I didn't pay much attention to the Gamble House issue until I was recently told a rumor that connected all the dots. The rumor is too sensational to repeat online, but I do want to share an interesting detail I found while doing a straightforward Google search:
Turns out the Gamble House had an onsite caretaker from 1969 until at least 1997, when Cincinnati Magazine published a feature on him and the house. According to the article, the house was still in a perfect state of preservation, including all original furnishings. But sometime in the 2000s this caretaker either died or moved away (I was not able to find any information on him) and the Greenacres Foundation conspicuously did not hire a replacement.
Around 2009 or 2010 they hired some guys to move all the antique furniture out and trash the place. So this house could have been this really nice place for the public to visit and see a 100 year-old mansion with original period furniture, and such an arrangement would have cost the foundation hardly anything. Instead they tore the place up so it now needs at least a million dollars in work just to make it useful for something or somebody. Their official story doesn't add up in the least, but our non-functional media is snoozing as usual.
Here is a link to the 1997 article:
http://books.google.com/books?id=MB8DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75&dq=gamble+house+cincinnati+magazine&source=bl&ots=LnkIvLZNtp&sig=OiL0P43xS3f65e0Um8S2be4gscg&hl=en#v=onepage&q=gamble%20house%20cincinnati%20magazine&f=false
In July I visited Los Angeles, CA. Here are some photos:
This past week we were treated to the old empty chair gag courtesy Clint Eastwood. If you have studied Cincinnati history in the least you know that Murray Seasongood pulled this stunt way back in 1923~ while working to destroy Boss Cox's political machine:
The Republican government agreed to a series of public debates, but after seeing the disastrous results of Seasongood's debate with Vice Mayor Froome Morris, the remaining debates were cancelled. Seasongood then carried on, with an empty chair standing in for the administration.
Okay, not quite the same situation, but nevertheless the empty chair thing has been around for awhile. The above passage was copied and pasted from this website, but if you want more insight into the magnificent bullshitter that was Murray Seasongood, head down to the main library when you have some time and glance over Murray Seasongood: Selection from Speeches 1900-1959, or if you're made of money just one-click it at Amazon.com.
Oh, and it was Murray Seasongood, more than any other single person, who smeared Cincinnati's Rapid Transit Loop and caused our subway project to be abandoned.
As of September 1, 2012, these are the approximate revised property lines in Blue Ash:
Red marks the triangle that Cincinnati just sold to Blue Ash and will become the Blue Ash Airport Park. Meanwhile, the strip in blue, including the runway, is still owned by the City of Cincinnati. It is valued at about $20-25 million and there has been no public discussion of its fate.
Originally, the airport's hangars and fueling facilities were to have been relocated into the wooded strip at center-right. I didn't follow the sequence of events closely so I'm not sure if Cincinnati never applied or was not granted permission by the FAA to do this. Either way it's not happening, so this strip of land is either going to become even more of the Blue Ash Airport Park or it will be sold off to private developers.
So in the next 5-10 years another $20 million is coming to Cincinnati's capital improvement fund, and no doubt we'll have another round of cage rattling courtesy Chris Finney. Oh, and considering how confused the media was by what just took place in August, count on another round of misinformation.
