Located just three miles north of downtown Cincinnati, Camp Washington, or “Camp,” as residents affectionately call it, is primarily an industrial neighborhood. Meat-packing plants dominated the area when folks of largely Appalachian descent flowed in during the 19th and 20th centuries, wooed by the prospect of work. Residents — numbered at just over 12,000 at Camp’s peak population before World War I — rose in the mornings to cross their streets to work at those same plants before heading home again. (Informative historical markers along Spring Grove Avenue pay tribute to the area’s contributions to Porkopolis, as well as the metal-working, printing and fire-fighting industries.)
Today, the face of Camp Washington has been altered by the build-out of I-75 in the 1960s, and the Mill Creek Expressway before that in the ’40s, as well as the encroachment of vacant lots and buildings every decade since. But as so often happens in well-situated urban neighborhoods blighted by exurban growth, Camp is turning a new page.
Enticed by low rent and close proximity to the city center, a number of artistic outposts have set up shop, primarily on Colerain Avenue, the main business thoroughfare — places like Wave Pool gallery, focused on community-driven creativity, and the CampSITE Sculpture Park, intent on helping reframe the way people experience their environments. And, increasingly, the Camp Washington Community Board and Center Development Corporation, established over 30 years ago, have gained traction as agents of more codified change.
“Our initial focus was basically keeping housing stock online. The city, by the ’70s and ’80s, had pretty much written off Camp Washington as a place to live,” says James Heller-Jackson, community organizer for the Camp Washington Community Board.
In 2014, the two organizations applied for and received a grant to create a study of the neighborhood to assess its points of viability and growth opportunity, to talk to the remaining community members and to put all that information into a plan. That analysis and public input came to fruition in 2017 with a 78-page document called “Made in Camp.”
The obstacles to making Camp as viable as it could be are numerous. Residential population plunged to 1,343 as of the 2010 Census, where it hovers now. (The coming 2020 Census should show some growth, especially in the number of foreign-born residents; the neighborhood and its Welcome Project, helmed in part by the aforementioned Wave Pool, have become a hub for recent immigrants to the city.) There are plenty of vacancies ripe for rehab opportunities, but also ripe for less-savory endeavors. And the infrastructure of Camp, as it stands now, isn’t doing it any favors.
“That’s evidenced in the zoning that happened here. Most of the western side of Camp Washington is (an) industrial annex and that’s appropriate for that, but this whole business district was zoned commercial-auto,” says Heller-Jackson. “Which is great if you want to build a McDonald’s with a big parking lot and drive thru, but pretty horrible if you’re an Italianate building that sits right on the street in a former business district.”
The heart of that former business district can be found at the intersection of Colerain Avenue and Hopple Street. There’s a Shell gas station, and stalwart neighborhood mainstay Camp Washington Chili (open since 1940) catty-corner across the street. Directly across from that is the vacant U.S. Chili, a still-beautiful husk of a building. The Camp CDC recently acquired funds through a grant from the City of Cincinnati’s Neighborhood Business District Improvement Plan to purchase the building, saving it from, among other things, becoming a parking lot.
The previous zoning designation, Commercial Community-Auto, in place for years and years, essentially allows big-box developers to aggregate (including through removal) existing properties to build CC-A-friendly businesses, aka those with easily accessible parking lots. By bringing a rezoning request to city council in 2018, which was approved, Camp is able to protect more of the existing infrastructure in the neighborhood and be deliberate about who gets to develop, and where.
The goal is an Urban Mix, a zoning designation to “provide a balance of uses and amenities fostering a vital economic, livable and cultural area and enhance its urban, aesthetic qualities,” according to the proposal. That means no drive-thrus, conditional use for standalone parking lots and buildings that meet the street line.
And now? The sky’s the limit, as it often is at the precipice of a big change.
“A big dream of mine would be to connect Camp Washington via the old subway to downtown,” says Joseph Gorman, executive director of the Camp Washington Community Board. (The never-completed Cincinnati subway system has an entrance near the Hopple Street exit.)
