Man: I think it's about the friendliest neighborhood I've ever lived and... Woman: The beauty of living in the Old West End is the cultural feeling of living here and the fact there are so many different kinds of.

People.

Man: The people that live in this neighborhood are a cross-section of every racial makeup.

This neighborhood reminds me of a city within a city.

It's what people think of America as in the Midwest, and they're finding it.

Lexi: I love everything about the Old West.

Ted: It's one of the nation's largest collection of Victorian and Edwardian preserved architecture.

Jeni: I would describe the old Western community as a beautiful island of misfit toys.

Pam: I wouldn't want to be anywhere else because you can't you can't duplicate this.

Mary: It turns out I found my tribe.

Dan: A community where you can make a home, but you can feel like you're part of a bigger family.

Joyce: So that's one of the uniquest things about the West.

We have some weird people living in the Old West End.

Lynn: A lot of people ride their bikes around here too.

Ive been asked not to anymore.

plus we have golf carts.

Announcer: This program was made possible in part by the McCallum family in memory of Reverend Lynn Chiles.

McCallum, whose spirit and love for the Old West End continues to inspire and enrich our community.

KeyBank supporting its communities through charitable sponsorships to arts, civic education and health and human services groups.

The Old West End Association and a proud supporter of magic of the Old West End, Salgau Roofing always professional since 1998.

Daniel Phelps, Finkle and Savage and Associates.

Our vision is to improve the lives of all we serve.

The Bolles Home with Skip Gaynor and Judy Stone, also by Gary and Roger Douglas.

Scott Wood in the Judy Stone Appreciation Society and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Ted: Toledo at the time was booming and we're talking 1880s and 1890s.

After the Civil War, Toledo really took off and we're looking at doubling of population almost every decade.

Ed: They were building lots of buildings.

Industry was moving here.

Industry was actually expanding at that point.

So it wasn't strictly a grain port.

There were also some manufacturing starting to come into play.

So you had a lot of money being made in in different sort of businesses.

Bill: It was virtually sort of a Silicon Valley.

It was relatively high tech.

There was money to be made.

You almost couldn't help but make money.

Ed: And before it was the old West End, let's say in the 1850s, it was just out in the country beyond the city limits.

By the 1860s, you had people starting to plant and sell parcels of land near the Old West and along maybe the east side of Collingwood.

Ted: In the 1870s, we do see the increasing pressure because all the homes are built up on Madison and Jefferson and Monroe, so they're still pushing further west and the Scott family who were really early pioneers.

And so they owned a lot of land out here and it was members of the Scott family, primarily Frank Scott.

He was the one that really kind of figured out the original plan for the neighborhood, which they called Scott, was.

Bill: By the 1870s and eighties.

Monroe Street had quite a number of good sized residents.

Again, they felt they were out in the country because the river had gotten busy with steamships and docks, and so downtown was no longer a place where the well-to-do wanted to live.

Ted: Some of the early wealthy folks like Christian Gerber in the 1870s, he built a magnificent mansion on Collingwood.

Along comes Mr. Gerber and builds this beautiful, stylish.

I mean, people would have looked at that home and said, my word, that's the most modern thing I've ever seen.

That sort of set the stage.

It caught the attention of a lot wealthier class of people and it just took off.

The 1880s, 1890s, they were just the heyday of this neighborhood.

Bill: Back in the original days of the neighborhood.

It was still considered somewhat exclusive.

Mainline Protestants, very few minorities of any sort.

Ed: But certainly a different lifestyle.

And those homes kind of reflect that.

Where you have large rooms, you had servants living in the home, you had someone living in the carriage house that would drive you somewhere when you wanted to go.

But still they would take care of your horses for you and you had to have a series of maids to keep a large home clean, a cook to cook.

So it's a lifestyle that I think for your average person is beyond really understand at this point.

Ted: So you have a situation where in a sense, the wealthier folks are trying to outdo one another.

Right.

The families would hire the architects and say, give me something that nobody else has.

Right.

And so that accounts for this incredible variety, which is so different from today's suburbs.

Right.

Which many of them do have a very uniform kind of look.

This neighborhood was intentionally designed so that every place was different.

Bill: Everyone was building a modern house, which to our eyes is a really elaborate Victorian one.

But it was the peak of fashion before development of the neighborhood started with Victorian houses.

