The Price Hill Press from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page A8

RICE ILL PRESS Price Hill Press Editor Richard Maloney 248-7134 Office hours: 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday See page A2 for additional contact information. 5460 Muddy Creek Road Cincinnati, Ohio 45238 hone: 923-3111 fax: 853-6220 mail: eb site: Cincinnati.com/communities Apublication of IEWPOINTS IEWPOINTS OMMUNITY PRESS Editor: Richard Maloney, 248-7134 A8 HILL 2016 April 7 question Earth Day is April 22. In what efforts do you partake? year for Earth Day I said I was going to plant a tree. This year I am actually going to do it.

One of the things I like about living in the Cincy area is the vast amount of trees we have. I travel to a lot of places in the country and not all places have this many trees. I always seem to breathe better around rees simply guessing at the a mount of oxygen they produce or us each and every day dur- i ng the growing season. However, the pollen season when their uds explode into leaves, I could do M.J.F. timing of Earth Day his year is perfect for all in olerain Township.

The new township contract with umpke provides a recycling oter as part of the monthly fee all residents. Now the last bstacle to recycle has been removed. Go T.D.T. try to remember to use ur cloth bags for the grocery store, and succeed most of the ime. Also we carefully check ur plastic containers for the recycling bin.

Passing on used clothing and toys to a good harity is also something we practice as well as purchasing second hand items if possible at agarage sale. For the lawn we look for environmentally friendly items when available. I think we deserve an for environmental J.M.O. time last year I sub- itted an editorial about the utterfly garden I planned. It as more successful than I oped it would be.

I researched and planted a large garden with oth host plants and nectar plants. I was especially thrilled about the endangered Mona rchs who called the 16 milkweed plants home for the sum- er. But, I also had two types swallowtails, cabbage whites, different types of skippers, great spangled fritillarys, earl crescents, red admirals, common buckeyes, red spotted purple admirals, and summer azures. There were also many large bumblebees as well as smaller bees. decided that the front yard would be well groomed; but, the backyard would have dandelions, violets, spring beauties, clover and other soc alled weeds in the grass for he bees and butterflies.

You an have all these while still owing as long as the mower is set a little higher. We let anoth- part of backyard grow. The tall grass was home to a host of insects. It was fun walking hrough the and finding praying mantis, grasshop- ers, This year I am expanding the butterfly garden and also clearing an area approximately 3 50 square feet to be sown with wildflowers. I will also plant a few corn stalks, tomatoes, and watermelon.

I also hope the mason bee house and the bat house that were recently added will have tenants this summer. am fortunate to have two things that make all this possible, a hard-working husband and a two-acre lot that our ouse sits on. But, anyone can the research and make a arge or small area attractive to a specific type of butterfly or as many as you can. So, put our back yard weed killers and insecticides away and put on your gardening gloves. other Nature will thank Donna Emerson THIS QUESTION Batman or Superman? Why? Every week we ask readers a question they can reply to via email.

Send your answers to with in the subject line. At the corner of Phillips and Considine avenues in Price Hill stands a lovely old church building empty ow, but in the process of estoration by the current wner. The building is unique for this area. he archi- ecture is a ombination of Gothic and Romanesque and includes a tower with a loping roof. There was a time when Sund ay School was held in the tower.

Abalcony, with a great view of Price Hill and the ity surrounded the tower a nd could be accessed from he second floor. The main entrance, on Considine, has a covered archway that leads into a arge vestibule which opens the sanctuary, an octagon al room that held more than 300 people. Lovely stained glass windows graced the sanctuary. Even in its deteriorated condition, i an attention grabber. he history of this building goes back to 1884, when Zerah Getchell, a minister of the York Street Church moved to Price Hill.

eeing a need for a hurch here, he called a eeting on Sept. 9 of four men in his home on Grand Avenue to explain his vision or the church. A second meeting at his home was Sept. 16 and was attended by 1 9 people, the first members of the church. The first services of the Price Hill Episcopal Methodist Church were in Library Hall on the outhwest corner of Price and Grand, a building they rented for $2 a month.

Today ibrary Hall is part of the Holy Family School build- i ng. Oct. 1, 1884, land was purchased. Getchell and his lanning committee decided the building should cost at least $5,000. $2,000, a substantial sum for the time, was secured from pledges from members and the fund- aising began.

A ll 14 women in the Lad Aid Society worked diligently to raise funds by hosting social events and entertainment. Music, as art of the worship experi- nce, was very important to he members and so a pipe organ was purchased. On Feb. 1, 1891, the Price Hill Methodist Church was dedicated, free from debt. There were improve- ents through the years.