For now, Camp is still focused on building inward and then out. So in this issue, we’re going to be highlighting the attractions that draw people there — places like Mom ‘n ‘em coffee shop and wine bar, whose coffee culture enticed Food & Wine magazine editor David Landsel to visit Camp to be a barista for a day. And Swing House, the renovated 1880s brick home that artist and architect Mark de Jong has reimagined to include a functional swing; it had its own Contemporary Arts Center exhibit, hosts open houses and also hosts Airbnb guests. And one of the early adopters of Camp — a neighborhood anchor — the American Sign Museum, which moved its collection of nostalgic neon and roadside history from its former home in Walnut Hills to the area and reopened there in 2012.
There are also several new or notable venues that aren’t covered in this package, including Sunny Blu Coffeehouse, HudsonJones gallery, Schenz Theatrical Supply and the now-defunct Chase Public, among others. Visit them all — or most of them — during the Second Saturday Art Walk, a monthly event wherein local businesses open their doors for art exhibits, wine tastings, live music and more. (The next Second Saturday Art Walk will take place Sept. 14.) It’s a chance for fellow Camp residents and visitors to see the arts and culture hub the neighborhood is becoming and experience the longstanding history that’s made this industrial enclave a vital part of the city’s urban fabric.
Wave Pool
In 2014, Wave Pool, the community-driven, artist-led experimental art gallery, was one of the first generation of new artistic outposts to stake a claim in Camp. Situated in a repurposed firehouse, Wave Pool has become a burgeoning force for change and action in the small community. It also acts as a haven for artists-in-residence and niche exhibitions. Calcagno Cullen, executive director, says that was intentional.
“Wave Pool’s mission is to pair community needs with artists’ sense of possibilities,” she says.
The organization’s approach to navigating that intersection includes a Venn diagram of directives: experimental art, connecting community and creating change. Each directive comes with its own set of initiatives, ones that holistically fit both with one another and with a broader mission.
Take, for example, experimental art. This entails an artists-in-residence program, a curatorial residence, socially engaged art and exhibitions. The residency program, called Art Space Is Your Space, has had a total of 10 artists in residence since 2015, including Maggie Lawson and Abigail Smithson in 2019. Artists receive a stipend and are asked to engage the community in at least one experience during their stay. Most recently, Smithson’s What is the Harm in a Reach? reflected on bridging the gap between sports and art, using input from basketball team members from local STEM high schools.
Wave Pool itself is a bridge of sorts, spanning the gap between underheard residents and both potential and definitive tangible change. “We do projects that their aim is to listen to our neighborhood,” Cullen says. “We’ve done several projects like that where we commission artists to create activities, games, events, sculptures that gather feedback and then we take that and respond with more projects that aim to solve those issues.”
Camp Washington is currently not served by a retail grocery store, and a lack of fresh produce is something residents have been bemoaning since Wave Pool first arrived in the neighborhood. So they decided to do something about it, falling firmly under the “create change” wing of their mission statement. Wave Pool partnered with Camp Washington Urban Farm to create a rolling tricycle, delivering fresh produce to the neighborhood from the farm. The organization wanted to scale up their efforts and, combined with new funding from an Impact 100 Grant, they hope to make a built-out market in the Welcome Project building directly across the street from Wave Pool a reality.
“The goal will be pay what you can,” says Cullen of the items for sale in the market, which will continue to include produce from the Urban Farm and select shelf-stable items.
Currently, the Welcome Project exists as a very-nearby satellite operation of Wave Pool, with distinct programs and offerings, much of it heavily focused on the refugee and immigrant population in Camp Washington. Here again the intersection of art and community is made evident, most notably in Welcome Editions, an endeavor pairing artist-designers with community resident fabricators, providing an opportunity for employment and empowerment.
On Sept. 21, Wave Pool celebrates its five-year anniversary with High Five Fiesta! at The Factory. Tickets start at $50 and include Latin food from Welcome Project chefs, libations, live music, printmaking and an auction. 2940 Colerain Ave., wavepoolgallery.org. — LEYLA SHOKOOHE
The Welcome Project
The Welcome Project is a social enterprise started in 2017 by Wave Pool and the immigrant and refugee resource group Heartfelt Tidbits. Part workshop, part retail space and part cozy hangout, the Welcome Project began as a way to empower Cincinnati’s “newest neighbors” and provide a support system for recent refugees and immigrants to Cincinnati.