And as the neighborhood moved north, people quite often the children of the people who had homes in the south end of the neighborhood, would build first Edwardian style houses and then arts and crafts.

So we have quite the spectrum of architecture from 1870 or so all the way up to the 1920s.

Ed: We probably cost millions at today's price to duplicate any of those houses.

Exactly the way they are.

Solid brick walls, massive beams.

They were using the high end materials at the time, which really aren't available today unless you spend.

An inordinate amount of money.

Ted: Now, what's really interesting about this neighborhood, you go on the side street, you've got little one, one and a half storey house.

These are the houses where the people that that oftentimes work for the families, they had the bigger homes.

They were able to afford to buy these houses on the side streets.

And so to me, that is quite remarkable and kind of an important statement about the neighborhood and the dynamics over time where you have, you know, all kinds of folks living next door to each other or around the corner from each other.

Ed: That difference in the size and style is home, but I think does give it a very distinct personality, which you really won't see in most historic districts anywhere because of that sort of diversity.

Even though we're being built roughly within a 20 year span of all these different styles of homes, sizes, size of lots.

Ted: Any really wealthy neighborhood in the country that you might encounter Old West End would stack right up against.

Ultimately, once that development really started, this really became recognized as the first suburb of the city.

Ed: And in the 1920s there were a lot of changes because the city was booming.

You had the automotive industry was really taking off at that point.

You had a lot of people moving here to go in those jobs.

And because of the desirability of the Old West End, you had a lot of middle management, upper management people that wanted to live there, but most of the lots were already built on.

And that was a time when a lot of homes got converted into apartments.

Ted: By the 20.

We have this interesting phenomenon of, you know, the children that grew up here in these big houses have inherited them and they're like, I don't need this big chunk of what am I going to do with those?

So they either move away and many of them do, but a lot of them also stayed.

Ted: So and this is the transition in this neighborhood from the original families and their children into the next generation of people that are buying or renting here.

Because a lot of these homes, particularly in the Depression, were rented.

Ed: By the time of depression.

Things have changed somewhat.

Costs for maintaining them has gone up.

You still have a demand for apartments.

So some buildings, they get converted into apartments or the apartments may have been divided up further.

People were looking at the homes a little bit different because if you think about it, by the 1930s now most of these are 30, 40, sometimes 50 years old.

Ted: They may have looked at that time kind of funny.

The people are real old timey, but they worked at that, been the beauty because they were so well built back in the day that they were still functioning perfectly well.

Ed:With Rosemary Cathedral being finished in the early thirties, it became sort of a magnet for Catholic families to live nearby so they could walk to mass.

There were Catholic schools nearby, so it made a lot of sense.

And if you needed lots of space for a larger family, they had really a lot of room and many of the homes were in larger lots so the kids could play in the yard.

Ted: That sort of sets the stage for a new generation that decide I want to have a big family.

You know?

Here's some really interesting old, big, old homes that are for sale cheap.

And we can move in and we can have, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Some of my friends had 14 siblings.

And it really sets the stage then for this revival of the neighborhood.

The churches on Collingwood was a big draw for a lot of those families, you know, because there was a stable institution to which they could belong.

Many different denomination was represented on Collingwood and so you had that as a draw for the neighborhood.

Ed: The commercial area was actually starting to move into the Old West End, so one of the houses became a club, one of them became the headquarters for the Red Cross.

You had other institutions that would buy these big homes because they were relatively inexpensive at that time for what you got.

Some were torn down to build a motel, so now you had the commercial creeping in as well as multi-unit start converting things into apartments.

Ted: There came a period in early to mid 1960s where a developers had other ideas for some of these properties, especially we saw this along Collingwood, a good traffic flow and so we begin to start seeing demolition of some of the big houses.

Ed: There was that sort of urban renewal movement about trying to make cities more livable.

Ted: And the other galvanizing thing was the expressway going through the neighborhood and people realized, wow, we weren't really consulted on that.

Suddenly these homes are all being torn down and there's a big huge ditch being dug going right through our neighborhood.

Ed: And the expressways put it in the late sixties and early seventies.

It really sort of isolated the Old West, then from the rest of West Toledo.

Ted: The Old West End Association had been a neighborhood association since the 1940.

And then a little bit later on, there's another organization called Women of the Old West End, which is established both powerhouse organizations that this neighborhood owes much to.

So they understand the nature of being a sort of an organized neighborhood and and all the benefits that come with that, not the least of which is being able to petition city council as a whole neighborhood and saying, you need to fix this or you need to do that.

