Bellevue, a.k.a. Jamestown, from Mt. Adams, c. 1865.
Civil War fortification
From a Facebook post by Joe Neary
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| Fairfield Avenue, May, 1911 | An overly colorized, but really detailed shot of Bellevue (or, “Bellvue,” as it's spelled on the card) |
Bellevue Business District |
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Bellevue Depot |
Ms. Katie Memmer ran the |
29 passengers went over this embankment |
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The work of J. W. Clark, photographer, 427 Clark Street
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A View up Clark |
443 Clark Street, Bellevue, 1913 Notice the vehicle the boy is riding Thanks! to K. Sutkamp for this one. |
The Bonnie Leslie Trolley stop
The Catholic Telegraph, June 17, 1897
| If we were guessing, and we are, we'd hazard a guess that the street Bonnie Leslie was named after a Robert Burns poem. This one. |
Before the Fill
Note the water filled basin.
The area now filled with businesses on the west side of Bellevue, back from the river, you'll frequently hear referred to as “the fill.” We've read that years ago it was a big empty gully, used as a trash dump. It was a popular place to dump the ashes that resulted from the burning of coal most people used to heat their homes in those days. A lot of debris from the I-75 construction was used to fill it in, during the late 1950's. But as this early map shows, it was also full of backwater from the Ohio. And that looks like a race track of some kind south of it. |
| Band Wagon showing officials of the parade and the speakers. They are Arthur Hindman, Newport Commissioner; Fred Bassman, attorney and one of the principal speakers; Dr. J. W. Thomasson, chairman of the Northern Kentucky Auto Club, Hubbard Schwartz, Dayton attorney and speaker; William T. Calerdine, Cincinnati Auto Club Trustee and one of the speakers; George Herold, Bellevue City Attorney; Mayor Fred L. McCLane, Newport; and Mayor Clem Wiethorn, Bellevue. |
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| Officials Autos and two motorcycle policemen, who escorted the parade through the main streets of Newport, Bellevue, and Dayton | Auto of Miss Alice Collins, first place, Crittenden, Kentucky | Auto of F. W. Petri, Bellevue Florist, Second Prize |
These four pictures are from the Grand Opening of the road across “The Fill” from Bellevue to Newport, November 7, 1929. Full story, with the parade route, is here. |
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Before “The Fill,” there was the bridge.
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| Knights of Pythias and Blake's Opera House | A later City Hall | |
| Cincinnati businessman Julius Balke's Opera House was built in 1884. It housed the mayor's office and had three storefronts on the ground floor, an auditorium on the second floor, and the Knight's of Pythias meeting area on the third. An opera house in this era rarely staged operas, but hosted a wide variety of traveling shows, local talent shows, and just a wide variety of uses for which an auditorium might be useful. The building was torn down in 1964. |
| In the famous double play combination of Tinkers to Evars to Chance, who was the third baseman the made up the fourth member of the infielder? Why, Bellevue's own Harry Steinfeldt, whose impressive major league record is at this site. Bellevue's Eddie Hunter played 3 innings for the Reds in 1933: no errors, no at bats. |
The Kansas City team in baseball's old Federal League moving to Bellevue?
All-Pro Bob Dougherty, played six seasons in the NFL
His career stats are at this site.
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| E. on Fairfield at Hallam1 | W. on Fairfield at Hallam | Fairfield at Hallam | |
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| E. on Fairfield at Hallam2 | N. on Hallam from Fairfield | Across Fairfield at Hallam | |
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| N.E. at Hallam and Fairfield3 | Where's Hallam?!?4 | Poor track conditions at Hallam and Fairfield | |
| 1. Matthew Bary's Saloon, 155 Fairfield, on the left | |||
| 2. The big building is city hall; it also housed the Knights of Pythias and Blake's Opera House. | |||
| 3. Shoe Repair, Southall & Zeis, House and Sign Painters; George M. Geiger, Cigar Manufacturer | |||
| 4. Jim McPhail gives us the background. | |||
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| Looking East on 5th from O'Fallon | |||
| This small collection of Bellevue scenes is from the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center. | |||
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| Gallagher Home, 1921, at 503 Ward from a Facebook post by Catherine Ross |
239 Ward photo by J. W. Clark |
Ward Avenue, "Bellvue" |
Ward Avenue, Bellevue |
Charles Bricking Home, 214 Eden Avenue
From a Facebook post by Judy Gerner-Bricking
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| sw corner of Fairfield & Ward (now the site of St. John's Church of Christ) | Home on Van Voast - before and after remodeling. | |
| From Facebook posts by Doug Hils | ||
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| The Bellevue Depot At the eastern-most end of Retreat Street Taken from the Grandview Bridge |
Looking southwest at Taylor and Grandview From a Facebook post by John Engelman |
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| The Seiter House (on Berry), and the Foote-Fister House, (on Lincoln), are on the National Register of Historic Places. The applications (pdf) contain lots of images, history, and architectural details. | Older House, Bellevue |
Van Voast Avenue, Bellevue |