Operating out of a space next door to Wave Pool on Colerain Avenue, the project initially led art classes. Then, the artisan goods made there spawned a boutique business, followed by additional enterprises in education, job training, language lessons and more. Currently, individuals from countries including Iraq, Syria, Tanzania, Bhutan, Mexico and Nepal gather at the Welcome Project for everything from public ceramics classes and art openings to Spanish lessons and entrepreneurial workshops.
The project has also launched an initiative called Cincinnati’s Table. Until October 2019, Cincinnati’s Table will host traveling monthly free dinners across the city with the goal of connecting immigrants and refugees to each other and their U.S.-born neighbors. Centered around themes such as “gratitude” or “exchange,” each meal features the cooking of immigrant chefs from across the globe and includes interactive activities to bring together groups of strangers, like guided meditations and roundtable discussions, art installations and simple projects. Cincinnati’s Table also plans to expand and offer a teaching kitchen in the Welcome Project space in November.
“That’s the goal of Cincinnati’s Table — to open the door for communication to people in the same neighborhood,” says Welcome Project manager Erika Nj Allen. “When you share food, even with strangers, that opens this door that allows you to communicate, or at least try to be friendly or giving. ‘Thank you.’ A lot of people know what that means, even if it’s not your own language.”
For September’s event, everyone and anyone is invited to a special farm-to-table dinner at Cincinnati State that will feature the cooking of four to five chefs. The dinner will coincide with Welcoming Week, which includes thousands of events held across the country to unite immigrants and non-immigrants in the same communities. 2936 Colerain Ave., welcomecincinnati.org. — MORGAN ZUMBIEL
American Sign Museum
Get lost in the ads and landmarks of yesteryear at the American Sign Museum. After opening in a small space in Essex Studios in Walnut Hills in 2005, the museum acquired the historic Oesterlein Machine Company-Fashion Frocks warehouse in Camp Washington and opened a 20,000-square-foot exhibition and event space there in 2012, with room to grow.
“We came here because we could afford it and it was a great space for us,” says museum founder Tod Swormstedt. “A lot of people don’t know Camp Washington in Cincinnati — it was kind of unheard of — and so artists could quietly find affordable space.”
Inside, Swormstedt and his team have transformed the former industrial complex into a glowing wonderland. Winding pathways of colorful signage give way to a mocked-up Main Street, with faux storefronts, cobblestone and giant logos from Howard Johnson, McDonald’s and Marshall Field. From roadside nostalgia and a looming Big Boy to pharmacy signs and gas station markers, the flashing lights, buzzing electricity and rotating wonders illuminate and preserve the past with a collection that encompasses signs from the late 1800s to the 1970s.
The largest public sign museum in America, there’s the option to take a guided, informative tour ($15 adult; $10 seniors) to learn about the history and manufacturing process behind different signs — including many with connections to Cincinnati’s past. Or wander on your own.
The museum also hosts a slew of special events, like weddings, as well as events like bus tours of local ghost signs and a popular Signs and Songs music in the museum series (which is returning in February 2020).
In terms of how Camp’s burgeoning arts scene is affecting one of its pioneers? In 2014, the museum saw 16,200 attendees. In 2017, that number was 32,400 and in 2018 attendance jumped to 41,500. “We’re on this pretty strong curve upward,” Swormstedt says.
Part of that is the pulsing electric lure of America’s novel past and part of that is the draw of the neighborhood itself (directly nearby I-75, I-74 and downtown) — a place where the Sign Museum is now an anchor attraction.
“Where it is on the map of Cincinnati, (Camp is) a great place. It’s got a really rich history — it’s a really fun history,” Swormstedt says. “There’s a lot of physical things about the Camp, but there’s a lot of subjective emotional, historical stuff that’s really cool that makes the Camp feel like a neat place to be part of.” 1330 Monmouth Ave., americansignmuseum.org. — MAIJA ZUMMO
Swing House
Mark de Jong, a trained artist and a renovator/reimaginer of old houses, spent three years working on Swing House, a freestanding 1880s three-story residential brick building, whose location and exterior appearance wouldn’t lead passersby to expect that a major work of Contemporary art — an ambitious and unusual house-size sculptural installation — awaits inside.