There's power in numbers.

And so this neighborhood realized that very early on.

Jeff: Scott High School is the oldest high school in Toledo.

Construction started in 1910, and the first students were welcomed in 1913, and it was built in the English Gothic style.

It's a magnificent building.

Avie: They built a school, and gradually, as the community changed the school changed.

I came in in 1960.

I graduated in 1964.

When I first came in, the school was predominantly white.

Jeff: The community was had been was worried all along that Scott would be abandoned.

And the focus was clearly on building new schools.

And they were very much pushing that.

Zahra: The task at hand was getting them to get their mind off of getting a new building and getting the community rallied around, not having new construction.

Avie: Scott had to be saved as far as that was concerned, because it was a symbol of the black community.

And so when the Board of Education here and in other areas decided they were getting rid of the older buildings, it was like, this one can't go.

It's got too much significance to the life of the community.

Jeff: I felt that not enough was being done.

The people attended meetings with Toledo Public schools and ask questions, and there was outrage.

I formed a group called Save Our Scott.

So it was and it became a wonderful combination of Scott alumni.

Avie: Jeff came in with this humungous size and that culture, and then we went into the parking lot.

He had a truck, he had speakers and he had.

A rally about saving Scott.

Jeff: It was a very concerted, very fevered campaign for about five months to to make it happen.

And we were very lucky.

In the end, a school bond passed which allowed which raised local money to match the state dollars.

And Scott, in the end was renovated a beautiful $42 million renovation.

Zahra: What happened in the building and the renovation in the building was bringing it back to its original glory for the students who were attending there.

Jeff: We basically knew that 99% of the people in the neighborhood wanted to save this beautiful building.

So it was a very multifaceted effort.

And again, we were incredibly lucky.

Bishop Culp: Most people then felt, especially African-Americans, felt like it was a white, middle class neighborhood that didn't especially want blacks who were at Scott.

Shirley: They were very few black families over here.

Actually, I never met any black families, and I would stop and talk to the neighbors.

Pam: We were young.

We were a biracial couple, and I was looking again for a place that felt engaging and open to diversity, and we wanted to be included.

Bishop Culp: That was a very key time in race relations nationally.

We're also here locally and at Scott High School.

The principal had refused to lower the flag because of King's death, notified that man.

Well, they walked out of the building and got down to the corner of Collingwood and Bancroft and just getting dressed at 9:00 in the morning.

A policeman actually said, Would you come with us?

We were having a mob scene?

Police put me in the car and drove me over there to find the kids.

I didn't know.

I never had an interview.

I and I said, Lord, what can I say?

And what can we do?

I said, Right in church.

I was a block away.

I think it's big enough to hold on to you there and let's go there.

And so we said to regroup.

Come on, we're going over here and we're going to meet with some of these folks.

So we went over there and had an excellent meeting where the kids really pour out their hearts.

And the very fact that some of us know we made it sound like we were very good friends with King even though we only met him a time or two in our lives.

Race wise, it was a great time to be alive in terms of seeking to make progress here.

Man: You cannot have good schools.

Good job.

If you don't.

If the neighborhood isnt up to scratch.

Because the final blow to a community, is when the lenders and the financial institutions stop putting money into the neighborhood and the people start moving out.

Toni: Redlining is discrimination.

It is.

It is not allowing certain individuals the opportunity to buy and own a piece of property.

And that wasn't just here in Toledo, Ohio.

It was everywhere.

Judy: Insurance company banks and also our government decided that neighborhoods that they considered were poor and at risk and predominantly black should have a red line drawn around them.

And you can look at the map.

You can see that.

Bishop Culp: Realtors wouldn't even show you property that was beyond the line, beyond the mark, beyond the block.

It was being integrated and whites understood what was happening.

And they knew when a black family moved in was time for us to plan to move out.

And that's what was happening in the Old West.

Yeah.

Shirley: When more of us started to move in because we were able to afford more of the houses, there were a lot of houses that were for sale, but they didn't have the signs up.

But it was kind of like it was a secret, You know, we're moving, but we don't want our other neighbors to know we're moving.

Toni: It almost destroyed this neighborhood.

And it's not just the houses, it's the businesses.

It's everything else that makes a community a community.

Judy: As time went on, banks, insurance companies were sued because they would not appraise properties within the red line, as true as they should have been.

