Walnut Hills event connects neighborhood’s history to current redevelopment

The Walnut Hills Historical Society will host a March 19 event called “Walk McMillan with the McDevitts” to recognize a typical turn-of-the-century, middle-class, Irish-American family who had success in business in Walnut Hills and to celebrate the business district’s redevelopment.
 
“Historians have spent a lot of time illuminating the lives of some of the world’s more extraordinary people while the more ordinary are passed over,” says Sue Plummer of the Historical Society. “To understand how a neighborhood like Walnut Hills operated, many different types of people need to be considered, and the McDevitts are one sliver of our history.”
 
Pat McDevitt, great-grandson of founder James McDevitt, has been working with the Historical Society to bring his extended family together to revisit the former store as well as share photos and history with the public.
 
McDevitt opened his dry goods/men’s clothing store in 1896 in Walnut Hills. Over the years, the store operated in several locations along East McMillan Avenue, with its most historically significant and last location being in the Paramount Building at Peebles Corner at Gilbert and McMillan. McDevitt’s closed in 1970 due to the advent of shopping malls and the riots of the 1960s.  
 
At the time, Peebles Corner was a major transportation hub for people who were traveling between downtown and outlying neighborhoods as well as for those moving across town. Most Cincinnatians were familiar with Peebles Corner and had either seen it or shopped there.
 
The Paramount Building stands at the center of the neighborhood and was at one point in time the site of Peebles Grocery store, a high-end retail business. It was also the Paramount Theater for three decades and is today a CVS pharmacy. Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation recently acquired the building, with plans to redevelop it into two floors of commercial space for local small businesses.
 
“As an organization, our main goal is to start collecting the oral histories that connect the neighborhood, and this event will help put us in touch with future oral history subjects,” Plummer says.
 
Limited event tickets are available for $15 here. The cost includes an annual membership to the Historical Society, a walking map of the historic McDevitt’s locations, day-of access to the store space, lunch at Fireside Pizza and happy hour prices at Brew House.