Norwood’s Craters

Norwood, Ohio is the quintessential American Dream: A village created by modest, middle-class families, growing into a strong community built on manufacturing and production. But despite its rapid expansion, the city remains humble and tough, preferring to be known for its rustic roads studded with potholes.

On a cool Thursday morning in October, I left the warmth of my cozy Craftsman bungalow with coffee in my hand and keys jangling from the crook of my index finger. The air was crisp, and the sun peered weakly through a thin veil of autumn clouds as I unlocked my car and settled in.  With a press of the Start button, my black Mazda purred to life and the stereo kicked on, serenading me with John Mayer’s “I Can’t Trust Myself (With Loving You).”

Following my usual route to the Norwood Lateral, I wound down Indian Mound and made a left turn onto Grandview Place.  Just as John wailed, “Hold onto whatever you find, baby,” a thunderous bang jolted my steering wheel sharply to the right.

“FUCK,” I shrieked, as my car rollicked to the curb. Throwing open the door, I stumbled around the hood of the Mazda to find a deflated front tire, still hissing gently. As the right side of my car sank slowly, as if in a curtsy, I turned my head, casting my eyes to the asphalt behind the rear wheels.  

Yes, there it was—just a few feet behind the Mazda’s steaming tailpipe. A Norwood treasure, glistening with dew and radiant with oily rainbows.

A pothole.

Humble Roots

The city of Norwood, Ohio is one of a kind. Surrounded entirely by the City of Cincinnati, Norwood is an enclave, a bumpy island in the middle of the Cincinnati Sea.  In fact, it is the largest “city within a city” in the United States, one of its many claims to fame.

The second most populous city in Hamilton County, Norwood has a rich and quintessentially American history.  The city traces its roots to a tavern and a general store built on the crossroads of what is now the intersection of Montgomery Road and Carthage Avenue. Ohioans flocked to the large swaths of affordable property; soon after, the humble village grew from a residential community to an industrial core. From 1923 to 1987, Norwood was home to a longstanding General Motors plant where Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds were churned out by the calloused hands of Norwood natives, and just down the road, the U.S. Playing Card Company produced glossy decks of Bicycle and Aviator playing cards. Apart from its role in manufacturing, Norwood is the hometown of acclaimed actor and dancer George Chakiris, who won the Academy Award for his role of Bernardo in West Side Story (1961), and actress Vera-Ellen of White Christmas fame.

But despite the city’s recognition as an industrial powerhouse and birthplace of international stars, Norwood’s residents have remained loyal to their modest beginnings. To this day, the city’s roughly three-square miles are veined with streets of unassuming houses and speckled with overgrown parks that glitter with discarded bottles and used needles. Norwood is so humble, in fact, that it has chosen to remain in a state of fiscal emergency since 2016.

“Their house is not in order right now,” Ohio Auditor Dave Yost said of the city in 2017, after releasing his fiscal assessment. The lack of funds might concern other larger cities, like Cincinnati; for Norwood, however, its crippling debt is the source of its charm, its grit, and its beloved quirks—like the potholes.

Gems of the Highlands

Oh, the potholes. The result of years of neglect due to budget cuts, you can find them on any Norwood street if you look carefully. It might be a small divot at the corner of Wakefield and Sheridan, or a behemoth crater that swallows your tire into a different dimension. Members of the Norwood Strong Facebook group wax poetic about the craggy pits that add percussion to your commute and create rainwater birdbaths for the local fauna.  

“We made Pothole of the Day!” one resident exclaims, sharing a photo of a chasm near Rookwood Pavilion.  Another rewrote the lyrics to a famous Guns N’ Roses tune, penning the truly inspired lines, “Take me down to the Pothole City / Where your rims get bent and the roads are shitty.” It’s not uncommon for certain potholes to achieve landmark status. ”Watch out for the doozy at Quatman and Montgomery,” your neighbor may call out as you leave your driveway.

There’s no fighting the Norwood potholes. While the City of Cincinnati will regularly visit surrounding streets, resurfacing the crumbling pavement into submission, the Norwood Public Works Department, operating on a shoestring budget, will swing by on a random Tuesday to unceremoniously dump steaming black piles of filler over the most impressive divots. But Norwood’s potholes are as tenacious as its residents, emerging again in the winter as temperature fluctuations cause cracks in the asphalt. 

Per Norwood’s website, the city is known as “The Gem of the Highlands.” Longtime Norwood resident Lonny Elfenbein admits that the city may not be wealthy in a traditional sense—but its streets are encrusted with gems in the form of potholes. "There's not enough time in the day to report all of the potholes that are going on here, as you can see driving around our city," Elfenbein says. Some residents express frustration after replacing their third tire in as many months, but for the true Norwoodians, the potholes are a testament to the spirit of the city: Imperfect, obstinate, unforgettable.

Norwood Strong

Shortly after my own tire exploded on Grandview Place, I purchased a replacement tire (and accompanying warranty) at Tire Discounters. Later that day, I soared down Quatman Avenue, comforted by the dull rumble of pocked pavement beneath my wheels.  Turning left onto Homer Avenue, I slowed as I approached the tiny two-bedroom home where my own grandmother grew up during the Great Depression.

The house was shabby, but here it stood, over a hundred years old, with a giant pothole out front. My grandmother spent her childhood here, receiving government assistance from Roosevelt’s New Deal and enduring the abuse of her alcoholic father. The world did its best to beat her down, but she was Norwood strong: persistent, determined, and maybe a little rough around the edges. Just like the potholes, she could not be conquered.

While some might envy the smooth, inky black streets of Pleasant Ridge or Oakley, I’ve come to appreciate the ragged craters of Norwood. Our streets may not be beautiful, and they may make it impossible for your children to sleep on a car ride home, but they’re unique, textured, evidence of a rough-and-tumble reality.  In short, they’re tough—just like a real Norwoodian.