Diana and Ron Gosses, they challenged that and we are an example of how redlining has been abated.

Ron: My name is Ronald Gosses I lived in the Old West in from 1967 to 1987.

At the time we walked into 2256 Collingwood Avenue and I saw the fire and I saw that we saw the dining room and we bought it just like that.

When we went to finance it through people's savings in association, we had 38 or 40,000 to put down on it and we were only paying 50 for it and they denied us and we went ahead and asked a bunch of neighbors, you know, does anyone know a lawyer?

And that's how we found Judy.

She lived in the neighborhood and she was the lawyer who helped us address it.

Judy: Ron and Diana were purchasing a magnificent house on Collingwood Boulevard, and they suffered discrimination in their pursuit of a loan from people's savings.

The lawsuit had to do with redlining, so and also with unfair investment in in an area based upon discrimination.

Ron: And so they sent us the letter and it said we lived in a substandard building.

Judy: There were requirements that they had to fix this or fix that.

And and that went on for a great long period of time.

Ron: Part of the issue was eliminating redlining where there's an actual line drawn.

So if you could afford that property, anyone can buy that property.

Diane got HUD involved and HUD actually got us involved because they heard about what was going on.

Judy: Ron and Diana, to their credit, went forward with it.

It was a class action lawsuit and as a result of that, it was a door opener for her actions against redlining.

Ron: Today, when you go to buy a house, you have to sign all these HUD papers to make sure that everything is up and up and that the, you know, the loan that you're taking is not have injustice behind it.

So we stood up for free for justice, and we thought that was the main issue.

Bishop Culp: We saw a house in the 2600 block of Greenway and like that and wanted to buy.

We did and wondered what would happen for the neighbors were concerned with the first night we were there.

Two persons came at the same time and again said, We are your neighbors.

We live across the street.

One was Judge Andy Devine and the other was Judge Geraldine Macelwane.

They said, We're not leaving.

The old West End is going to be a multicultural race.

The old white flight is not going to happen here.

We're going to stay and keep as many people as we can.

And to tell you the truth the Old West End is still very integrated.

Jan: My grandfather, Gerald Johnston, and his wife Effie.

Were one of the first black couples to build a home in the old West End area.

He acquired some land.

In the Old West End, which became 2155.

Robinwood.

He purchased.

The land in 1946.

Marlon: Mainly professionals who lived there and small business owners.

And at that time, you got to remember when the Johnsons moved into the area, there is still discrimination everywhere and people feel threatened when a person of color would move into the area to purchase the land.

Jan: What he did was he went, Then he found a white guy.

The white guys posed as my grandfather.

The property is put in his name.

Marlon: For the most part, African-Americans did not go into the main part of the old with, and they stayed on the outer blocks.

Jan: He tried to find a construction company.

That would build the house.

Here.

No one would touch it, black or white, from what I understand, was.

That if anybody did build that house, they would have been.

Blackballed from any kind of work.

Marlon: So they had to go out of town to secure a building and materials, and they had to have a guard around the clock until the house was completed and the Johnsons moved in.

Jan: None of the neighbors really warmed up to him until like the late sixties.

You know, And that's when.

All it started.

To integrate.

He could afford to live there and he had the right to live there.

Kurt: John was showing me his apartment for the first time, and one excused himself to go use the bathroom.

I took that opportunity to make a beeline to his record cabinet.

And said, What has he got on his shelf?

And I saw a selection of Broadway shows.

And I said, This is it.

One of the purposes of moving to Toledo was to being able to live my own life and to be openly gay.

If you're going to be gay in Toledo, you got to live in the Old West.

And that's what everybody is.

Ed: In the seventies and eighties, people were afraid to come out.

They were concerned about losing their jobs as me comfort of one shoe.

My sister said to me, Eddie, you know, you're moving into that neighborhood and it's known to be gay.

You're not married, and people are going to assume you are gay.

And I said, Joanne, I could care less.

I no different than anybody else.

Those times I have the same morals as anybody else.

I refuse to be intimidated or be afraid of this.

Michael: Gay people felt welcome.

I could come here and I was around other gay people that lived halfway normal lives.

They all had jobs.

Everybody had jobs.

They were working.

I was always impressed by it.

Like, you know, I don't want to brag, but gay people can easily do a house up better than straight people.

Ed: The gay community is the community that was largely responsible for maintaining, holding and improving these old neighborhoods.

