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Hartwell, Cincinnati — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Cincinnati stops at Hartwell, the city's northernmost neighborhood, where an 1868 plat broke from the grid into curves off Vine Street.
About Hartwell
Where to stay in Hartwell
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Hartwell holds houses, churches, and a school, and no hotel of its own. Interstate 75 walls the eastern edge and the Ronald Reagan Cross County Highway crosses the southern end, so a room sits a short drive off either. Downtown Cincinnati keeps the deepest supply. Northward instead, Vine Street becomes the Springfield Pike and carries on to Wyoming and Glendale, older villages of weatherboard and Victorian houses.
Take that northern option if what brings you up here is the Mill Creek valley towns, or the Hamilton County Fairgrounds just south in Carthage.
About Hartwell
What are the main landmarks in Hartwell?
Hartwell's chief landmark is its own street plan, an 1868 survey that refused the rectangle and left curves such as Washington Circle. Cincinnati kept its City Infirmary here. The buildings sat on a 160-acre farm off the Carthage road.
Holy Trinity was made an Episcopal parish in 1888, and streetcars set riders down for it at Sheehan Avenue. Hartwell Presbyterian Church dedicated its building on December 18, 1887. The Victorian houses people drive north to see, the Louis Sawyer House among them, stand beyond the city line in Wyoming's Village Historic District.
What is the history of Hartwell?
Hartwell was platted in 1868 by the Hamilton County House Building Association, which bought the Gares farm of 130 acres and forty more from Judge Jonathan Cilley. Daniel DeCamp was its president. De Camp Avenue still runs off Vine Street.
The name came from John W. Hartwell, a vice-president of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad. The village incorporated in 1876 and Cincinnati annexed it in 1912. Robert N. Gorman was born here in 1896, went to the Hartwell School, and reached the Ohio Supreme Court in 1937.
Where is Hartwell?
Hartwell ends the city at Compton Road, with Wyoming over the line north, Carthage below it, and Interstate 75 walling the eastern edge.
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Updated September 2026