Cincinnati loves to joke that they need a passport to get from the East Side to the West Side, but how did the split come about? WVXU’s Bill Rinehart examines the major loopholes in this newest city OK, I want to know..
When Jackie Heintis moved to the Cincinnati area in the 1980s, she soon learned about the rivalry between Eastside and Westside. She wants to know how it started. Was it politics? Religion? Ethnic Origin?
To answer these questions we need to define a few things. Who qualifies as an East Cider or West Cider?
“I think we all have some idea what it means to be East Cider or West Cider. I don’t know if there really are that many differences. “
Jill Beitz is the References and Research Manager for the Cincinnati Historical Library and Archives. She attended high school in East Central, Dearborn County, Indiana and became a West Cider. Extreme west anyway. She says she has her own prejudices, but read several newspapers from the 1950s and 1960s.
“The general belief is that the West Side is very conservative, very Catholic, not at all diverse, and almost very isolated. People stay there for generations. The East Side is wealthier, more educated, and a little more transient in the area. “”
Today, Bates says stereotypes don’t really last. After looking at the census figures, she finds that the West Side has diversified over the past two decades, with no religion making up the majority.
“I think you might think that the west side is a worker and the east side is an employee. Again, some of them stop here, but the west side has very well-designed pockets and is blue. There are more colored bags. East Side. Some of them depend on what you count as Eastside and Westside. “
Where do the East End and West begin?
Where the limit is depends on who you ask.
“I can identify the East Side and the center of the West Side,” says Dave Straddling, UC history professor, Zein L. Miller. “Delhi Township and Price Hill on the West Side, Hyde Park and Mount Lookout on the East Side. But because of the large fuzzy center, I don’t know where the limits are. “
Spreading works in the large fuzzy center. Straddling graduated from Indian Hill, but it doesn’t feel like East Cider.
“There are a number of institutions that do not fit well into the east-west division because they serve the people on both sides of the city,” he says. “I’m working on one of them, the University of Cincinnati, and I think St. Xavier High School is in the middle.”
Stradling says it’s an important factor in the development of Cincinnati: parish schools and religions.
“The way Catholic churches and parish schools are organized allows us to develop a different culture around Elder High School or Seton and a different culture around Moller. I’m going. “
He says a lot of people equate it with high school for the rest of their lives.
“What school did you go to?”
John Fairfield is a history professor with Xavier. He was born in Chicago, so he’s neutral.
“I’ve been an outsider for forty years,” he says. “This east and west is kind of an insider. The people of Cincinnati want to ask you which high school you came from. I don’t have a high school yet. I know which ones. No. There is one too. “
Fairfield knows how the city has grown. East and West are definitely a phenomenon of the 20th century. “Back in the 19th century, Cincinnati was a very dense, compact, and crowded community surrounded by all of these hills, essentially the old West End, downtown, and across the border. Everyone lived. At that time, in my opinion, there was no concept of East and West. “
According to Fairfield, 19th century residents moved east because they could afford to leave the overcrowded and polluted pools. This is because most of the trams and railroad tracks come and go and developers are selling land in places like Hyde Park and Oakley.
“If you go west, you hit the canal quickly and you will run into a milk leak that is heavily polluted and stinks to heaven,” he says. “You have to overcome this geography. I really should have initiated that by saying that the east-west division really does lead to geography. “
So we have economics, religion, and now geography, all of which have contributed to something. Former Enquirer cartoonist Jim Borgman depicted as the Great Wall of China Between both sides. UC Professor Stradling says there are old-fashioned ergonomics too.
“We think we’re Cincinnati sometimes. If it helps. Sometimes we think we’re Clift Knight. If it helps or whatever your neighborhood is. But geography than your neighborhood. You may think that there is a big middle ground in the school district that is useful in establishing identity; connect to. “
The division isn’t just for Cincinnati. Jill Bates of the Cincinnati Historical Library says he found similar breakdowns in other cities. She says it’s just fun when people talk.
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