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Kennedy Heights, Cincinnati — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The seed merchant Lewis Kennedy platted Kennedy Heights in 1885, a hilltop Cincinnati neighborhood whose streets carry the names of English writers.
About Kennedy Heights
Where to stay in Kennedy Heights
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Kennedy Heights is residential ground on the north-east side of Cincinnati, and Montgomery Road carries what commercial frontage it has. Hotels sit outside the neighborhood. Downtown Cincinnati lies a short drive south-west and holds the deepest supply of rooms in the city, which makes the neighborhood a place to drive out to along Montgomery Road rather than a base. You will get more out of an early start if the Kennedy Heights Arts Center or a show at the Kennedy Heights Cultural Campus is why you came.
About Kennedy Heights
What are the main landmarks in Kennedy Heights?
Kennedy Heights keeps its institutions along Montgomery Road, where the former house of Lewis Kennedy holds the Kennedy Heights Arts Center, saved from demolition in 2004. A long-vacant grocery store beside it opened in 2015 as the Kennedy Heights Cultural Campus, with a performance venue, a digital media lab, and artist studios. Kennedy Heights Park opened in 1930.
Its 1937 shelter stands over a playground and a soccer field. Daniel Drake Park spreads sixty-six acres of steep hillside along Red Bank Road opposite Onondago Avenue, ground the city bought in 1957 and named for the physician Daniel Drake.
What is the history of Kennedy Heights?
Kennedy Heights was farm country in Columbia Township until the Cincinnati Northern Railroad opened the ridge to commuters in 1882. Lewis Kennedy, a seed merchant, filed subdivision plans in 1885, cut large lots and named streets for William Davenant, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Wyatt. The Yononte Inn, a fifty-room Queen Anne resort by A. O. Elzner, stood on the ridge above the Little Miami valley until it closed in 1907 and burned two years later.
The village organized in 1896. Cincinnati annexed it on July 24, 1914. A community council formed in 1963 to answer blockbusting with deliberate integration.
Where is Kennedy Heights?
Kennedy Heights runs along a hilltop in north-east Cincinnati, sharing its border with Pleasant Ridge on the west and the separate city of Silverton on the east.
More areas in Cincinnati
Updated September 2026