Website hosted by the Clintonville Community Fund as a service to the Clintonville community.  CCF is an IRS 501(c)(3) charity organization.

Portal Website Contents:
(New information is ongoing.)

Project:  Whetstone Community (Recreation) Center renovation and expansion:  An ad hoc community group had been working  with City of Columbus officials in the planning for the current renovation and expansion of the Whetstone Recreation Center building - and is conducting a community fund raising drive to secure $500,000 as the community's gift of support of the new Clintonville Community Room and outdoor patio and playground area, along with to provide equipment enhancements.  The more than $5,200,000 project includes mechanical upgrades, interior and exterior enhancements, and adjacent parking and playground improvements.  Visit the recreation center's Website for updated information.

Project:  The Ohio Schools for the Deaf and the Blind are considering the merger of the two campuses that are now located at the north side of the Clintonville neighborhood.  Click here to visit their website for details.

It all depends on who you ask - but the truthful answer remains the same.  Neither "Clintonville" nor "Beechwold" ever existed as political or formally recognized entities.  Thus any answer as to where the boundaries are between the two areas is an answer based on myth.

The story begins in the 1800s, with the creation of Franklin County and its Clinton Township.  In 1847, the US Post Office employed a postmaster to open a post office in the center of Clinton Township, near the corner of Oakland Park Avenue and the former Sandusky Turnpike, a plank covered toll road that we today know as High Street.  The post office was designated as "Clintonville", recognizing the center of the township and the hamlet of a few dozen homesteads.

By the early 1900s, Columbus residents, a majority of whom lived downtown, along with professors from the new Ohio State University, began to build summer homes in the areas around the ravines and the river.  Visitors were lured into the country to enjoy the Olentangy Amusement, and later, the short lived Columbus Zoo Amusement Park (where the "Old" Beechwold Subdivision is today).  With the arrival of the automobile, developers turned the area farms and woodlots into more than 80 subdivisions - eventually constructing thousands of new homes.

During the 1940s, as the area's population expanded northward, towards Rathbone (now Morse) Road, a new northern branch of the Post Office was created, being designated as the Beechwold Post Office, recognizing the clustering of businesses in the area north of the Overbrook Ravine, along High Street - then State Route 23.

The southern Clintonville business area had its drug stores, groceries, banks, hardware store, auto service stations, churches, and theater.  The northern area also had its own business clustering.  Nearly a mile of residences lined High Street in-between, including the large Fuller Farm (today's Whetstone Park) and the Indian Springs Golf Course, east of High Street at Henderson Road.  Residents naturally adopted the names "Clintonville" and "Beechwold" to designate their local neighborhoods.

By the 1950s, the City of Columbus had annexed all of the area into the City, erasing any formal separation between the two business centers.

In late 1974, the City of Columbus created the "Clintonville Area Commission", designating its governance area (south: the Glen Echo Ravine, west: the Olentangy River, north: the City's border with the unincorporated Sharon Township and the City of Worthington, east: the Big Four Railroad).  Although the CAC's name includes the word "area" - as time passed, most residents within the geographical area of the CAC's oversight, including residents north of Clinton Township, believed that they resided in "Clintonville".  Thus the imaginary boundaries grew.

An interesting observation is that of the more than 80 subdivisions that were platted in the CAC defined area, other than for two small parcels on Orchard Lane, the word "Clintonville" was not used in a subdivision name or in the naming of a street.  A review of property deeds as far back as the early 1840s provides evidence that the community of Clintonville was referenced as a legal description only in a handful of property transfers.

In contrast, the word "Beechwold" is employed in the "Beechwold Subdivision" (Old Beechwold) and "Beechwold South Subdivision" - along with the naming of East and West Beechwold Boulevard.

The purest amongst us proclaim that Clintonville is a state of (wonderful) mind and its is a community that encompasses many neighborhoods, including the Crestview, Walhalla, Dominion Park, Northmoor, Webster Park, Northridge, Overbrook, Rosemary Park, Indian Springs subdivisions, as well as the Beechwold subdivisions and the more than 70 other formally named subdivisions.  There is no right place to draw a line between the often discussed Clintonville and Beechwold neighborhoods - because there never was a formal boundary.  "Clintonville" is the combination of many neighborhoods.  There is no value in trying to separate the two halves of the community.

Today, the Beechwold Branch of the Postal Service serves an area that extends south to North Broadway Street and as far west as the railroad past Riverside Hospital.  The Clintonville branch only serves up to North Broadway, but south to include portions of the former "North Columbus" community, south to Patterson Avenue, just north of Lane Avenue.

The party conversation will likely never end - in endless riddle discussion of the where the dividing boundaries are.
-- Paul Bingle