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Cincinnati from the Bellevue shore, 1949
There are three Bellevue neighborhoods on the National Register of Historic Places. You'll find each one contains lots of images, history, and architectural details. Each is a pdf. |
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| Fairfield Avenue between LaFayette Ave. and O'Fallon |
Bellevue | Taylors' Daughters Roughly bounded by O'Fallon Ave., Locust St., Retreat St., Clark St., Patchen Ave., and Fairfield Ave. |
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| Fairfield Avenue Scene | Taylor Avenue Scene |
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| Covert Run Scene, and Tollgate | Toll Gate at beginning of Covert Ridge, at Taylor Avenue | |
from the Bellevue Eagles
An invitation to a June 20, 1908 outing at Coney Island
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| Bellevue Fire Department, 1941 List of the firemen is here. Both engines are by Ahrens-Fox (Wikipedia) |
In front of the Fire Department on Van Voast From a Facebook post by Alex Meiner |
Bellevue Fire Department, Company #1 Located in a section of the Balke Opera House at Fairfield and Berry |
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| The Bonnie Leslie Trestle | Trolley passing over the Bonnie Leslie trestle, on its way to Fort Thomas. We've got the entire route in pictures for you at our pages here. The image is from a Facebook post by the Campbell County Historical and Genealogical Society |
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| The Bellevue | The Florence Shanks |
| “The stern wheeler Bellevue was built in Levanna, Ohio in 1890. It was built to replace an earlier steamboat, the Florence Shanks, which was too small for the task required. The Bellevue ran from Dayton, to Bellevue, to Cincinnati and back., twice an hour. Trolley's ran it out of business, although she was later used to haul stone between Cincinnati, and Moscow, Ohio. The Florence Shanks, which the Bellevue replaced, was built in 1888, and burned at the mouth of the Little Kanawha River in West Virginia in 1896.” from Frederick Way Jr.'s encyclopedic Way's Packet Directory, 1848-1994 | |
The Bellevue's boiler exploded in 1893, after it was put up for sale in 1892.
Cincinnati Daily Commercial, October 20, 1859
| “The first house in Bellevue, Kentucky was erected six years ago. There are now one hundred and seventy buildings in the place.” Indianapolis News, November 8, 1872 | The Ku Klux Klan in Bellevue, here. |
| David Schroeder has written on the history of Bellevue in the Northern Kentucky Magazine, at their site. | George Robson and Robson's Row, in Bellevue, detailed at this site. |
| “The streets of this place are in a horrible condition, and in many places the mud is so deep that pedestrians are compelled to go about one square out of their way so as to find some kind of crossing to keep out of the mud.” from the Bellevue news in the Kentucky Journal, April 21, 1892. | “Bellevue was lighted by gasoline last night for the first time. The inhabitants are
already putting on metropolitan airs, and refusing to recognize
their next door neighbors.” from Covington's The Ticket, November 20, 1875 |
| Feud breaks out in Dayton and Bellevue. Five Shot. | Covert Run controversy, 1924. |
| “Bellevue City Council has passed an ordinance limiting the number of cafes to be operated in the city at ten.” From The Kentucky City, May, 1935 | Bellevue becomes an official town in 1870. |
| Gen. James Taylor was the recipient of a land grant, because of his war service, which included all of what is now Bellevue. The General had four daughters, who married men named Foote, O'Fallon, Ward, and Van Voast, for whom he named the streets. And the name of his family estate back in Virginia? Fairfield. | |
| The Enquirer's coverage of the 1884 Flood in Bellevue is here. | Tornado Hits Bellevue, 1867, more here. |
In 1925, the Kentucky Post ran a full page history of Bellevue.
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This map shows the extent of the 1913 |
1883 Map of Northern |
Bellevue Shanty Boats
The artist is Kate Reno Miller
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Fairfield at Foote
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Lewis' Notions and Dry Goods, 411 Fairfield
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Queen City Beach at the foot of Ward
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John Kaltenbach, First Class Shoe Repairing, 502 Fairfield
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The 1915 Tornado drops the third floor of one building onto the plumbing business next door. We believe the plumber to have been George F. Kessler at 603 Fairfield. |
| These are all scenes from the tornado of July 7, 1915 | ||||
The Alleys of Bellevue
by Bev and Jim McPhail
 The alley plat above was originally published in the Bellevue Community News, and if you have an interest in Bellevue history, absolutely check it out. The back issues, online, contain a wealth of Bellevue history. |
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| In 1927, there were enough baseball teams in Bellevue to start a league. |
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Bellevue, 1974
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The Bellevue Formation is a geologic formation in Ohio and Kentucky which preserves fossils dating back to the Ordovician period. It is so named because the fossils from that period were first discovered in Bellevue. To see the actual fossils, we would direct you to the Trammel Fossil Park in Sharonville, Ohio (12026 Tramway Park Drive). Free. |
