Price Hill Wall (detail)

We're still waiting on a good family portrait for the wall, but the details are coming together nicely. My wife is going a stellar job, as she always does with these types of projects. So, without further ado, here are the neighborhood images chosen for our home, and a brief synopsis of why they were selected. All images were printed in sepia, in an effort to make them timeless.
Price Hill has always had positive connotations to me, as Grandpa Joe took me to Price Hill Chili almost weekly for my entire childhood. When I was a little kid, PHC owner Sam Beltsos would say hi to Grandpa and pinch my cheek. When Grandpa died, we essentially held the wake in the back room. Sam joined us. He's like family. Since moving to Price Hill, Sam has pinched my cheek as well as the cheek of my son. I love Sam and his restaurant. The tradition continues.
Next to our front door, this picture hangs in our entryway. When trying to decide if this was a neighborhood we wanted to live in, we came and walked the streets to try to get a feel for the area. We were walking west on Warsaw when Robyn saw our last name in ceramic tile on the stoop of 3518 Warsaw Ave, less than 3 blocks from our front door. A somewhat distant family member owned the building until 1964, but the tile remains to this day. Seeing our name in tile certainly didn't discourage us from moving to this neighborhood.
We saw our name in tile while walking home from the playground. We started at the house, before buying it, and walked to the playground. We loved walking to the playground in College Hill, and we wanted that option at our "next house". When we got there, there were boys and girls, parents and grandparents, whites and blacks, all playing and talking with one another. We wanted a melting pot community, and we already knew that there was a nearby Hispanic population and some folks of Asian decent. And Tobe loved the slide and the drawbridge, so life was good.
Before buying the house, I was all geeked up at the possibility of having an enormous Gothic church as part of my front porch view. St Lawrence church is absolutely stunning, and it's just a stone's throw from our front steps.
Almost every Saturday morning, we walk across the street to the bakery to get fresh-baked donuts. And Tobe gets a little cookie. Robyn and I both want our kids to have some good, consistent memories from growing up. Can't go wrong with the best glazed twists in the city. And walking there as a family is just a fun time all around.
As of today, there are 2 vacant Kroger buildings on the same lot, 1 block from our house. 1 closed last week, and the other closed 20 years ago. Both will be demolished in the very near future so that a new store can be built. This mural is on the older of the vacant buildings. Isn't it awesome?! It will be gone soon, but how awesome is a ceramic tile mural of a woman shopping for vegetables?! I love it... I wish they'd preserve it, just for old time's sake. But mainly, we just wanted a cool pic of our grocery store, as we so much enjoy walking to and from the store to get our groceries.
And finally, directly across the street is our local post office. Robyn and Tobe walk there to get stamps. It's so close by, and Robyn loves getting the mail!

Who knows, maybe this wall will grow as time passes. I'm sure there will be much more to discover as the years come and go. But for now, we are appreciative of these aspects of our neighborhood.