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College Hill, Cincinnati — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Hamilton Avenue runs the length of College Hill, a hilltop neighborhood in northwestern Cincinnati named for two colleges that once stood here.
About College Hill
Where to stay in College Hill
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
College Hill has houses rather than hotels, so the bed goes elsewhere and the visit becomes a drive. Its streets run to frame and brick homes on deep lots, with a short commercial stretch where Hamilton Avenue crosses West North Bend Road. Book in Downtown Cincinnati or Over-the-Rhine, where the city keeps its rooms, then come north on Hamilton Avenue through Northside.
You come for a reason. Family, an appointment, or the old village core around College Hill Town Hall.
About College Hill
What are the main landmarks in College Hill?
College Hill Town Hall stands on Larch Avenue, brick on a stone foundation, with a large archway in the facade and a four-story tower holding the belfry. Samuel Hannaford designed it, and it went up in 1886. The village owned no other building.
Laurel Court, on Belmont Avenue, is grander: James Gamble Rogers modeled it on the Grand Trianon at Versailles for the paper manufacturer who moved in during 1907. The Old College Hill Post Office on Pasadena Avenue began in 1840 as a single-story frame building. On Aster Place, the Samuel and Sally Wilson House, Greek Revival and finished in 1849, hid people escaping slavery in its cellar.
What is the history of College Hill?
College Hill was called Pleasant Hill first, after the farmland William Cary bought north of Cincinnati in 1813, when the ground belonged to Mill Creek Township. His son Freeman opened a boys' academy on part of it in 1833. That school became Farmer's College in 1846, Belmont College in 1885, and the core of the Ohio Military Institute in 1890.
The Ohio Female College ran from 1852 until 1873, and its grounds were sold for the Cincinnati Sanitarium. Two colleges, one new name. A railroad arrived in 1851 and horsecars in the 1860s, the village incorporated in 1866, and Cincinnati annexed it in 1911, 1915, and 1923.
Where is College Hill?
College Hill holds high ground in northwestern Cincinnati, with North College Hill over the city line north and West North Bend Road running east to Springfield Township.
More areas in Cincinnati
Updated September 2026