Years ago, fresh out of school, full of energy and bent on carving out a life, my wife and I joined close friends in a hunt for property in town that we could afford to fix up and live in. We wanted something close to the center city, something with a little character, the antithesis of the suburban dream.

What can I say?  The sixties had just happened.  

We drove through nineteenth century street after nineteenth century street in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown.  To our disappointment, Mt. Adams, the obvious choice was already too wonderful and way too expensive for beginners.  As it happened, the combination of right house and right price in 1972 turned out to be in the triangle of streets at the eastern end of Over-the-Rhine, so it was there that we started tearing out the tons of linoleum, carpeting, venetian blinds, and, in one case, a basement full of tires that had accumulated in the checkered lives of our houses.  It was and is a great neighborhood.  Our children were born there and we still have friends on the old block.

But I never forgot our first look at the West End, which had its own flavor and history, an unbeatable location a walk away from Fountain Square, and a beauty that the wise Enquirer artist Caroline Williams turned to time and again in her superb line drawings.  So when, after many years and several moves, the chance came up to buy into the West End, we did it.

We are, from time to time, congratulated for what some people seem to think moving to the West End was a bold act.  There was nothing bold about it.  It was the right place at the right time in a city that is, at long last, appearing to have its own right time.