It is called Swing House because de Jong has removed the interior walls and upper floors and built a swing right inside. Made from reddish pine he salvaged from third floor joists, the swing is attached by 30 feet of natural-fiber rope to a newly installed metal beam on the ceiling. The swing is functional in and of itself, yes. But swings are hardly a common inclusion for homes, so this one has far more than a practical use. It represents freedom from architectural convention — it’s a radical departure from our expectations of everyday domesticity. It is, thus, not merely a swing. It is an experiential and experimental artwork — as is the house that surrounds, complements and is named for it.
The strong metal beams that de Jong had to install along the sides and roof of Swing House, since the load-bearing floors were removed, serve like a set of Christo’s gates through which one swings. And as you do, if you look up, there’s a white hourglass-like form painted on the otherwise-black ceiling. There are also two sleek, Minimalist-style white ceiling fans that look like 1950s-era atomic clocks.
“I’ve always seen the swing not so much as a vehicle for pleasure as a vehicle for contemplation and the passing of time,” de Jong told CityBeat when this initial interview ran in April 2018. “When you see the hourglass shape on the ceiling, the swing acts as a pendulum and is descriptive of time passing.”
And that gets to the larger meaning of Swing House.
“This piece, in its perfect manifestation, is about experiencing,” de Jong says. “It is to really be alone inside the space. A couple or an individual will be having a quiet moment with the house, with my work and with my journey. Being on the swing is about contemplation of lives lived — those who lived in the house as well as that of the person participating in the piece by swinging.”
“Swing House fits into this idea of people in Camp Washington being really creative, and able to utilize spaces and assets in unconventional ways to make interesting things happen,” says Wave Pool’s Calcagno Cullen. “It helps to elevate the neighborhood by speaking to Camp Washington’s past and future through its reuse of a house.”
The home and its ephemera were the subject of a Contemporary Arts Center exhibit from April to September 2018 which displayed art objects and material derived or inspired by Swing House, plus new work by de Jong. The exhibit also included special tours of the space. Today, the Swing House is open to the public the second Saturday of the month for tours and is also available to rent on Airbnb. The one-bedroom, one-bathroom home allows guests to stay in and utilize a work of modern architectural art. 1373 Avon Place, swing-house.com. — STEVE ROSEN
Mom ‘n ’em
Built in 1893, the site of Mom ‘n ‘em is on the other side of Hopple Street, a bit farther down Colerain Avenue and into Camp Washington than the central cluster of burgeoning arts-related operations taking up residence in the area.
Brothers Tony and Austin Ferrari are the duo behind the neighborhood coffee shop — familiar territory for the pair, who run Provender Coffee Shop in San Francisco, too. Mom ‘n ‘em marks a return home for the brothers, both of whom live in Camp and grew up in Clifton, but its purpose is to bridge the gap between work and home.
“In the ’50s and ’60s, when everyone knocked everything down to go out to the suburbs, we lost all those kinds of places. We lost that (place) in between work and your home,” Tony says. “Before that we had our local watering holes, we had our coffee shops, we had our markets. Every neighborhood needs those things to survive. (The reason) why Camp Washington was in despair all these years was the highway cut it right in half. And what happened? All the ‘third places’ were gone and neighborhoods were lost. People abandoned them. For us, we want to bring that back.”
The Mom ‘n ‘em site sat vacant for the last 20 years before Tony snapped it up (he intended to live in the space, a former single-family home). The original plan for Mom ‘n ‘em was fairly different; inspired by a coffee outfit in Austin, Texas, the brothers wanted to create an outdoor coffee garden using a 1969 Airstream as the center of operations. Ironically, zoning regulations being what they were at the time they purchased the Mom ‘n ‘em building, the Airstream idea was scrapped.
But no matter. Their goal of providing a respite from the work-a-day world and the duties of home could be achieved in just about any space.
“The idea wasn’t about becoming millionaires,” Austin says. “It was about creating a cool, fun idea for the community to hang out in.”
The sons of immigrant father Fausto and American mother Theresa — she was the first girl he met next door — they are passionate about family and food and bringing the former into the latter, and oftentimes, vice versa. The menu here features coffee and espresso drinks, a curated wine list, cocktails and food, including pastries, sandwiches and tinned fish.
