Glendale

How Glendale began

Glendale was laid out in 1851-52 by the Glendale Association, a joint-stock company of about thirty Cincinnati men (George Crawford and Henry Clark were its trustees) who bought some 565 to 600 acres of farmland on the new Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad. Civil engineer Robert C. Phillips surveyed 200 acres in curving avenues, three parks and a lake on rural-cemetery principles, one of the earliest planned residential suburbs in the United States, and buyers had to become residents. The village was incorporated in 1855; its first institution was the Glendale Female College (founded 1854 in the original summer hotel), and its churches followed from 1855. Morgan's raiders rode through in July 1863, and fires in 1880 destroyed much of the business district. The Glendale Historic District was listed on the National Register on July 20, 1976 and became a National Historic Landmark on May 5, 1977. A prehistoric mound, Mathew Mound, stands on a hill north of Oak Road, and the village had 2,298 residents in 2020.

Settled 1792 (a station on Mill Creek just below the later village), platted 1851-52, incorporated 1855, by The Glendale Association (about 30 Cincinnati investors, with George Crawford and Henry Clark as trustees); Robert C. Phillips, civil engineer.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted documents the specific origin of the name "Glendale" for the village.

Before the town

Glendale holds Mathew Mound, a prehistoric earthwork atop a hill on the northern side of Oak Road within the village. No source consulted gives a cultural attribution or date range for it. The 1881 history of Hamilton County describes other mounds in Springfield Township, in which Glendale lies, all attributed there to the 'Mound Builders': a large mound near the Station spring, destroyed in grading a turnpike, whose earth was found laid in small heaps of different soils; one on the Maynard French farm southwest of Glendale, 73 by 63 feet at the base and 8 feet high; a smaller one, 40 feet across and 6 feet high, on the Noah Babb place; and several on the estate of John L. Riddle, one of the farmers from whom the Glendale Association bought land. No enclosures or fortified works had been found in the township. In the 1790s the valley of Mill Creek was a corridor of settler stations and military roads: a company led by Henry Tucker built a block-house in 1792 on a military trace cut between Forts Washington and Hamilton, at a place just below the later village. No historic-era Native village, trail or treaty line specific to Glendale was found.

• Mathew Mound (mound) — Atop the hill on the northern side of Oak Road, Glendale village, Hamilton County, not specified in sources consulted (en.wikipedia.org)
• Mound on the Maynard French farm (mound) — Section 11, southwest of Glendale, Springfield Township, undated; described in 1881 as the work of the Mound Builders (archive.org)
• Mounds on the Babb place and the Riddle estate (mound) — Section 4 (Noah Babb's place) and the northwest of Springfield Township (John L. Riddle's estate), undated; described in 1881 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1792 — A company of Henry Tucker, Henry Weaver, Luke and Zebulon Foster and others builds a station and block-house on the west branch of Mill Creek, a little below the site of Glendale, on the military trace cut between Forts Washington and Hamilton; the place is remembered as Foster's Hill.
2. 1851 — The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad, the first line through northern Hamilton County, is completed; the Glendale Association, a joint-stock company of about thirty Cincinnati men with George Crawford and Henry Clark as trustees, buys 565 to 600 acres from the Glenn, Cochran, Riddle and Watson farms, and surveyor Robert C. Phillips lays out 200 acres on rural-cemetery principles.
3. 1852 — The village is laid out; among its first settlers are Robert and Henry Clarke, Mr. Glenn, Benjamin Stenell, Fenton Lawson and Robert Crawford, soon joined by Stanley Matthews and Anthony Harkness. The company dams a spring to make a four-acre lake and builds a hotel for summer boarders.
4. 1854 — The original wooden railroad depot is destroyed by fire.
5. 1854-09 — Rev. John Covert opens the American Female College in the former hotel, which the railroad company had acquired; in 1857 the new management renames it Glendale Female College.
6. 1855 — Glendale is incorporated as a village; the First Presbyterian Church is organized on November 29 in the college chapel.
7. 1858 — St. Gabriel's Catholic Church is organized and builds a brick church on land given by Gross and Dietrick; the Presbyterian and New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) churches build their own houses of worship in 1860.
8. 1860 — Glendale has 690 inhabitants; 1,780 in 1870.
9. 1863-07 — Confederate cavalry under John Hunt Morgan ride through Glendale on their raid across southern Ohio; the depot museum preserves memorabilia of the episode.
10. 1865-08-06 — Christ Episcopal Church is organized under Rev. J. B. Pratt; its $20,000 church at the top of the hill south of Sharon Avenue is first used on May 30, 1869.
11. 1871-10-05 — The Glendale Building and Loan Association is incorporated.
12. 1872 — The village streets, first lit by coal-oil lamps, are fitted with natural-gas lighting, and the fixtures are still in use.
13. 1880 — The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton depot is built to replace the 1854 structure.
14. 1880-05-14 — A fire on a windy afternoon, with no engine at hand, does about $30,000 of damage; another on August 17 does $25,000 more.
15. 1974 — Glendale Heritage Preservation is founded after residents find that property development has no safeguards; the museum opens in the restored depot in May 1997.
16. 1976 — The Glendale Historic District is added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 20.
17. 1977 — The Glendale Historic District is designated a National Historic Landmark on May 5.
18. 2020 — The census counts 2,298 people in Glendale.

