Tales of the University District

Three hundred city blocks, 2.8 square miles and more than 43,000 people. Some people live in the University District only for a school year or two. Others call it home for a lifetime. They run businesses. They raise children. They watch the college kids come and go. They adjust to the noise level. They make peace, as much as they can, with the sight of discarded beer cans strewn across front lawns. It's worth it, they say. So they stay.

The University District is one of the most historic and vibrant communities in Columbus and stretches from the Glen Echo Ravine in the north to Fifth Avenue in the south, from the Olentangy River in the west to the ConRail railroad tracks in the east.

Not originally part of the city of Columbus, the University District developed around Ohio State. The creation of the streetcar further developed the district and, just after World War II, the area quadrupled with the return of thousands of veterans.

But numbers and dates don't tell the story of this neighborhood. That story is better told through its long-time residents, through the eyes of those who stay. Here are some of their stories.

Michael Day and Bob Hipp

Tucked away in the heart of Olde North Columbus sits a cluster of homes and residents that defy University District resident stereotypes. Elsewhere, lawns may occasionally be littered with remnants from weekend parties. Here, residents are seeing the first irises of the season begin to burst in their well-tended gardens.

In 1996, when Michael Day was shopping for a new home, he could have moved into a new house in the suburbs, but on a gut instinct Day purchased a house with a funky brick pattern, an address etched in stain glass over the door and an extensive history to turn into his home in the historic Oakland Avenue neighborhood.

"There was something about the house that told me this is the right place to be," Day said.

Slowly but surely, Day and his partner, Bob Hipp, have been renovating their house and discovering parts of its assorted past. A recent kitchen renovation uncovered an old pass-through embedded in brick walls. A weathered wooden door leading from the entrance into the dining area was once layered with mismatched locks, a reminder of the house's days as student apartments.

"What keeps me here is that it's not suburbia," Day said.

The low sound of church bells from Holy Name Church wake the couple in the morning and the clashing sounds of local student bands serve as their dinner music.

"It's things like that that make my Saturday hop," Day said.

Although the tightly knit neighborhood is a sanctuary of stability in an ever-changing sea of rental properties, the street experiences its share of campus-related cacophony. Both Day and Hipp cite the first few games of the football season as the most tumultuous time to live in the neighborhood, with alumni and non-University District residents treating their neighborhood "like a playground," Day said.

The block is full of families and retirees, but few undergraduates, and the residents seem to like it that way.

"There's that fear of the block going downhill," Day said, regarding the possibility of more undergraduates joining the neighborhood. "It's a nice balance right now."

GILES CLEMENT/FOR THE LANTERN Dianne and Ed Efsic stand in front of their 100-year-old home on Indianola Avenue, near Iuka Ravine. The couple have owned the home since 1967 and enjoy the diversity and excitement in the district.

Dianne and Ed Efsic

Clad in one brown shoe and one blue shoe, Ed Efsic was quick to explain that he was wearing "braces" and not suspenders.

Why was he wearing shoes of different colors?

"Well it's not because I'm an idiot," Efsic said. "It's because one of each color wore out for whatever reason, anyways. So these are still good."

Ed and Dianne Efsic moved into their 100-year-old house on Indianola Avenue near Iuka Ravine in 1967, and when they moved to Texas in 1982, their kids lived in the house while attending OSU. Soon after their children graduated, they moved back in.

It's not the noise of college students that bothers Ed.

"They're quiet and I don't mind the noise so much, it's just the trail of debris that follows them. If they cleaned up after themselves, I wouldn't mind so much," Ed said. "For the most part, from Sunday through Thursday afternoon, it's not a bad neighborhood."

Dianne disagreed.

"It's not a bad neighborhood weekend nights too," she said.

Diane sees the positive side of living among college students. It's livelier, she said.

"Kingwood was boring, where we lived in Texas," she said. "God that was boring."

The Efsics originally moved into the University District because they didn't want to live and raise their children in a boring, homogenous place. Dianne wanted a mixed neighborhood.

"I didn't want everybody to be like me," Dianne said. "I wanted the kids to be exposed to different cultures, different kinds of people."

Out of everywhere in Columbus the best choice seemed to be the University District, with its "old people, young people, fat people, skinny people, brown people, white people, black people, rich people, poor people, and in-between people," she said.

"There's just all kinds of people that live here," Ed added. "Chip down the street is a professor in anatomy at the medical college and he's also a world-famous magician. There's interesting people around this neighborhood. We just quietly go about our business."