United States · Ohio · Cincinnati
Columbia-Tusculum, Cincinnati — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Painted Victorian fronts climb Tusculum Avenue in Columbia-Tusculum, the oldest neighborhood in Cincinnati, settled above the Ohio River in 1788.
About Columbia-Tusculum
Where to stay in Columbia-Tusculum
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Columbia-Tusculum reads as a residential hillside, so a stay here means a house on a slope rather than a hotel strip. Tusculum Avenue is the address to aim for: the Victorian rows and the entrance to Alms Park both stand on it. The hill is small.
Delta Avenue drops west to Columbia Parkway, the fast road into central Cincinnati, while Grandin Road holds the quiet upper edge toward Mount Lookout and Linwood Avenue closes the east. If you want an evening walk under old porches and a short run into town, this is the slope for it.
About Columbia-Tusculum
What are the main landmarks in Columbia-Tusculum?
Columbia-Tusculum keeps nearly all of its listed buildings on one street. Tusculum Avenue carries the Stephen Decker Rowhouse of 1889, the only rowhouse of its type in Cincinnati, the Norwell Residence of 1890, and the Neoclassical August Bepler House further up the slope. Alms Park closes the top of the climb with an Italian Renaissance pavilion of 1929 and a bronze Stephen Foster turned south toward Kentucky.
Two older relics sit outside the boundary. Spencer Township Hall stands on Eastern Avenue in the East End, and Pioneer Memorial Cemetery holds the settlers' graves on a rise above Lunken Airport in Linwood.
What is the history of Columbia-Tusculum?
Columbia-Tusculum began as two settlements. Benjamin Stites landed 26 settlers from New Jersey below the mouth of the Little Miami River in November 1788, a month before Losantiville was laid out as the future Cincinnati, and the congregation they organized in 1790 was the first Protestant one in the Northwest Territory. Flooding pushed the village uphill to the foot of Tusculum Hill in 1815.
Nicholas Longworth's Catawba vineyards then held the slope until his estate was platted in 1869 and sold to builders. Cincinnati annexed Columbia in the early 1870s and Tusculum in 1875.
Where is Columbia-Tusculum?
Columbia-Tusculum holds the slope between Columbia Parkway below and Grandin Road above, with Delta Avenue closing the west and Linwood Avenue the east.
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Updated September 2026