In 1923 a basement was exca- ated providing additional classrooms, a kitchen and an auditorium. As was common in those ays, a parsonage was built irectly across the street on onsidine. The church building and furnishings cost about $11,000. By 1933 the Depression a ffected the church. It was ut of money.

The board orrowed $500 from the Aid Society just to keep the doors open. The members relied on God to see them through the fin ancial storm. And times got etter. In 1959, the church bought the John L. Barth mansion of the corner of Phillips and Elberon, adding and eventually building a ew building.

I 1967 they sold the building for $15,000 to the Church of the Nazarene, hich occupied it for many years. Sources 8 Hist orical Churches of Price PHHS, 1998; Hill, Its Beauties and Advantages as a Place of PHHS, 1994. iane Clark grew up in rice Hill and lives there now. Her company, Fairy ust Ltd. is on Warsaw Avenue in Price Hill.

She is alongtime member of the rice Hill Historical Society and Museum. History of the rice Hill Methodist Church Diane Clark COMMUNITY PRESS GUEST COLUMNIST As part of Bicentennial celebration, the Delhi Historical Society is hosting a wine tasting event May 20 to eflect the great, but little- nown, wine-making history of elhi Township. Back in the mid-1850s, the Cincinnati area produced ore wine han anywhere i the largely due to the efforts of the of A merican Nicholas Long- orth. Although Eden Park was better known, Longworth planted his first vineyard on land in Delhi Township in 1823. he land was the Bold ace now part of Ems choff Woods Nature Preserve.

Longworth advertized in the Rhine region of Germany and France for vintners and eventually hired immigrants named Tuchfarber and Amann to anage his Delhi vineyards. By 1833, Catawba ine, from grapes grown in Delhi, won first prize at the Hamilton County Fair. The Longworth land in Delh i was terraced hillside reinforced by fieldstone walls still isible today. He rented the land to Tuchfarber and paid him to manage the vineyard, oting that German emigrants can cultivate the grape to most profit, for the greater part of the work in the vineyard is performed by their wives and daughters, without interfering with household affairs. Longworth was not the only landowner putting his proper- into grapes.

Sebastian Rentz, whose farm was on Foley Road where Rentz lace is today had the greatest yield per acre in the county in 1846, pressing 1,300 gallons wine from three acres. Rentz also was the winner of the coveted or the best grapes in the U.S. that year. Other area immigrant vintners, Charles A. Schumann and John E.

Mottier, wrote pam- hlets on the cultivation of the American grape. Schumann, came from Nuremburg, Germany, in 1841. His vineyards were on the hills below Mount St. Joseph. vineyards encompassed the area today known as the Dunham Recreation complex on Guerley Road.

An Enquirer article about the irst Annual Hamilton County Horticultural Society Fair in 1843 noted that, atawba wine, vintage 1837, was adjudged the best, resembling the best of Sicily and eapolitan Wine-making was also popular along the Lick Run as intners such as Michael Werk and Jacob Metz opened wine gardens on Queen City Avenue. Charles Geis operated the best known, Quebec Wine Gardens. Delhi-grown grapes helped make Nicholas Longworth one the richest people in the U.S. by the 1850s, when more than 6 00,000 gallons of wine were being produced in Cincinnati. But alas, it was not to last.

Beginning in the mid-1850s, iseases of the grapevine also called blackrot and white ildew spread through the Ohio Valley. Then the Civil War struck and grape-growing and ine production slowed as workers became soldiers. The golden age of the Ohio Catawba Wine was over. The Bicentennial Wine Tasting will showcase local wine from Henke Winery in Westwood. The event is 7 p.m.

to 9 p.m. Friday, May 20, at the Delhi Park Lodge. Reserva- ions are required. Cost is $20. For more information or to make reservations visit Delh itownship2016.org.

Peg Schmidt is a public historian and 40-year resident Delhi Township. A founding member of the Delhi Historical Society, she serves on the Delhi ownship 2016 Bicentennial steering committee. Delhi Historical Society hosting a wine tasting event May 20 Peg Schmidt COMMUNITY PRESS GUEST COLUMNIST PROVIDED Delhi vintner Sebastian Rentz Jr. (center below flags) with his wife Louisa in black) and their children, photographed around 1910. Also in the photo is the neighbor, fresco artist Charles Pedretti, third from left.

PROVIDED Label from a bottle of Longworth Catawba wine, circa 1850.