simple, symmetrical Foursquare homes were less costly to build than more complicated Victorians, and were often available from catalogues such as Sears Roebuck and Co.  

The style most often incorporated many of the interior design features of the Craftsman movement, and the Looker home exemplified those interior features. The name "Craftsman" comes from the title of a popular magazine published by the famous furniture designer, Gustav Stickley, between 1901 and 1916. A true Craftsman house is one that is built according to plans published in Stickley's magazine. But other magazines, pattern books, and mail order house catalogs began to publish plans for houses with Craftsman-like details. Soon the word "Craftsman" came to mean any house that expressed the English Arts and Crafts ideals.

Jane (Hess) Harris, shown here (third from left) in a 2014 photo at a Grandview Heights High School Homecoming event, passed away on January 6th, 2021. She is accompanied in this photo by Grandview Heights High School graduates Jerri (Williams) Lawrence ('56), Jean (McQuilkin) Carfagna ('57), Harris ('56), and Kathy (McQuilkin) Miller ('65). Jane was a proud resident of Grandview and a 1956 graduate of the Grandview Heights schools, as was her classmate and husband Ron. She also was an OSU Buckeye, graduating with a fine arts degree. Jane has been an active member of the board of the Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society for many years, providing valuable support as a Society volunteer, and most recently as the Secretary of the board. Ron and Jane's beautiful 1897 Victorian home on Urlin Avenue was featured in the Society's 2004 Home Tour. Jane also served as a board member and past president of the Grandview Heights High School Alumni Association, as a member and treasurer of the Women's Auxiliary of the Buckeye Ranch, and as a docent and past docent chair for the Columbus Museum of Art. Jane will be missed by all of us that were lucky enough to know her.

This postcard, from the Columbus Public Library collection, was mailed from Columbus to a couple in Greenville, Ohio in January of 1913. The image depicts the Columbus Motordrome, which was built and opened in July of 1912, by the Columbus Motordrome Company. An article in the 1912 Motor World magazine contained an entry that the Columbus Motordrome Co. was established in April, 1912, with $20,000 capital, by William Snyder, George Baughem, Philip Vogel, and others, after they were approached by famous Chicago bicyclist and racetrack architect Jack Prince. 

According to an article titled Pioneers of American Motorcycle Racing by Daniel K. Statnekov, "Prince's motordrome designs were mostly 'seat-of-the-pants,' an expansion of his earlier sketches for bicycle velodromes, rather than formal construction drawings.  The dapper Englishman, wearing his trademark Derby hat, would walk around the site, driving stakes into the ground to mark the layout for the new track.  In a grand manner, the board track impresario would hire hundreds of carpenters, and schedule railroad car deliveries of millions of board feet of lumber and tons of steel spikes." 

The Columbus Motordrome was built entirely of wood in just a few months on the site of the Arlington Gun Club, near Fifth and Cambridge, and could hold up to 5,000 fans of high speed motorcycle racing in grandstand seats. The enclosed green space, accessible by a tunnel under the track, could accommodate up to 1400 automobiles, or reportedly up to 100,000 fans. Motorcycles could reach speeds of over 90mph on these short (1/4-1/3 mile) banked tracks. The Arlington track closed in 1913 after a fiery motordrome crash in Cincinnati killed a racer and 9 spectators, and injured 35 more, on a similar 30 degree banked track. The accident caused these short-track facilities to be referred to as "murderdromes" because of the number of fatalities across the country, and most were closed over the following several years. Subsequent tracks were longer, and included advanced safety innovations. 

The Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society and the ThisWeek News began a partnership to publish weekly Moment in Time features in March of 2004. This is a reprint of the first feature story and photograph published. 

 Mr. Julius F. Stone was an influential Columbus industrialist and entrepreneur who lived in Grandview Heights.  His home at 1065 Westwood, which he and his family lived in until the mid-1940s, was razed to develop the current Stonegate Village homes at Westwood and Goodall. 

Mr. Stone (upper right) was the owner of Ohio Buggy Works and the Seagrave Co., turn of the century makers of Seagrave fire equipment. Mr. Stone was a trustee of The Ohio State University and  President of the OSU Research Foundation. He donated quite a sum of money to the University, endowing a fellowship in Biophysical research and purchasing the first OSU cyclotron.

 In 1925 he donated Gibralter Island in Lake Erie near Put-In-Bay to OSU to establish what would become the Franz Theodore Stone Lab, in honor of his father. He was very active in conservation issues, and organized the first Colorado River expedition for sport in 1909. He was inducted into the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Hall of Fame in 1967. 

His Harvard educated son Julius Stone, Jr. (lower right) is credited with saving Key West, Florida from total collapse in 1935 and reestablishing it as a mecca of tourism. Another of Julius Stone's sons, George was Commander of the Ohio Wing of the Civil Air Patrol and was the pilot of the first plane to land at Don Scott Field in 1942.

Nicholas Botti was born in Rutino, Italy in 1887 and arrived in Columbus, Ohio when he was 16. He was taken in by the Joe Adorno family, who owned and operated a grocery store on Goodale in Flytown, which was the "melting pot" area of immigrants near Goodall Park in downtown Columbus.

He initially worked in his sponsor family's grocery store, delivering beer, wine, and whiskey by horse-drawn wagon to the construction crews working to build the Griggs Dam on the Scioto River. He later spent time working in the Carmen Spaghetti factory on Goodale Avenue, and finally settled on becoming a barber. 

His first barbershop was located at 437 West Goodale and was known as Nick's Place (shown in the photo above, with Botti in the center on the step.) He relocated his family to Grandview Heights and opened The Village Barbershop at 1668 West First Avenue in 1920, just east of what is currently the Seville condominiums and across the street from the Library. 

The photo on the upper right shows the interior of the shop which occupied the east side of his building. The west side of his building was leased to various other tenants. Nick Botti became a master gardener and maintained a garden to the rear of the barbershop (upper left and middle). He was especially renowned for the quality of his strawberries and grapes. Nick Botti died in 1974 at the age of 87.