And the thought behind that was, obviously, we didn't have kids.

We had disposable income.

We liked beauty.

We like grand homes.

So it was kind of a natural place for us to be.

And of course, during that time, we were not accepted.

So it was our way of maybe coming into and creating a community within which we felt comfortable and accepted.

I feel like the Old West End has always been probably the most accepting community in the city and has been known as such.

You're going to see a more, I guess, diverse group of people than you would throughout the rest of the city.

Kurt: I was never comfortable going to gay bars, but the bars and the baths were the only place you could go in Toledo and be gay.

I opted instead, got involved in a social group.

I was called Pro Toledo, the personal rights organization of Toledo.

What turned to the pro Toledo events allowed us to do it, especially the social ones, was to be much more open about our sexuality and what we like.

Judy: The gay organizations started organizing, but they certainly had strong supporters in the neighborhood.

Whether you're gay or straight, because we understood the problems they were going through.

Ed: The neighborhood in seventies and eighties really is where our community gathered and many of us worked very quietly behind the scenes.

Activist So various organizations may have been spawned by those who lived here who were not afraid to speak out.

John: Toledo was unique in having a community newsletter called to Go to Toledo area Gay and Lesbian Affiliations about 1982 or 83.

Dignity, Toledo.

You know, the Catholic Group Pro Toledo, the civil rights group and Lavender Triangle, the women's group.

Each had their own newsletters and several people had the I think, really insight that for better communication within the whole community, why don't we jointly put our three newsletters together?

One interesting, I think, indication of how closeted people were and how protective of their identity for several decades, really.

Did you ever get a last name in the in the newsletter, first name and maybe the last letter of their last name?

Michael: It's different now.

Now there's gay pride flags and stuff, and we didn't have any of all that, but there were people that always had parties.

Biy, Did we have some good parties?

Judy: The gay community gathered here because it was a safe place for them, but their parties and their experiences.

When I first met my husband and I said we go to Christmas parties with the he didn't expect 28 parties in less than 30 days.

Ed: Those people who were here knew the community they were coming in to.

So you had this camaraderie among everybody, whether they be gay or heterosexual.

Lexi: It's just so different now.

I think visibility.

And community gives kids the opportunity to live, to not feel desperate and feel suicidal and simply to... to find a happy life and be a part of this amazing community that we call the Old West End.

Donna: And my husband had always wanted to be a innercity pastor.

And so we moved to Toledo in 1961.

Larry: Chet and Donna were behind the scenes on a lot of the movement in Toledo to bring full acceptance of LGBTQ folks.

Donna: Well, reconciling congregations are our churches that that declare that they're open to all people.

Central was was one of the first ones to do that.

Larry: Chet was kind of at the forefront of the Reconciling Ministries network across the country and working to raise the issue more broadly in the United Methodist Church in particular, and was very out front about where he stood.

He was well respected even by folks who didn't agree with what he was suggesting they ought to do.

Donna: A couple of the people that we that were in the congregation, young men, had come out to Chet and trying to get a group someplace.

Where people could meet.

Somewhere the didnt sell liquor.

Chet arranged for one of the churches to host a young men's group.

And they would meet monthly and I would go to they decided they didn't want a group that was tied to any place else.

So they called themselves Pro Toledo, and they decided they would have Tuesday nights, they would have coffee at different people's homes and sometimes a few times they had them here.

Larry: One of the things they did was they had a hotline in their house.

It was called the Pro-Life and Personal Rights organization.

And for people who could call in, who were wondering about their sexual orientation issues they're dealing with as gay or lesbian persons.

And Donna was often the voice on that phone.

Donna: I did run a phone for 20 years.

I got a fair amount of young people who didn't know what they were feeling.

And some of the guys had told me since that that it was very helpful.

Larry: Central United Methodist became the first church I'm aware of in Toledo that openly said the gay and lesbian folks are welcome here.

You would be treated the same as everybody else.

Donna: They were very forward looking church.

So really forward looking people.

I don't know whether people didn't know that we were so avant garde or I know they used to get away with things.

For some reason.

I think somehow he he managed to soothe people from all.

Toni: When the expressway was set up to come through.

You know, the city, it was rumored it was going to take out the 2020 100 blocks of this neighborhood, which meant the Libby house and the Lamson House and many of the other major significant houses in this neighborhood would have been gone.

Bill: For most of us.

