Rachel Wells News

Robert Bonner Bowler: A “Baron of Clifton”

By Jan Checco

This article was first published in the Summer 2022 Clifton Chronicle.

Robert Bonner Bowler

Robert Bowler (1803-1864) came to Cincinnati from Providence, Rhode Island in 1820. In 1842, he married Susan Pendleton, granddaughter of the politically powerful Judge Nathaniel Pendleton, and made his riches in dry goods and railroading. His 1845 two-story brick and stucco house – Mount Storm – featured two terraces and a porch with views of the Kentucky hills sweeping up the Mill Creek. A tower was added later.

Bowler’s landscape included shade trees from around the world and 17 greenhouses, making it like none other in the Midwest. A lovingly-tended collection of rare roses, 90 varieties of camellia, 60 begonia varieties, a collection of bananas and palm trees were splendidly complemented by seven Australian black swans gliding on small lakes. A publication of the period noted, “The entire residence was most lavishly decorated with rare plants, bright flowers and buds, exotics evergreen and smilax, the perfume of which filled the air.”

Sadly, Bowler enjoyed this paradise for only 19 years. He was struck and killed in 1864 by an urban stagecoach. His wife, their three children and grandchildren stayed on with the help of Irish laborer James Cluxton, who worked for 53 years to care for the property and helped to rear the children born at Mount Storm.  

The city of Cincinnati purchased Mount Storm and its 70 acres from the Bowler family in 1912 with a promise to make it a park. The former grand home was demolished when a battle to save it was lost in 1917.

Robert Bonner Bowler had this two-story brick and stucco house built in 1845. Named “Mount Storm,” the home was surrounded by a 70-acre landscape featuring rare roses, palm trees and more. The home was demolished in 1917 and the land became Mt. Storm Park.
Map Showing Closure
Kevin Marsh Announcements

Temporary Closure of Burnet Woods Drive

The Cincinnati Parks Department has announced a temporary closure of Burnet Woods Drive. It will be effective June 29, 2020. Below is their communication on it, and their plans for feedback after a 90 day period. We will share the Cincinnati Parks Department survey with the Clifton community when it come out so everyone has adequate time to share feedback. Please note that Brookline Drive is and has been closed to through traffic for many years.

Kevin Marsh Announcements

Cincinnati Parks 2019 ReLeaf Program

The Urban Forestry division of the City is accepting applications for this year’s ReLeaf program.  The annual ReLeaf program began in 1988 with a mission to provide trees for homeowners who either have lawns that are too narrow to be planted by Urban Forestry or for those with conflicting utility service structures. The program has expanded to include schools, community areas, and other public green spaces. Eligible participants are provided a tree to plant in their front yard, providing the beauty and energy-saving benefits street trees bring.

Why are street trees important?

The benefits of street trees are vast, the most obvious being the aesthetic value of a tree-lined street or parkway. However, the value of a healthy urban forest extends beyond beauty and can include one or more of the following:

  • reduction in heating/cooling costs through creation of shade or windbreak
  • aid in abatement of storm water
  • reduction of erosion through abatement of stormwater runoff
  • increase in air quality
  • decrease in the effects of noise and visual pollution through buffering and screening

Interested in participating for 2019? Click here and apply before the Oct 4, 2019 deadline.

Program considerations

There is a limited supply. Applications are a first-come, first-serve basis.
A higher priority is given to planting trees on private property along streets the Cincinnati Park Board cannot plant due to narrow right-of-ways. Other priority areas include community focal points such as entranceways, street triangles, areas near street intersections, and public frontages along major streets. Approved applicants are responsible for pickup and planting.

Pickup will occur October 19, 2019 at 3215 Reading Road. Forestry staff will inspect each planting location before approving tree requests and will inspect locations after planting to ensure guidelines are followed. If you have additional questions, please contact Urban Forestry at 861-9070.

Kevin Marsh Announcements

Mount Storm Park Master Plan Funding

Dear Cliftonite:

Mount Storm Park is a treasure many of us in the neighborhood and across the region have enjoyed for decades. Over the last year, a group of us have been working on a project to develop a Master Plan to revitalize the park by restoring Adolph Strauch’s historic design.

Many will recall that Strauch was the Austrian landscape architect invited to Cincinnati by Robert Bowler (whose large estate is now Mount Storm Park) in 1850. Bowler admired Strauch’s landscape designs at the Royal Botanical Gardens in London and was taken by their pastoral feel, the placement of trees on the land that surprises and awes visitors. In addition to being the Cincinnati Parks’ first Superintendent and designer of Mount Storm and other estates along Lafayette Avenue, Strauch famously went on to design Spring Grove Cemetery.

