Laurel Homes Historic District

Bounded by Liberty Street, Linn Street, John Street, and Ezzard Charles Drive (West End)

  • National Register of Historic Places – Listed May 19, 1987 (No. 87000690)

Significance: Laurel Homes was the second largest Public Works Administration public housing project in the country. It illustrated the housing ideas prevalent in planning circles in the 1930s and represented a milestone in Cincinnati’s local humanitarian efforts to improve the living conditions for the poor. The district consisted of 25 brick apartment buildings with 4 subsidiary brick buildings each three and four stories tall with flat roofs. Between 2000 and 2002 all but three buildings in Laurel Homes were demolished to make way for a new public housing project; the three remaining buildings were rehabilitated but now lack the strong sense of time, place, and history that was so integral to the complex. While no action has been taken to remove this resource from the National Register it no longer retains sufficient integrity to merit listing.

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