The old houses brought us here the sudden realization that if you don't do something, everything historic is going to be flattened everywhere.

Toni: And if it hadn't been for Judge Divine and a few others who were on the legislature at that time, they made a concerted effort to make sure that it didn't come through this neighborhood.

And unfortunately, it went in behind the museum and took out another neighborhood.

Bill: In 1969, the Richardson house on Collingwood was torn down to build a nursing home and that got people upset.

Ted: One day they kind of woke up and there were the bulldozers taking it down.

And that I think was sort of the catalyst for this neighborhood that they realized, boy, we really we need to organize here, we need to do something or we're going to start losing all these beautiful home.

So it caught the attention of politicians, often judges, architects, planners, landscape architects and the museum.

Bill: The Maumee Valley Historical Society had a subcommittee called the Landmarks Committee.

Ted: So they get on board to and work with the neighborhood to have this neighborhood designated as an historic district.

And at the time, in the early 1970s, it was one of the largest historic districts in the country.

So that became a national historic district.

And then not long after that, the city recognized this as a local historic district.

And so you had these, you know, Old West End Association, Women of the Old West End, the museum, the landmarks committee, all sort of coming together and really raising the awareness in the city of the importance of this neighborhood.

Doug: In 1984, the historic district was expanded fairly considerably.

North of Delaware.

And this is home to an area of more modest houses.

It's been important for the character of the neighborhood, adding this more modestly sized housing stock to the neighborhood.

It's obviously relaxed to the kinds of owners that can afford to buy and live here.

TOni: Individuals did not realize when they bought these houses that there were certain things that should be maintained.

And so those big in the historic District commission.

Judy: The historic District Commission is part of the legislation.

And what the commission does is reviews applications of the neighbors who want to make exterior changes to their property, but to make sure that the any of the exterior changes were comfortable for the homeowner, but also.

Would preserve The history and integrity of the whole of the neighborhood.

Toni: I think for all of us that moved here early on, that was our goal to preserve the integrity of this neighborhood.

Doug: These houses are well built.

Demolishing them and building new houses is is ecologically destructive.

And then there's a certain quality to these neighborhoods.

There's walkability, there's.

This porch culture and.

And we need to preserve for our cities as much as.

Possible.

Kent: I think we're all on board for preservation as far as, you know, saving whatever house we can.

I don't know.

Too many houses that are duplicated down here.

They're all unique.

Judy: Living in these houses.

We are like the curators.

We're saving them for the next generation.

You cannot find architecture or quality of materials like you have in these houses.

Mary: You can sort of sketch timelines, if you will, based on the architecture and the families and the rich history that the families brought here.

So every time we lose a structure, it's almost like losing a piece of the history of the neighborhood.

Judy: These houses were crafted by such skilled people that you had to.

Be.

The center of.

Construction.

To make sure.

To remind us that.

These houses.

Stood.

The test of time.

So if we don't protect them, who will ?

Bill: The 70s were somewhat scary.

There was still quite a bit of rather violent drug activity.

There were prostitutes lining Jefferson and and Monroe Street.

There were multiple hospitals.

So there were sirens going 24 hours a day, going to or from a hospital or from the ambulance service on Monroe Street.

Toni: Anybody living outside of this neighborhood or outside of the central city were fearful about coming into the central city at all.

And that just the old West End downtown, anywhere.

I mean.

Truly.

Michael: The news media, any time there was a crime in the city, they would report it as Old West End.

Well, we got tired of it and ordered all the news media and said, hey, this is the old West and don't misreport it because you're not doing us any favors.

Judy: The crime that we saw was crimes against people.

And the the most prevalent crime was breaking into houses.

Michael: There was a time you couldn't get food delivered here.

You ordered a pizza and a pizza man.

And it's been a long time.

And when I called the the the pizza place up, they said, he got robbed out by his car and he just didn't bring it up.

And he left.

Michael: Two consecutive.

Years in a row, we.

Went to city council budget hearings asking for more policemen.

We got nowhere.

The city needed more policemen.

They were understaffed.

Toni: On July 3rd, 1979, all hell broke loose.

Bill: Police and fire departments could not reach a contract with the city, and the city was intractable, but they wouldn't do anything.

So the first time both the police and fire went on strike.

Judy: And unfortunately it was aimed at the Plaza Hotel.

Keep in mind, this is a very strong union town.

By using that nonunion contractor that created a problem with the building trades.