The Cincinnati Parks Foundation, the Clifton Community Fund (the Parks’ Mt. Storm Advisory Council), and several generous individuals have donated to a restricted fund within the Foundation to develop a Master Plan for Mt. Storm that provides for moving, planting, and maintaining new trees in the mode of Strauch’s aesthetic; removing the dead trees and trimming existing ones; and cleaning up the invasive species crowding some of the Park area. The Plan for selection and location of plantings is being developed by the landscape architectural firm, Human Nature, and will be completed in January.

The Parks will contribute staff support and has already begun construction to reduce the size of the parking lot (without reducing parking spaces) to increase greenspace. Our goal is to have at least 2/3 of the planting completed before the end of 2019, including a redesign of the shelter house garden areas. Parks have estimated the budget for the project at approximately $70,000. $50,000 of that has been raised, and an ongoing fundraising campaign is being managed by the Foundation.

Contributions to this exciting project will honor and celebrate the extraordinary and often overlooked contribution nature, and trees in particular, make to our physical and mental health and to the wildlife that is supported by a well-designed greenspace. We see this as a legacy investment in our Parks, our children and grandchildren, and the planet; it is one sure thing we can do today for a better future for us
all.

All gifts are 100% tax-deductible, and gifts of any amount are appreciated. Larger donations of $1,000 or more will be honored with name recognition on a plaque within Mount Storm Park. Please click here to make a donation in support of Mt. Storm.

Sincerely,
Mary Jo Vesper & Bob Rack
Clifton Community Fund

Kevin Marsh Announcements, Uncategorized

Entering Year 4 of the Clifton Deer Project

From the CliftonDeer.org Team:

With the sterilization of eight more does last Fall, year 3 of field operations brought the total number of treated deer to 59, or 91% of our total adult female deer population.  Based on field camera counts, the herd within our study area has shrunk by 19% since we started.  This rate of reduction is steady and contrasts sharply with the 30% increase reported by the Parks in the year before we started.  A more detailed Year 3 Field Operations Report can be found on our website here.

Our goal this Fall is to reach 95% by capturing the most elusive does over a series of weekend operations.  In addition to the wile ones who browse happily at our bait sites until just before the darter arrives (never question the intelligence of these critters), we will also be seeking out the “borderland deer” whose territory overlaps with but extends beyond the study area. This should result in more of the benefits of the deer program reaching the streets within the study area closest to Clifton and Ludlow Avenues.

We are happy to report the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has renewed our research permit to continue operations for another two years.  While the numbers from this study, and others around the country, are already showing clear indications sterilization can effectively reduce deer populations in open urban settings, another two years of data will be important to reaching any firm conclusions that might support requests to States for permission to use fertility control as an ongoing urban deer population management tool.

One component of the study, and a critical requirement for the long term viability of sterilization as a management alternative, is making it cost effective.  Obviously, this means comparing sterilization’s effectiveness in reducing deer overabundance to other methods, but it also means finding economically viable ways for communities to implement programs like this one.  To that end, Clifton Deer is in it’s second year of recruiting and training local volunteer veterinary surgeons and a darter-capture specialist.  Transitioning from reliance on expensive out-of-town experts to assumption of these duties by local professionals and volunteers could greatly improve the cost side of the cost effectiveness calculation.

Finally, we are proud to report that as one of the few, and maybe the only citizen initiated and managed fertility control program in the country, CliftonDeer.org was invited by the international Botstiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control to present at a national conference on deer fertility control in New York on May 2nd.  The success of the Clifton project has drawn the attention of experts from around the country.  A video of that conference should soon be available on the Botstiber website at https://www.wildlifefertilitycontrol.org/.

As always, we are grateful for the support of our Clifton neighbors who donate and volunteer their yards and time to make this project possible.  Fundraising for the Fall ’18 operations has begun and your help is needed.  Please consider a tax deductible donation through one of the methods explained on our website at http://cliftondeer.org/donations/.

Have you met Doe #32? Still looking healthy and happy at almost 9 years of age, this gentle doe makes her home in the woods and yards around Mt. Storm Park and is often seen with her BFF, 5 year old Doe #7. Both were sterilized during our December 2015 field operations. (Photo Credit: Sally Skillman)

Bob Rack, co-founder of CliftonDeer.org, giving Clifton international exposure at the Botstiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control conference in NYC earlier this month.

 

The CliftonDeer.org Team