The King-Lincoln District, Poindexter Village and the bathroom on the Near East Side

The Near East Side of Columbus, the neighborhood the Columbus Metropolitan Library files as King-Lincoln Bronzeville, holds two of the plainest records of how a Columbus house came to have a bathroom: what the Census Bureau measured in the housing there, and Poindexter Village, which opened in 1940 on ground the Ohio History Connection says had been cleared of a settlement called the Blackberry Patch. This page sets out what the named documents say about both, and stops where they stop. It carries the Census Bureau's own figures for the city in 1940 and for five census tracts in 1950, the National Register nominations for buildings on East Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue, and the Roosevelt Presidential Library's log of the ninety minutes the President spent in Columbus on October 12, 1940. Where two documents disagree, both are printed.

Last updated September 2026 · Figures are the Census Bureau's for 1940 and 1950 and the named archives', read September 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

Two names for one place, and how the neighborhood filled

The federal housing department's case study of the Poindexter Village redevelopment calls the neighborhood around it the Near East Side, places it between downtown Columbus and the city of Bexley, and describes an 800-acre Near East Side planning area. The Columbus Metropolitan Library files its Poindexter Village photographs under a different neighborhood name, King-Lincoln Bronzeville. Both names are in published use. No City of Columbus page could be opened to give an official boundary for either, so none is drawn here.

How it filled is stated here only as the National Register nominations state it. The 1992 nomination for the Lincoln Theatre says the Panhandle Railroad shops on the near east side, which employed African Americans, led to migration to the east side in the 1890s. It puts the African American population of Columbus at just over 9,000 in 1900 and almost 39,000 in 1940, without naming the census table they come from, so they are the nomination's figures rather than the Census Bureau's. It also quotes a November 1922 article in The Crisis describing an East Long Street business district serving a community of 25,000 African Americans in a city of 250,000.

The 2017 nomination for The Edna, an apartment building on East Long Street, carries the other name: it says a Bronzeville movement began in Columbus in 1936, and that the city elected a Bronzeville mayor in 1938 after mapping out the neighborhood, which took in East Long Street. The nomination explains that office as a symbolic one begun by the Chicago Defender.

The Lincoln Theatre, and a year two documents do not agree on

The theatre at 77 East Long Street is this neighborhood's most-used date marker, and its two accounts disagree on the year. The 1992 National Register nomination says it opened as the Ogden Theatre and Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day in 1929. The theatre's own published history says Thanksgiving Day 1928. The nomination also disagrees with itself: the period of significance field on the same form reads 1928 to 1942. Both years are printed because neither can be preferred.

Two dates are not in dispute. The nomination says the name was changed to the Lincoln Theatre in 1939, and the National Park Service's own National Register data records the listing on October 8, 1992, under reference number 92001355.

The same data carries four more listing dates nearby: the Pythian Temple and James Pythian Theater in 1983, Shiloh Baptist Church in 2004, the Theresa Building in 2015 and The Edna in 2017. A listing sits on a building rather than on the neighborhood around it.

The Blackberry Patch, in the Ohio History Connection's words

Poindexter Village was built on the former site of a settlement known as the Blackberry Patch; the federal housing department's case study and the Ohio History Connection both say so. The Ohio History Connection describes the Blackberry Patch as "a neighborhood of substandard housing and sanitation" that emerged on the Near East Side out of a lack of housing choice. That is its wording. The federal housing department's case study describes the same ground differently, as a successful settlement of the Great Migration and home to Black entrepreneurs, families, musicians and community leaders. Both are printed, each in its own words, and nothing is added to either.

The Ohio History Connection says the Blackberry Patch was razed in the 1930s. The only dated record of the clearance opened here is a construction journal digitized by the Columbus Metropolitan Library from an Ohio History Connection collection, whose first volume carries photographs dated June 16, 1939 of the demolition of structures on the site.

The Ohio History Connection also says that many people from the Blackberry Patch moved into Poindexter Village, that there was not room for all of them, and that fewer than 100 units of replacement housing were left available to former residents in the city. No survey of toilets or baths in those blocks could be opened for this page, so no figure describes the Blackberry Patch here. Every number below is the Census Bureau's, measuring the city and its census tracts.

Poindexter Village

What was built, and what the counts disagree about

The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority opened Poindexter Village in 1940. The federal housing department's case study describes it as one of the nation's first public housing projects. A stronger ranking, second in the country, appears in one of the documents relied on here, but three stronger publishers use only the weaker wording above, so only that wording is printed. The Ohio History Connection describes what was built as a low-rise apartment complex "built exclusively for Columbus' Black population".