Michael: Unions were going to take advantage.

Of the police and fire being on strike.

So they early in the morning at the crack of dawn, they had a mass of demonstration on Robin Ward at the corner of Monroe in front of one of the buildings.

While that's going on, coming down.

Scottwood towards the art museum was a pickup truck with four union ers in it.

They threw Molotov cocktails into the Plaza Hotel.

Toni: It was like living in a war zone down here.

Man: The fire department has no right to do what they're doing now.

They're putting people's lives in danger.

Toni: And we had no aerial ladders to save that building.

We were getting small fire, fire trucks, nothing with a ladder on it.

Ron: Because the police and the fire were on strike.

The only fire department that would help were the volunteer firemen.

So they came in.

Judy: The neighbors went down there with as many hoses that they could and tried to put out the fire.

It was a very, very sad time.

Ron: All the women and those guys would sit on fire hydrants as they were fighting the fire at the plaza because the union guys were trying to split the hoses or turn off the bells.

So it was a very every time it was it was not a pretty time.

Michael: Three or four other fire department showed up.

That was a very large building, six floors.

It was all up in flames.

It was totally destroyed.

Bill: It was probably one of the scariest times I've ever had in my life about truly feeling not there, a lack of control, and you end up with a violent event like that.

And it took weeks for the smell of smoke to go away.

Toni: The feeling was that if you lived in the central city, this is how it is.

You just have to live with it.

Well, we didn't want to live with it.

We wanted to make it better.

Michael: Everybody kick in $15 a month.

We had contracts printed up and we organized block by block by block.

We had a block watch network of captains.

Judy: And about 710 of our neighbors signed up for our security patrol pre Internet, pre Facebook before text messaging.

Michael: It was called Old West End Security.

Judy: We offered services like, if you're out of town, let us know.

We'll check your house, we'll walk the property.

Our patrol was armed.

They had arrests, rights.

And I think all of that put together helped reduce the perception of crime in the neighborhood and spreading the word about what was going on.

Michael: Old West Enders were resilient and they know how to solve problems.

Our batting average was five four, five, four, five, five, arrested, five convicted, five went to jail.

And I would put the word out to the block captains to send the letter.

Well, the letter that went to the perp was this crime doesn't pay in the Old West End.

Pass it on.

That's how we cleaned up the neighborhood.

Announcer: Yeah, we're here in one of the old homes that is going to be featured in one of the oldest festivals here in Toledo, the Old West End Festival.

This is the Walcott.

Toni: The West End Festival began in 68, and it was only for the neighbors.

The women's group organized several homeowners to open up just for coffee and cookies and for people to tour the house and meet their neighbors, meet who was living in the neighborhood.

And so thus began the Old West and for the neighborhood that continued through 68 and 69 and partially 70.

And then in 1975, it was blown wide open.

The parade, all kinds of children's activities, food vendors were brought in.

It was it was amazing that as the years have gone on, the festival has become bigger and bigger.

And in 1985, women of the Old West End transfer around ownership of the festival to the Old West End Association.

Jnei: It spreads over 20 city blocks and is one of a kind experience as far as festivals go, bands and beer in the arboretum neighbors will have yard sales just a walking progressive party.

There are so many people who come down as strangers to the Old West and met their 50 new best friends because people walk around and celebrate each other and open their their hearts and their kegs or their grill so that you can just meander along and experience everything that the neighborhood has to offer.

Dan: If you think about festival and why we do it, this is a very social community.

We get excited about our neighborhood.

A lot of communities are excited about their neighborhoods, but we get so excited.

We want to throw this big party and invite everybody to come in a chance for us to show off both the culture of the neighborhood and the historic homes of the neighborhood.

So people come from the surrounding cities, surrounding suburbs.

Of course, the city of Toledo comes into the neighborhood and we even see people travel from around the country to come visit the neighborhood festival weekend.

Okay.

Chris: Toledo in 1909, through this huge weeklong festival trying to get itself on the international map, it was branded as the Mardi Gras of the North.

It was a week long and it really only happened once.

Mark Moffett and others brought that King Wamba coronation back to the old Western Festival, making it weird.

It's like the Old West, as does so well.

Lynn: The King Queen just kind of start the festival.

And let me tell you, Dave and I were, I just thought Id put that in... King Wamba and Queen Sonja.

Dave: Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

Down in.

Front of the our museum, we get.

Lynn: We get crowned.