Their first foray into local coffee began with Ferrari Barber & Coffee Co., a barbershop run by their great-uncle Fausto (same name as their dad). Then came Mom ‘n ‘em, lovingly referencing their mother (her face graces the welcoming mural on the side of the house), followed by the recently opened Fausto at the CAC, a contemporary restaurant outfit focused on seasonal cuisine.
The beginnings of a renaissance in Camp Washington are invigorating for them, the artists leading the charge on the other side of Hopple serving as inspiration and motivation, and they plan on sticking around for some time.
“We want to be part of that. We’re artists, too, in different ways,” Tony says. “Why don’t we make it an arts district, where we don’t allow any big developers, any big corporations. It’s all about mom-and-pops, all about working with your hands. Still very much working-class craftsmanship. Everyone creates something in this neighborhood.” 3128 Colerain Ave., momnemcoffee.com. — LEYLA SHOKOOHE
CampSITE Sculpture Park
The latest addition to the artistic stakeholders rising up in Camp is CampSITE Sculpture Park, a relatively self-explanatory outdoor experience at 2866 Colerain Ave., right next door to the former site of Chase Public. The ethos of CampSITE, founded by Sean Mullaney and Lacey Haslam, is one of good-natured irreverence, tempered by an earnest desire for connection — and a fierce belief that Camp is a singular place.
“To kind of start with that whole phrase of, ‘We’re the next something,’ I think that’s the big question we’re digging into right now,” Haslam says. “We don’t identify as being the next anything.
“The people that are here, that have been here, there’s deeper roots in this idea of people that are here having a long history of doing what we’ve done, just maybe in different places. So now it’s continuing to do what we’re used to doing, just in the place where we feel like there’s a certain level of opportunities.”
For Mullaney and Haslam, that means taking advantage of the vacant lot where CampSITE now lives. Mullaney owns several properties on the block, and recently, he put some miscellaneous items from his studio space at 2868 Colerain Ave. into the vacant adjacent lot, including some large painted boxes, to make a little room inside. But then neighbors started to tell him how cool they thought the boxes were. (You can still see one on Google Street View.)
“They were just into it, because it was kind of weird, and you didn’t really have to understand it,” Mullaney says.
Traipse through CampSITE today and you’ll spot the shell of a vintage car hanging off the wall of an adjacent building; a massive tree trunk ring with the center burned out, fashioned to resemble a guitar; a few leftover glitter rocks from a community project; a fire pit; and a refurbished Airstream that houses Haslam’s personal project, the Archive of Creative Culture, described as “a living collection of books sourced from the personal libraries today’s arts leaders.”
CampSITE’s ethos is rooted in theories about social sculpture parks and urban spaces, engagement and, most importantly perhaps, that everyone is an artist.
“The park is really designed to be for displaying works by artists and non-artists, but it’s for everybody,” Haslam says. “The goal is that we are bringing in, we’re adding something in the neighborhood that’s a way for people to come onto ‘private property’ and have a really engaging, interactive experience, kind of on a consistent basis with the Second Saturday Art Walks.”
Programming varies, depending on the lineup for the Second Saturday Art Walk that involves multiple other organizations in Camp, but past iterations have included varied vendors and a pizza oven, music and activities.
“It’s nice to have places to congregate, and that’s what the sculpture park is, too. We’d like to see that as an outdoor congregation place,” Mullaney says.
Haslam agrees, and sees CampSITE as well-positioned within the neighborhood’s shifting landscape.
“I want it to be a place where people come down and just play and hang out. That’s really my main thing — having more people down here working, living, playing,” she says. “I would love to walk down the street and say ‘hi’ to everybody and everybody knows each other. There’s a level of community where we might not all get along but we look out for each other. And the more space we say, ‘Hey, you’re welcome (here),’ is the basis of that. Because our built environments really do tell us how to interact. If there’s more places people can gather, then the better.”
CampSITE hosts Camp, Cars and Coffee from 9 a.m.-noon each Saturday, a gathering event to admire vintage cars. 2866 Colerain Ave.; get details about upcoming events on Instagram @campsitesculpturepark. — LEYLA SHOKOOHE
The FRINGE Bookshop
The FRINGE bookshop is the brainchild of Andrew McKinley, who first came to the area from San Francisco as an artist in residence at Wave Pool two years ago. He stayed there for about a month and turned the downstairs gallery into a bookstore/community living room. Christened “The Gathering Space,” it was a hit.
