This grand OTR experiment is about all of us
A one-block stretch of Republic Street in Over-the-Rhine is so quick, so short, it would be easy to miss. It is eight buildings, two parking lots and one old tree that has somehow survived for decades on a narrow patch of hard dirt tucked between two brick buildings.
The street is 146 steps long and somehow encompasses both promise and risk. All the success of Vine Street is one block to the east. On some days, you can smell chorizo-stuffed dates cooking at Abigail Street.
The beauty of Washington Park is one street to the west. In the summer, you can hear the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra playing the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony over the rooftops.
It is a street of beginnings. It is where German immigrants first arrived. It is where the Appalachians unpacked their bags when they moved to the city. It is where poor blacks came to replace them both.
Now it is time for a new beginning. Maybe the hardest one. Rich and poor are living next to each other. Black and white are sharing a street. Hope and heartache living door-to-door down the street.
Real change could happen here. The idea of true integration could form. But it will be complicated.
This is the type of street where the city could lose its soul. Or find it. But nothing comes easy on Republic.
Republic Street has a history that is inescapable and sometimes ugly. This was the street where Timothy Thomas was shot in the heart by a police officer in an alley on the early morning of a warm April day in 2001. That alley is now fenced off, gated, a spot for people to leave their garbage. All that is left of that troubled time is the fading paint of the letters "RIP" on the bricks above where he died 14 years ago.
Do not tell Julie Niesen Gosdin she is a pioneer. She moved to her home in 2009, an early resident in the condominiums at the corner of 13th and Republic, but she would never call herself a trailblazer. Those words, she knows, can be weighted with meaning.
"Pioneers discover things," Gosdin said. "There are people across the street who have been here for 30 years. My grandmother grew up in this neighborhood. I haven't discovered anything."
Gosdin's home is a mash-up of exposed brick and wood floors with a modern kitchen and a glass and metal staircase running up to the second floor. It all works perfectly. When Gosdin looks up and down her street, she sees black people and white people living on the same block, but it does not all work perfectly.
"You know the existence of your neighbors, but there is not mixing," Gosdin said. "Nobody is inviting their neighbors for a cookout."
Part of this, certainly, is because of suddenness. Some streets never change. Some streets change over decades. Republic Street feels like it changed overnight. Buildings that sat empty and degraded for decades were bought and fixed and sold at market rates, all in a year.
"You went from these buildings falling down, to white, upper-middle class people all coming overnight," Gosdin said. "It was just 'whoosh.' "
Gosdin is aware that the economic diversity on the street may stand as the single greatest divide on Republic. It breeds a sense of "otherness," it can create fear and envy and misunderstanding and judgment.
"It is a barrier, or it can be. It is something we all have to be aware of," Gosdin said. "In the suburbs, or in some neighborhoods, some streets may have more in common. That can make things easier. But I didn't want that. I wanted the diversity. I didn't want to live only with people who look like me and think like me."
It would be wrong to forget how important it is to see diversity on a street like this. It can be easy to forget how impossible this seemed in 2001 and before. But Gosdin knows it has to mean something.
So she works hard to say hello to every person she meets. A wave or a hello, she says, can go a long way. And there is somebody new in her life since April who has helped break the ice. That would be Sophie, a French bulldog. Three times a day, every day, Gosdin walks Sophie to Washington Park. The dog is irresistible. "She's cute as hell. You cannot not smile at this dog."
On one of those walks, Gosdin started talking to an older black woman across the street about a salad recipe she was creating. They ended up exchanging recipes. "It was a watermelon salad with some cheese and some turkey, and it sounds a little weird but it was very good," Gosdin said. "It was a really idyllic moment. We need more of that."
Republic Street is a social experiment masquerading as a residential block. People planning five-course dinners across the street from people wondering how they will put something, anything, on the table tonight. It is a place to see how far we have come, and how much farther we have to go.
Anntionette Jones moved onto Republic Street in 2009, across the street from Gosdin and just a bit toward 12th Street. She lives in the building with catwalks across the front. The building has been there, maybe, a century and is now Section-8 housing.
Republic Street is where she lives, and she likes her two-bedroom, one-bath apartment on the 3rd floor. But it does not feel like her neighborhood. Not really.