Dave: Yeah, Yeah.

Lynn: And people love it.

People come.

I loved it.

Dave: Okay, well, it's.

It's.

It's honor.

Yeah, I know to be it, but it's not such a big deal.

okay.

Lynn: I thought it was.

Next question.

Toni: Hundreds of people come every year there.

They love coming down.

They're shocked by the houses still.

And it opens it up for individuals who want to buy a house, who end up buying a house down here.

That's what it's all about, is getting people to come see the neighborhood, meet the neighbors, and then decide that this might be a place that they want to live.

Dan: The neighborhood is more than just the houses that are down by the museum.

The neighborhood is larger than that.

Chris: When we're talking about this neighborhood, we're not just talking about the people that live in these historic homes.

Jeni: I can go the next street over and see the rubble from a house that was torn down three years ago that still hasn't been picked up, and that would never happen in the historic district.

So I think the association's job and challenge is to make sure that the entire neighborhood Joyce: We're not community without imperfections, right?

It's a work in progress.

The racial divide, the gap is closing.

Sometimes people, you know, we fear what we don't know.

Judy: When I moved here, I lived in a non historic area.

But I think the thing of it is, is that we're recognizing more and more that our neighbors who live outside the historic district have the same interests.

They want a safe environment, they want quality of work life.

They want to know their neighbors.

They're the same whether.

You're in the district or out of the district.

Toni: For me, the concern is here today, gone tomorrow.

I hope those that are here see this significance of staying involved and making a difference for this neighborhood and themselves.

Mary: We have a lot of young families that are moving in and raising your children here.

Kent: Which is perfect, you know, So I think the future is very good.

Toni: The inroads have been made for people to follow if they want to.

I want them to follow.

I want them to make a difference for the next generation.

Joyce: But we're trying to work and figure it out as the new generation comes in into position of authority, we're trying to strategize and see how we can make a change.

Judy: The Old West End is becoming the zip code that you want to live in, and I hope the next generation loves their homes and preserves them.

Sara: We love it.

Dan: We do.

Sara: And the new kids or younger kids love it just like we have that's going to carry it on.

Andrew: We have a very distinct culture that we want to maintain.

We don't want it to become boring.

We want to maintain the collective ness.

We want to maintain the weirdness, if you will, of of all of the different people that live here and everything that they bring.

Lexi: To me always is the heart of Toledo.

That may not be true to everybody.

It doesn't, you know, it's just where I grew up.

I think it's amazing and it's it's a supportive place to be.

I would describe it, number one as probably one of the coolest diverse neighborhoods in the city.

Michael: We are a neighborhood that is black and white, gay and straight.

Young and old.

Rich and poor.

People don't care who you are, what your persuasion is.

You're all treated as neighbors.

You're people with a heart.

Ed: You know, I'm fortunate enough to live in one of the finest historic neighborhoods in the entire country.

Bishop Culp: I found this to be a good, stable neighborhood.

One that has good, good values.

Lynn: Come!

We love you.

We accept you.

We're community of peace.

And you'll love it here.

You'll just love it.

Dave: This is a wonderful neighborhood to live in.

Jeni: There's been good, there's been bad.

There's everything in between.

Social issues, historical issues.

And here we are still standing.

The house.

The people.

Judy: It doesn't matter whether you own the biggest corporation or you're the CEO, or maybe you just clean houses.

Everybody comes together because we're neighbors and we love these houses.

It's just it's magical.

Toni: Today.

They know us and they know that our hearts are in the right places and that we're going to fight for everything.

We can fight for it.

We put a sign in the old West End Commons park, and I think that said it all.

There's a plaque that says, We came for the houses but we stayed for the people.

And that is so true.

That is exactly how all of us feel down here.

Announcer: This program was made possible in part by the McCallum family in memory of Reverend Lynn Chiles.

McCallum, whose spirit and love for the Old West End continues to inspire and enrich our community.

KeyBank supporting its communities through charitable sponsorships to arts, civic education and health and human services groups.

The Old West End Association are a proud supporter of magic of the Old West End , Salgau roofing always professional since 1998.

Daniel Phelps, Finkle and Savage and Associates.

Our vision is to improve lives of all.

We serve.

The Bolles Home with Skip Gainer and Judy Stone, also by Gary and Roger Douglas.

Scott Wood in the Judy Stone Appreciation Society, and by the following and by viewers like you.

Thank you.