McKinley decided to make Cincinnati his new home and bought a house across the street from Wave Pool. With their help, an ArtsWave grant and vision/fabrication from artist Karay Martin, he transformed his shed into a colorful bookstand, which opened April 6.
“We’re getting books into local people’s hands,” McKinley said in an interview with CityBeat in May. “I’m trying to bring good books into the pop-up so they’ll spread throughout the neighborhood.”
They’re priced about $3 apiece. He’s been pleased that the shed — covered with literal colorful pieces of fringe and made interactive with chalkboard walls — has become a meeting place for people in the community and hopes that, in the future, other groups might use the space for other creative endeavors.
“It’s set up like a carnival booth, or an ice cream booth,” he says. “It should morph into something more substantial down the line. It’s really in its infancy.”
McKinley’s interest and passion for the introduction of a pop-up bookshop wasn’t happenstance; he founded the renowned Adobe Books in San Francisco 30 years ago. Pulling from his own collection of books and texts, FRINGE customers can expect to sift through an array of works that relate to “inclusion, equality and equity” — specifically ones that speak to the LGBTQI community.
FRINGE was originally slated to close on June 1 — or at least it finished out its Wave Pool-programmed run then — but McKinley still has it open each Saturday for passersby to peruse the window shelving and outside tables, with additional hours for special events and readings. 2931 Jessamine St. — BILL FURBEE
Camp Washington Urban Farm
To Camp Washington’s east, cars sit in traffic on I-75, waiting to make their exit downtown or to cross the bridge into Kentucky. To its west, the high-pitched whistles and screeching of trains can be heard long into the night as they roll through the Queensgate rail yards. A bright white salt dome on Colerain Avenue is the area’s best recognized place marker. If you didn’t know where to look, you might miss the soft, green plot of earth at the heart of this once-industrialized neighborhood. It’s a surprising place for flourishing gardens and broods of baby chicks, but the folks at Camp Washington Urban Farm have been feeding their neighbors with the fresh produce grown here since 2012.
The two-and-a-half acre farm sits on the former site of the Cincinnati Work House and Hospital, which operated from 1869 to 1985 and was demolished in 1990. The workhouse’s stone foundation still exists under a foot of dirt, making for less-than-ideal farming conditions, so composting has been instrumental in improving the soil over the years.
It’s proved fertile. A small army of about 300 volunteers a season plant, tend and harvest everything from tomatoes, peppers, squash, radishes and fruit trees to herbs, kale, spinach, cabbage and bok choy.
The farm is also vital to accessibility in Camp Washington’s food desert — the neighborhood’s last grocery store, Kroger, closed a decade ago. Now, the Family Dollar — which has a more limited food selection and does not sell fresh produce like that grown at the farm — is the closest option.
Once harvested, fresh fruits, vegetables and greens are loaded onto a miniature teardrop Airstream trailer, hooked up to a tandem bicycle and carted around the neighborhood to be handed out for free. The cart, called Camp Washington Art and Mobile Produce (CAMP for short), is a partnership with Wave Pool and volunteers bring arts and crafts activities along with fresh produce. The farm aims to give away 1,500 pounds of produce every year.
“We just want to be able to feed our neighbors,” says community organizer James Heller-Jackson. “That’s our goal here.”
Farm Manager Aziza Love (also of local Hip Hop group Triiibe) is focused on building more opportunities for community members by hosting gardening and cooking classes as well as creating space for neighborhood events and live music. Eventually, she says, she’d also like to see the farm become a source of produce throughout Ohio.
“I really see this space being somewhere kids can come and learn,” she says, eager to share her love of gardening. “I’ve always been a flower child. Nature has never failed me, so I never want to fail her. It’s in my spirit, it’s in my soul.” 3220 Colerain Ave., facebook.com/cwurbanfarm. — MORGAN ZUMBIEL
*An earlier version of this story did not include Karay Martin’s contributions to the FRINGE bookshop
This article appears in Aug 21-28, 2019.