When the weather is nice, Jones can stand on the catwalk and see through the window into the fancy kitchen of the woman who lives on the third floor across the street in her condominium.
She does not know the woman, she doesn't know her name or anything about her. But she knows they can see each other when the woman in the apartment is washing her dishes. Jones can sometimes even hear music from the woman's apartment. They are that close. But the woman never smiles. The woman never waves.
"It doesn't feel like she even sees me. Like I'm invisible," Jones said. "It's like she thinks she's better than me. She doesn't know me."
Jones said there is no real mixing on the block. She says her building mixes with the Section 8 building next door. She says the people in the condominiums mix together, too. "And nobody really mixes with the people down on the corner. Most of them are crazy."
That building down the corner of 12th and Republic is Tender Mercies, a home for the homeless mentally ill.
From her catwalk, Jones can also see across the parking lot to Vine Street and to the vibrancy of open stores, cold beers and warm food. It does not feel accessible to her. "It's one block away, and it feels like a long way from here," she said.
She said the restaurants and bars on Vine can sound and feel like an amusement park dropped into her neighborhood. "You see them coming out and they're having their fun," Jones said. "Where's our fun at?"
Jones said her building is quite nice, and that she likes it for her and her two children, but it does not feel like a home for a family. Not really.
While Jones feels some days she does not belong on her own street, she does not want to move. The older of her two children goes to nearby Rothenberg Preparatory Academy. The rent is cheap here, a percentage of income. Some people in the building pay $350 a month. Some people pay as little as $65.
And it is a good street. Just 14 years after Republic came to represent violence and shined a hard light on police tactics in this city, Jones wants to stay because this is now a safe place. She fears the block will become so nice, somebody will find a way to try to make her move. "I want to stay here," Jones said. "This is a good place for them." Then she pointed back into her apartment and to her children living in the only home they have ever really known.
Republic Street feels like any other street at the start of the day. People hurrying off to work, getting kids ready for school, checking their phones and going on their way. By 10, the retirees are alone, left to linger in the morning light. It is hard to remember what this street used to be.
Just down the catwalk, continuing south down the block, Artie White isn't leaving either. White has lived in Over-the-Rhine his entire life and on Republic for much of it.
"I've left a couple of times, but I always came back home," White said. "It's home."
He's been here so long that Jim Tarbell used to babysit him when White was a boy. ("Oh yeah, I remember Artie," Tarbell, the longtime owner of Arnold's Bar and Grill, said.)
White has seen this neighborhood's befores and its afters. He has seen segregation and integration, good times and bad. He remembers when the police would come in heavy and ready, and when the buildings started getting bought and sold.
There is no doubt there is far less crime now. He knows it every time he walks out his door. "It's changed so much from the '80s and '90s. You wanted it, you could find it on Republic," White said. And what was "it"?
"Whatever you wanted 'it' to be," he said.
So White is a little more tolerant of demographic shifts and integration that can feel awkward. He might be willing to look the other way when people come in from the suburbs to spend their money and act like they are visiting Disneyland, talking too loud, driving too fast, hooting and hollering when a decent person might be trying to get some sleep. He can smile at the Bro-T-R boys with their skinny jeans, plaid shirts, ironic beards and sense of entitlement. He can tolerate the women who live in the neighborhood for 20 minutes and act like they own the place.
The years leading up to the riots and the months after them were extraordinarily difficult in Over-the-Rhine. There were no jobs, no money, and little hope on Republic Street. The blood on the streets after that shooting literally stained the ground here. It would not scrub out.
Change can be hard, but White said this place needed to improve. If that change only came after an infusion of new residents and contractor dollars and a yoga studio, that's fine with White. He does not have the luxury of questioning why a neighborhood suddenly got safer or why it can feel like the city only cares about his block now because white people live on it now. Times were that hard before.
"After the riots, we needed change. That was crazy and dangerous. Lot of angry people. Lot of police with a lot of guns. You didn't want to be out on the street." Plus, he said, he can talk with anybody. "Welcome to the neighborhood."
White knows more needs to be done. Economic disparity needs to be changed on this street, just like much of the city and the state and the country.
