Celebrating Mariemont’s Centennial: The Inaugural “Ground-Breaking”

By Pete McBride

Seth Rosen’s timely article in the April 2013 edition of the Mariemont Town Crier, “Construction of Mariemont Began Ninety Years Ago this Month,” recalled for readers the Village’s inaugural groundbreaking ceremony on what was then its 90th anniversary. The article concluded with a hopeful and prophetic prompt: “Perhaps it’s time for Village organizations to begin planning a Centennial Celebration in 2023.”

That well-intentioned reminder, while offered a decade ago, has been a challenge not only accepted, but enthusiastically embraced by many of our Village’s leaders, institutions, advocates, and neighbors.

As reported in Rosen’s 2013 article - as well in other reminiscences and histories (see the sources list at the end of this article) - the original groundbreaking event was attended by more than 100 people. Attendees included: Thomas Hogan, Jr., Rev. Frank Nelson, John Schindel, and Bleeker Marquette employees (including members of the engineering department and a small group of workers representing the hundreds who would help build the town), officials of The Mariemont Company, the local press, and Mrs. Emery’s nurse, Helen Baird. Husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, and other Emery family members also proudly attended.

Most significantly, however, the event celebrating the official launch of what was to become the Village of Mariemont was highlighted by the rare in-person attendance of the normally shy and very private Mary Emery herself. Mrs. Emery, using a ceremonial silver spade (now planner and landscape architect John Nolen, who had been hired by Livingood, were able to attend. Livingood was receiving medical treatment for an ailment he developed during a recent European excursion. Nolen had just returned home from Cincinnati to his Boston office and was busily reviewing construction bids for the Mariemont project.

The historic Ferris House, built in 1802, provided a suitable setting for the historic occasion as it became the location of the Mariemont Company’s field headquarters during Mariemont’s construction phase. A granite marker still indicates the spot of the inaugural groundbreaking. That “monument” or “shaft,” as it has been called, also indicates the precise elevation above sea-level “of the entire town.” displayed at the Village’s municipal building) and holding a bouquet of roses, turned over a small patch of soil on the grounds of the historic [Eliphalet] Ferris House, still located at 3915 Plainville Road.

(For trivia fans or perhaps as a conversation-starter, that distance is 584 ft., according to elevation.map.org.com .)

Fortunately for all of us, the event was filmed, and that only existing live-action footage of Mary Emery now resides in the archives of the Mariemont Preservation Foundation (MPF).

It is noteworthy that neither Mrs. Emery’s trusted business manager and adviser Charles Livingood, nor internationally-renowned town

Over the years and across several well-crafted print sources, Mary Emery (whose nickname was “Guppy”) has been acknowledged, heralded, and praised for:

• her remarkably creative vision of a “model town” that would be “a national exemplar” for America and was, in fact, one of the nation’s first planned communities cont'd on page 4

• philanthropic practices and disposition.

(Being one of the richest women in America, she was praised by one admirer as “Lady Bountiful”).