The number of apartments is not settled: the federal housing department says 414, the Ohio History Connection says 400, the Columbus Metropolitan Library's catalog record about 400, and The Columbus Foundation 333. None states what it is counting, so all four are printed. The sources agree on the buildings: 35 of them, on 27 acres by a City of Columbus photograph caption the library holds, at 240 North Champion Avenue.

Poindexter Village was named for the Reverend James Preston Poindexter, 1819 to 1907. The Ohio History Connection says he pastored Second Baptist Church for thirty years and in 1880 became the first African American elected to Columbus City Council; Columbus Landmarks gives the same dates.

October 12, 1940

The Roosevelt Presidential Library's day-by-day log for October 12, 1940 records that the President arrived in Columbus at ten in the morning, "inspects Fort Hayes and Poindexter Housing Project", and left at half past eleven. The library builds those transcripts from the White House Usher's Log and the Stenographer's Diary.

The Ohio History Connection and The Columbus Foundation both describe that same day as the dedication of Poindexter Village by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. All three give the same date. The verb differs: the federal library's own log says he inspected it, and dedicated is the two secondary publishers' word. Both are printed, attributed.

What the sources say the apartments had

The Ohio History Connection says the units featured steam heat, gas stoves and other amenities that were not available in the Blackberry Patch. That is the whole of what the documents opened here say about the inside of the apartments.

It does not mention plumbing, and this page will not add it. The Ohio History Connection's own list stops short of it, no other document opened here names it, and no floor plan or count of bathrooms was reached either. The question is left open.

What happened to the buildings

Poindexter Village is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A query of the National Park Service's own register data returns no Ohio property of that name, and none of the 295 Franklin County, Ohio listings is Poindexter Village.

Demolition went ahead in 2013. Columbus Landmarks records an expert committee report of June 27, 2013 recommending that ten buildings be kept, and the housing authority's answer of July 19, 2013 that only two would be saved. The federal case study confirms two were preserved.

The two passed to the Ohio History Connection, in a year the sources give differently: the Ohio History Connection and the library's catalog record say 2017, and the federal housing department's case study says the housing authority sold them in 2016. A sale and a transfer of title can fall in different years, so both are printed. The Ohio History Connection says the Poindexter Village African American Museum is coming in 2028.

What the Census Bureau counted in Columbus in 1940

No document opened here gives a date for when water mains or sanitary sewers reached these streets, so none is stated; the city-wide arc is on this site's pages about the Columbus sewers, then and now and where Columbus water comes from. What can be measured here is the housing, and the measure is the census.

In the 1940 census the Census Bureau counted 85,014 Columbus city dwelling units reporting toilet facilities. Of those, 4,348, or 5.1 percent, had an outside toilet or privy, and 261 had no toilet or privy at all. Those are printed in Table 7, page 580, of the Ohio chapter of the 1940 housing volume.

Bathing was counted separately in the same table, which recorded 85,032 Columbus city dwelling units reporting bathing equipment: 71,602, or 84.2 percent, with a bathtub or shower for their exclusive use, 5,811, or 6.8 percent, sharing one, and 7,619, or 9.0 percent, with none in the structure. The 1940 definition counted equipment supplied with running water, not necessarily hot water, and available in the structure. The same table found running water in the dwelling unit for 83,583 of the 85,355 units reporting, or 97.9 percent, with 1,312 more drawing it from within fifty feet.

This site's page on how and when Ohio homes got indoor plumbing carries the Census Bureau's Ohio figures for the same census: 26.0 percent with an outside toilet or privy and 32.2 percent with no bathtub or shower anywhere in the structure, against the Columbus city figures above of 5.1 and 9.0 percent.

A second 1940 table combined repair with plumbing: 76.0 percent of the Columbus city dwelling units reporting were not in need of major repairs and had a private bath and a private flush toilet, and a further 8.1 percent had both but did need major repairs. On that item 77,574 of the city's 86,752 units reported.

The Census Bureau reported that same measure separately by color of occupants, the table's own heading. Of the 5,924 Columbus city tenant-occupied dwelling units printed under the row label "Nonwhite tenants", 3,561 had a private bath and a private flush toilet, against 32,933 of the 40,684 units under the row label "White tenants". Each total is the sum of the table's two private-bath columns, for units not needing major repairs and for units needing them; the shares work out at 60.1 and 80.9 percent, and the table prints neither. These are city-wide counts of tenant-occupied units, printed by the Census Bureau in 1943; nothing is added to them here.

What the Census Bureau counted, tract by tract, in 1950

The Census Bureau printed tract-by-tract figures for Columbus in Census Tract Statistics, Columbus, Ohio and Adjacent Area, Volume III, Chapter 13, October 1952, dividing the city into tracts numbered 1 to 61. The equivalent 1940 bulletin could not be opened, so every tract figure here is from 1950.