He thinks the idea of there being two sides of the street, one for "haves" and one for "have nots," is not sustainable.
"We need more money down here, more jobs," White said. "So we can get to the other side of the street instead of Price Hill."
That is what makes this time on this street in this neighborhood in this city so important. "You worry about people being forgotten or left out, or left behind," White said. "You don't want that."
Republic Street is where this city's cracks became a chasm in 2001, laid bare for all the world to see. The block had the distinction of being arguably the most dangerous and lawless street in Cincinnati. Now it is not that. Now it is becoming something else. Or trying.
Sarah Mayorga-Gallo does not live on Republic Street. But the University of Cincinnati sociology professor has been studying what happens on blocks like this her entire career. Walking the block on a recent cloudy morning, she was struck by Republic's brevity and quiet.
The architecture on Republic will help it adapt, she says. All of the buildings have a handsomeness to them and the heft of age, but none are particularly grand or eye-catching. None stand out.
But there are differences. The Section 8 building with the catwalks has front doors that open directly to the sidewalk. The condominiums have gated entrances. Some are accessible for their owners directly from a gated parking lot. Both can have a sense of remove.
Mayorga-Gallo is not comfortable with the idea that this street, in the eyes of some, matters more now than it did a decade ago. "This street, every street, should matter," she said. "It does not matter who lives on the street, if they are rich or poor, black or white, owners or renters."
Now that there is a mix on Republic, Mayorga-Gallo says there needs to be equity. "This street is the intersection of race and class power," Mayorga-Gallo said. "The question people will ask is: Am I really welcome here?"
The answer will be hard-earned.
Fellow University of Cincinnati sociologist Jeffery Timberlake said Republic is a street that can set traps for people. Residents and visitors can take mental shortcuts that can lead to trouble.
Income levels can be difficult to ascertain, but on Republic Street, the buildings themselves provide a road map. The addresses tell the story. The low-income people on the street, exclusively or nearly exclusively black, all live in the Section 8 buildings. The middle to higher income people, exclusively or nearly exclusively white, are all owners, and all relatively new.
"On this street, race and income are conflated," Timberlake said. This is not the way of the world, but it is the way of this street. It is likely that a black man and white man, both extraordinarily wealthy and living next to each other, would have much in common. Similarly, a black woman and white woman, both on the far reaches of poverty and living next to each other, may feel a kinship. That is not the case here.
The differences, the "otherness" on Republic will be difficult to navigate. Long-time residents, renters, may feel a fear of displacement as they see property level values increasing. Newer residents, all financially invested in this block with down payments and mortgages and taxes, could believe they have more at stake, and deserve more of a voice.
"It can be particularly galling to a renter, a long-term renter," Timberlake said, "when a new owner arrives and says: 'We should start doing things a certain way.'"
Mayorga-Gallo wrote her dissertation at Duke on a neighborhood in Durham, N.C., which became a book, "Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multi-ethnic Neighborhood."
She says that just like any relationship, people on Republic Street will need to be kind and considerate, and to listen.
Mayorga-Gallo spoke of a neighborhood in her book where the wealthier residents built a community garden as a way to build relationships with the lower-income residents in their neighborhood. The idea was well-intended, but misguided. The lower-income residents didn't participate in the community garden, which made the garden builders resentful. When Mayorga-Gallo asked the lower-income residents why they didn't use the garden, they all said they didn't want one. They either grew their own vegetables or were not interested.
It turned out, nobody asked people what they wanted. She said owners and renters on the block need to talk to each other, to find out where there is common ground and how they can help each other. And, Mayorga-Gallo says, not every resident on every block needs to love every neighbor.
It is certainly unfair to expect all of the residents of Republic Street to love each other. That does not happen on any block in any city anywhere in the world. So that is not the goal.
"It doesn't have to be a block where everybody is hanging out together," Mayorga-Gallo said. "As long as everybody feels welcome and they can live their best life here."
Republic Street is paved with good intentions. Exactly where that will take it is still a question. This is the street that can measure this city's tolerance and patience. It is settled now. There is no new construction, the turnover will be slow. The people here are likely to be here still in five years or 10. By then, they may be neighbors.
