Help Us Revitalize Sustainable Mariemont

The mission of Sustainable Mariemont is to share information and events that embody the motto of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. We are off to a great start for 2024 and want to thank the community for your eager participation and support!

In the month of April, we helped organize four local sustainability projects to celebrate Earth Day. These included: beautifying the MariElders Center with assistance from the Cub Scouts, restoring lounge chairs at the Mariemont Pool, partnering with the Cincinnati Waldorf School to clean up Dale Park and Ann Buntin Becker Park, and the

MHS Environmental Club working at the boathouse in partnership with the Parks Board.

We also partnered with the Mariemont Library and the Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub to collect solar eclipse glasses to mail to Latin America, who will experience an eclipse in October.

The Mariemont composting program continues to outpace expectations. To date, we have diverted over 30,000 pounds of organic matter out of the landfill. By composting, we are protecting the climate by minimizing methane emissions in the landfill. If interested in learning more or joining our efforts, please email Mandy Rohal at mandyrohal@yahoo. com

We are just starting this revitalization of Sustainable Mariemont, so if you have suggestions or want to join in on the fun, we invite everyone to follow us on Instagram/ Facebook or by subscribing to our newsletter by emailing sustainablemariemont@gmail. com.

The

THANK YOU for your support! Funding for production of the Town Crier comes solely from our advertisers and your contributions. Individuals contributing throughout the publishing year will have their names included in each remaining issue. Your contribution can be mailed to: Mariemont Town Crier c/o Matt Weinland, 3914 Miami Rd. #207 Mariemont, Ohio, 45227 Club

Anonymous

Brenda & Paul Allen

Sara & Brent Arter

Bobbie & Stan Bahler

Linda & Rob Bartlett

Denis & Marianne Beausejour

Ed & Karen Berkich

Rex Bevis

Robert & Elaine Blatt

Todd Blersch

Phil Bender & Janet Cleary

Publisher / Editor

Suzy Weinland mariemonttowncrier@ gmail.com

Advertising Manager

Matt Weinland mariemonttowncrier@ gmail.com

Layout

Zachary Weinland mariemonttowncrier@ gmail.com

Distribution Manager

Margaret Jevic amjevic@gmail.com

David Davis

Elizabeth & Thomas Dulle

Sam & Nancy Duran

Kate & Peter Fenner

Garden Club of Mariemont

Jim, John & Helen Gray

Nina & Wes Iredale

Judith Kagrise

Peggy & Charles Landes

Gail Cooley & Pete McBride

Lori & Jeffrey Miller

Brenda & Patrick Mitchell

Thank You for Supporting The Town Crier!

Contributors

Matthew Ayer matt@ayerquality.com

Kim Beach kimbeach13@gmail.com

Aileen Beatty aileen.beatty@gmail.com

Margaret Jevic amjevic@gmail.com

Peter McBride pete0948@gmail.com

Carol Sanger csanger1@me.com

Photographer

Steve Spooner me@mariemontstuff.com

Junior Couriers

J ames L epa

L aura Q ueen m ichae L L epa a L exis c L ark

O L ivia c L ark a L ex r O ha L m ax m ad L

L

L

Julie B. Northrop

Emily O'dell

Kim & Stephen Pipkin

Nancy Powell

Jan Timothy Riker

Janet Stollmaier

Wendy & Gary Tomczak

Carol & Joel Tucker

Jim and Rachel Votaw

Suzy & Matt Weinland

Women's Art Club of Cincinnati Foundation

September deadline:

The deadline for the next Town Crier is August 10, 2024

All camera-ready ads and articles must be submitted by 5p.m. to Matt Weinland at MariemontTownCrier@ gmail.com. Articles should be sent via email in Microsoft® Word, with photos sent as .jpg files of at least 350KB.

Payment and advertising contracts should be submitted to: Matt Weinland, 3914 Miami Rd. #207, Mariemont, Ohio, 45227 vision. Mariemont Care Center (formerly Mercy St. Theresa) and The Barn are the only structures that remain in place.

During the 1930s, the Lindner Quality Milk Company leased the dairy farm. The cottage housed the creamery, where workers processed milk from farmers in Goshen and Milford.

Over time, the land around The Barn became home sites and a private residence.

Later, The Barn served as a home for the Village of Mariemont’s Tax Office and Maintenance Department. When these services relocated, the future of The Barn was uncertain and demolition was eminent.

In 2007, The Mariemont Preservation Foundation (MPF) and the Woman’s Art Club of Cincinnati joined forces to save The Barn. With the help of the MPF, the Woman’s Art Club created the Woman’s Art Club of Cincinnati Foundation, a 401-C, to purchase, renovate, and repurpose the former dairy barn as a cultural arts center that would soon serve art enthusiasts from Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati and its suburbs.

The Woman’s Art Club of Cincinnati was founded in 1892 by 19 women artists who were denied entrance to the Cincinnati Art Club due to their gender. The Club is more than 250 women strong and stands as the oldest woman’s art club operating without interruption in the United States.

The Woman’s Art Club donated $50,000 to the Foundation for the down payment for The Barn. Its Foundation purchased the property at auction.