One definition decides how these figures may be read. The 1950 census reported condition and plumbing as one item, and its categories say so: "No private bath or dilapidated" and "No running water or dilapidated". A dwelling unit falls into one of them either for want of the fixture or for the condition of the building, and the table does not separate the two. That is not the question the 1940 census asked, and the two must never be drawn as one line.

For the city as a whole the Census Bureau put 19,458 of the 108,286 dwelling units reporting, about 18 percent, in no private bath or dilapidated, and 5,764, about 5 percent, in no running water or dilapidated. The bulletin prints no written boundary descriptions, only a map, so the boundary streets below were read off that map. A census tract is not a neighborhood; it is a line drawn for counting.

Tract 29 carries the strongest single figure on this page: 740 of its 1,437 dwelling units reporting, about 52 percent, in no private bath or dilapidated, against about 18 percent for the city. The percentages are worked from the table's own counts; the table prints no percent line.

That is not a ranking, and the same table will not support one. Tract 40, away from the Near East Side, stands above it at 1,750 of 2,573 dwelling units reporting, about 68 percent, and tract 39 at 1,503 of 3,130, about 48 percent, both south and west of downtown on the bulletin's map. The Census Bureau's own table therefore supports no ranking of the Near East Side against the rest of Columbus, and this page makes none.

Tract 28 sits below the city figure. The map bounds it by Ohio Avenue on the west and Taylor Avenue on the east, which takes in the North Champion Avenue address the library gives for Poindexter Village. That reads across two documents and is not a statement that the Census Bureau counted Poindexter Village.

The same table shows how old that housing was. Of the 1,165 dwelling units in tract 29 reporting a year built, the Census Bureau put 850 at 1919 or earlier and five at 1940 or later. The bulletin marks the year-built rows with an asterisk as based on a 20 percent sample, while the condition and plumbing rows are not.

Highways, and the buildings on the Register

The National Register nomination for The Edna says that during the 1960s more than 14,000 residents were displaced by interstate highway construction through the area, a figure it footnotes to a 1982 Lincoln Theatre economic impact study. It is printed as the nomination's figure, for the decade it gives.

The same nomination carries this page's one detailed description of a bathroom on the Near East Side. The Edna was put up in 1905, and the nomination describes each of its third-floor apartments as having a parlor at the front and a kitchen and bathroom at the rear. That is one federally documented building: evidence that an East Long Street apartment building was going up with bathrooms in 1905, and evidence of nothing around it.

What a bathroom remodel in this housing meets today

Nothing a remodel meets in housing of this age is particular to the Near East Side, and all of it sits elsewhere on this site: whether the work needs a permit in Columbus, on the bathroom remodel permit page; which code applies, on the Ohio plumbing code page; paint before 1978 and asbestos in an older house, on the lead paint and asbestos page; the water pipe by era, on the supply pipes page; and what is under the floor, on the floors and subfloors page.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, Columbus, Ohio: Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Fuels Redevelopment of Historic Public Housing, undated; read September 2026.
• Columbus Metropolitan Library, Columbus Memory digital collections, Poindexter Village, photograph by the City of Columbus Slum Clearance Commission, 1954; read September 2026.
• National Park Service, nomination held by the National Archives, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Lincoln Theatre, 77 E. Long Street, Columbus, reference 92001355, 1992; read September 2026.
• National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, The Edna, 877-881 E. Long Street, Columbus, reference 100000665, 2017; read September 2026.
• The Lincoln Theatre, Columbus, Our History, undated; read September 2026.
• National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places spatial data, nrhp_locations map service, Franklin County, Ohio records, undated; read September 2026.
• Ohio History Connection, Unvarnished project, Columbus, Ohio, Unvarnished local spotlight, undated; read September 2026.
• Columbus Metropolitan Library, Columbus Memory digital collections, Poindexter Village Construction Journal, Volume 1, page 4, with two photographs, 1939; read September 2026.
• Ohio History Connection, Poindexter Village History, undated; read September 2026.
• The Columbus Foundation, The Power of Place: Poindexter Village, undated; read September 2026.
• Columbus Landmarks, Poindexter Village Story Unfolds, undated; read September 2026.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Pare Lorentz Center, Timeline: FDR Day by Day; the entry read was the day log for October 12, 1940, undated; read September 2026.
• Ohio History Connection, Poindexter Village African American Museum, undated; read September 2026.
• U.S. Census Bureau, Sixteenth Census of the United States 1940, Housing, Volume II, General Characteristics, Part 4, Ohio chapter, Tables 6 and 7, printed pages 577 and 580, 1943; read September 2026.
• U.S. Census Bureau, 1950 Census of Population, Volume III, Census Tract Statistics, Chapter 13, Columbus, Ohio and Adjacent Area, Table 3 and the tract map, October 1952; read September 2026.

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