Two doors down from White, Jon Harmon and Kelly Adamson live in a condominium in a green brick building. Harmon bought it three years ago because he liked the proximity to downtown and the fact that the place was affordable and attractive. But what really hooked him was the street.
He liked the mix of buildings and people, and he liked the fact that the street was filling up. "Republic felt a little more lived-in and complete," Harmon said. "It had already taken shape, you could see it."
Adamson moved in this past summer, and knows it will take time for a real community to form. "More time than a cul-de-sac in the suburbs, certainly," Adamson said. "It's not people of the same color, with the same socio-economic histories."
Harmon said time is an ally. When he first moved to the street, he wanted to get to know the neighborhood better. Then he wanted to get to know his neighbors better. "The second year we went from nodding and waving to saying hello," Harmon said. "This year we are getting to know each other, learning each others' names. It's a process."
And the residents of this block have to learn to get along because these opportunities do not happen regularly in Cincinnati.
"Our stories might never have crossed if it weren't for the fact we all ended up living on the same street," Harmon said. "But that alone, being neighbors, means over the years we will continue to share the same basic, similar experiences that only happen between you and your next-door neighbors."
For Adamson, it all starts with the housing and with effort especially in a community that is diverse in nearly every way. "There may be less common ground and it can take more time and effort to find it. It's a beautiful yet challenging living option," Adamson said. "But my neighbor down the street may only see the challenging."
The problem there is that while many of the rental properties remain affordable or subsidized in OTR, the cost of home ownership is more market-based, creating a divide between wealthy owners and lower-income renters. "We need more housing stock, for purchase, for people who make between $40,000 to $70,000," Harmon said. "We need more diversity in ownership to keep this neighborhood balanced."
But both Harmon and Adamson remain hopeful. People chat on corners more than they wave from cars. And Sundays — when the visitors empty out of OTR for the most part — can feel like more like a regular neighborhood.
"I love Sundays," Adamson said. "It's quieter."
Both hope to try to organize a block party sometime this summer. Maybe block off the street, and set aside an entire day for people to come outside and talk. To learn names and meet children and talk about work or parking or how noisy it can get on Vine Street on a Saturday night.
"We all come from different places," Adamson said. "But we are all walking on the same street now."
Republic Street cannot erase its history. It can look like it is trying sometimes. The flower pots and new windows provide a sheen to the street. But this street's history was never about brick and mortar. It was always about the people who called it home. Now it is a street where people will need to bring the future and the past and all of the residents together. It is going to be complicated.
At the end of the street, the corner of 12th and Republic, which is actually where it begins, sits a red brick building with the word "Hotel" rolling vertically down the facade. This is not a hotel. This is Tender Mercies, specifically Harkavy Hall, a home for homeless adults with mental illness.
Cardale Simpson has lived here for only two years, but there may be nobody who appreciates Republic's history and its present more than Simpson. Simpson has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression, post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorder, addiction issues and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
"This place saved my life," he says. "I'm happy here. I'm in my structure. I'm still broken but they help me. Mostly they help me with dignity."
Simpson remembers coming to Republic to find drugs and trouble, and always finding plenty of both. "It was real bad here, real bad," Simpson said from his home. "Nobody came for anything good." He remembered fights and knives and guns and arrests.
"Now you see Caucasian people walking their dogs down Republic," Simpson said. "I can't even believe it. Right down Republic. That didn't seem possible."
Fixing Washington Park helped, he said. More programming at Music Hall and Memorial Hall, and people walking over to Vine Street after shows, makes this street feel a little more loved, a little more inclusive. "It used to be people just getting into or out of their cars and they were gone."
Simpson knows all is not well. He knows there are people on Republic who fear this block may become too nice. "There are people living in their apartments and they are happy here, but they are afraid they are going to be thrown out," Simpson said. "It can still feel like them and us."
What Simpson sees is the start of something better. He is certain the street and the residents only need more time together. Time for people to know each other, to trust each other, and to treat each other with dignity. Not an easy future, but a better future.
"People who have lived here for years, they are not going to have the same stories as the person who just moved in to their condominium," Simpson said. "But we all ended up here."