In 2008, Carl and Edyth Lindner donated $485,000 to the Foundation for the renovation of the west wing of The Barn, known as the Lindner Family Wing. The wing houses a classroom and a well-used kitchen. The Lindner family, among countless other donors, continues to be supportive of The Barn, which hosted more than 30 events annually until the onset of COVID 19.

Not one to rest on its successes, The Barn has made a comeback. With about 20 cont'd on next page cont'd from previous page classes weekly, numerous art shows and sales, seminars and lectures, The Barn serves as a vibrant community arts center for all ages.

The centennial celebration takes place on June 15 from 1-3 p.m. The Barn invites the public to free tours, cake, ice cream, and a close-up view of Bessie the wooden cow—a piece of artwork in and of itself.

The Barn and its unbreakable bones preserve its link to the history of Mariemont through its sensitive, respectful restoration of its programs and exhibitions that reflect Mary Emery’s life passion:

“She embarked on a philanthropic program that endowed or initiated children’s programs, … an art museum, … various cultural agencies, and other causes that benefited humankind.”

(Words from “Rich in Good Works” by Millard F. Rogers Jr, description on GoodReads).

Sources: Mariemont Preservation Foundation website, The Village of Mariemont website, and Wikipedia

By Carol Sanger

In the southeast corner of Mariemont, once known as “the bottoms,” weathered stone pillars rise from the earth amidst a tangle of weeds and overgrown greenery. They stand like silent sentinels, guarding secrets of a bygone era.

Stumbling upon them, you might wonder at first if they are remnants of an ancient culture. And in a way, you would be right. Because they are all that remains of what once was Mariemont’s very own village golf course.

Built in 1928 – not so ancient after all! – the regulation nine-hole, par 35 course was sited on an 82-acre tract of bottom land that had been used for growing corn. It lay between tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad to the north and the Little Miami River to the south. A few hundred feet west of the site was Whiskey Creek, and on the east was a Goose Island, separated from the mainland by another small creek.

Surrounded on three sides by water and prone to flooding, it may not have been the most auspicious location for a golf course. In a book entitled A Dream Come True, A Brief History of Mariemont, G. Carlton Hill Jr. called it “poor planning.” Yet there it went, touted by Village elders and real estate developers alike as a course that “the good golfer will appreciate and commend.”

A newspaper report at the time effusively praised its “many features” that conformed to “modern principles of golf course design.” These included well-placed hazards that constituted “a reward for the good player rather than a penalty for the poor player.” cont'd on next page cont'd from previous page

(Presumably, by 1931, the “poor player” could try less-challenging golf on a miniature course that was located at Wooster and Crystal Springs, where Mariemont’s Municipal Building now stands. Surrounded by white picket fencing, the “Tom Thumb Miniature Golf Course” was said to offer a more relaxing alternative to the larger course and its “irregular and undulating” sand traps.)

But what would a respectable nine-hole, par-35 regulation golf course be without a club house?

Unacceptable is the answer. So in March of 1929, land was cleared and construction of a proper, eponymously named Club House commenced.

While stone pillars may be all that remains today, the Club House once stood proudly atop them as a wood-frame structure built in a style known as “Mississippi Colonial.”

Memberships in the Club House, as well as access to the adjacent golf course, were open to all of Mariemont’s then 1,800 residents for what was called a “nominal,” if unspecified, fee. An arched wooden bridge spanned the small creek in front of the building and provided access to the course, as did a swinging footbridge at another juncture of the creek.

The first indication that those bridges over troubled waters might not be enough to appease swollen rivers came in 1933 when a flash flood on the Little Miami crested at 63.5 feet, leaving the golf course and Club House inundated with several feet of mud and water. Okay, not good and a big mess to deal with, but survivable. Village leaders, real estate marketers and stalwart golfers soldiered on.

The building rested on those pillars, held six feet above the ground “in order to escape any of the little inconvenient floods” that occasionally occurred on those bottom lands. Inside the structure was a “handsome” club room with a stone fireplace, and a locker room where players – presumably both good and poor – could stow their gear.

While planners had realized from the outset that the area was subject to flooding when the Ohio River reached the 52-foot mark, they consoled themselves by noting that past floods of up to 60 feet “were not too frequent and only left a thin layer of silt which would not necessarily injure the fairway turf.” Moreover, there had been no flooding of that magnitude since 1913.

Four years later, in January of 1937, the river gods stuck again. Ohio River waters rose to a recordbreaking 80 feet, submerging the golf course, the Club House and the 14 acres that constituted Goose Island. And as noted by Warren Parks in his 1967 book, The Mariemont Story, “a six to eightinch layer of mud over the entire course sounded the death knell of the golf course.”

After the golf course was given up as a sodden lost cause, Parks stated that “the land was sold and returned to its original use of growing corn.” Then, in January of 1941, the Club House caught fire and burned to the ground, ending that chapter of Mariemont history and leaving behind a few lonely stone sentinels to stand watch over a forgotten past.

(Photos courtesy of Mariemont Preservation Foundation.)