Stories

A cemetery designer's curves become a commuter suburb

When George Crawford and Henry Clark set out in 1851 to build a residential development along the new Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railway, they did not lay down a conventional street grid. Civil engineer Robert Phillips planned the 200-acre core using the same design principles then fashionable for rural cemeteries such as Spring Grove in Cincinnati: shaded, winding lanes that followed the natural contour of the land rather than cutting across it. The railroad made the arrangement practical in a way it could not have been a generation earlier, letting Glendale's residents commute into Cincinnati by train while living on curving streets meant to feel more like a park than a subdivision, an approach so early and so well preserved that the resulting Glendale Historic District became a National Historic Landmark in 1977, one of the earliest known planned suburbs in the country still substantially intact.

A hotel that became a college

The Glendale Association built a hotel for summer boarders in its new suburb, but business never matched hopes and the building passed to the railroad company, which sold it in 1854 to the Rev. John Covert. He opened it that September as the American Female College. In 1856 he handed it to Rev. J. G. Monfort and Rev. S. S. and L. D. Potter, who renamed it Glendale Female College the next year; a fire that summer destroyed the chapel and a music building, but classes opened on schedule and steam heating, a novelty, was installed. The school claimed to be the first in the country to give women the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classification used for men, and by 1879 it had graduated 201 women. Its chapel was also Glendale's first church: the Presbyterian congregation organized there on November 29, 1855, and villagers of all denominations worshipped with the college for six years. In 1879-80 it enrolled 83 students, from Ohio and Indiana and as far away as New Mexico and Russia.

The Eliza House and John Van Zandt

Glendale Heritage Preservation says local tradition counts the village as a station on the Underground Railroad, though it admits there is little hard evidence naming the families involved, and that the only documented case is that of John Van Zandt. Van Zandt, a former Kentucky slaveholder turned abolitionist, was the model for John Van Tromp, the Ohio farmer who shelters Eliza in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and his house is known locally as the Eliza House. The Supreme Court case that bears his name, Jones v. Van Zandt, arose when slavecatchers stopped his wagon at about three on a Sunday morning and seized several people hidden in it. Salmon P. Chase and William H. Seward were among his lawyers, but in March 1847 the Supreme Court unanimously held the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 constitutional. The Heritage Preservation museum in the restored depot is open on Thursdays and Saturdays.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · glendaleheritage.org · archive.org · glendaleheritage.org · glendaleheritage.org · glendaleheritage.org · glendaleheritage.org · en.wikipedia.org · glendaleheritage.org

Every historic place in Hamilton County on the full map

13 wells in the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer along the Great Miami River near Fairfield, Butler Co. The water here

• Cincinnati Public Water System85% of residentsOhio River (Miller Plant, ~88%) plus Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (~12%)
• Glendale Village15% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Butler Co. Water District 20% of residentsHamilton wells (Great Miami aquifer) + Cincinnati (Ohio River + wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Private schools (2)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 5 of 5 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 2 of 2.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked. The county's results on file run through 2025-11-04; later elections are not loaded yet.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023, released 2024-12-05

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Glendale, Hamilton County and its school district:

• Glendale Village: Renews a 2.5-mill property tax levy for the current expenses of Glendale Village for 4 years, beginning in 2026.
• Glendale Village: Renews a 8.5-mill property tax levy for the current expenses of Glendale Village for 4 years, beginning in 2026.
• Hamilton County: Renews and increases a 5.61-mill property tax levy for the care & placement of children & children services of Hamilton County for 4 years, beginning in 2026.

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

Cite this page