A Cincinnati bird preserve celebrates centennial with rescued, restored arch

A hundred years ago, Cincinnati’s prominent Rawson family donated part of their 50-acre estate to the city of Cincinnati.

Since then, the 10.7-acre parcel at Middleton and McAlpin avenues has been known as the Rawson Woods Bird Preserve, maintained in its primitive state and closed to the public.

Little-known outside the Clifton neighborhood, the bird sanctuary became even harder to find when its arched sign went missing three years ago.

That changes Saturday, when the neighbor who rescued and then restored the lost arch helps reinstall it.

“It was in really tough aesthetic shape,” said Stephen Mergner, who discovered the arch had slid down a hillside on McAlpin, where he and his family have lived for 23 years.

The paint on the 600-pound structure was peeling, rust was visible and decorative brass spheres were dark with oxidation.

Structurally, however, the arch was undamaged, Mergner said. “It was built to last 500 years.”

Saved from the scrapyard

The arch had become hard to see amid trees and brush on McAlpin. Rains had eroded the soil at its base.

Once felled, Mergner and a neighbor retrieved it, loaded it onto a garden cart and stored it under the neighbor’s deck. Eventually, Mergner began restoring it, first in his yard and later at the University of Cincinnati, where he works as senior instrumentation specialist in the Department of Biological Sciences.

As he stripped and sanded, he posted updates on a Clifton Facebook page.

That’s when Jim Goetz, president of the Cincinnati Park Board of Commissioners, learned what happened to the Rawson Woods arch.

A Clifton resident, Goetz had noticed “the sign was gone.”

“I assumed it ended up in a scrapyard someplace.”

When Facebook told him otherwise, he contacted Mergner and asked “What do you need?”

Turns out Mergner needed just a gallon of black paint – a thick-as-honey gloss used to paint boats – for the 10-by-10 foot steel arch and posts. He bought a quart of gold, too, to repaint the cast iron lettering.

He finished the job over the Thanksgiving holiday, with time left to add four bird silhouettes to the arch and two bird houses to the grounds.

“It was a very sizable amount of work,” Mergner said, estimating he gave away about 100 hours of his time.

Birds 'need places to stop'

Gia Giammarinaro appreciates Mergner’s efforts to bring new attention to Rawson Woods. As a naturalist with Cincinnati Parks, “it’s all about the habitat” for her.

Bird preserves provide food, water, shelter and space for birds, especially migrating species. “They need places to stop,” Giammarinaro said. That’s especially true in the densely populated Clifton area. “There’s not a whole lot of green space there.”

Cincinnati Parks manages about 20 preserves, she said, most open to the public. With a four-foot fence around its perimeter, Rawson Woods is among the few not open, except to academics and other researchers with permits to enter.

The Rawson family donated the land on that condition – “in order to preserve some of the woodland in Clifton in its primitive state,” according to the parks’ website.

Rawsons tied to pork, politics

Joseph Rawson Jr., his wife Lucie Russell Rawson and eventually their seven children lived at 3767 Clifton Ave., beginning in 1877. Their Italianate mansion, with seven bedrooms, remained in the family until 1982 and has had private owners since 2013.

Just two doors away, nephew Edward Rawson lived at 3737 Clifton Ave., with sister Marion and Dorothy. At her death, Marion Rawson willed the house to UC, where she’d been an archaeologist in the Classics Department. The Cincinnati Board of Education has owned it since 2017, currently using it as event space.

The Rawsons descended from Edward Rawson (1615-1693), an Englishman who became the first secretary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Generations later, in 1929, Joseph Rawson Sr., was running a pork packing plant called Joseph Rawson & Sons. His namesake graduated from Woodward High School, then Harvard University, and served as vice president of the First National Bank of Cincinnati, in addition to working with his father and two brothers in the pork business.

Another family member, Rhoda Rawson, married into the Taft family. Her husband, Aaron Taft, was the great-grandfather of William Howard Taft, the Cincinnati native who became the 27^th president of the United States.

In 1923, for unknown reasons, the local Rawsons turned over just shy of 11 acres of their Clifton land to the city to create Rawson Woods Bird Preserve. They also sold off land on the north edge of the preserve, with Rawson Woods Lane and Rawson Woods Circle now populated by spacious homes. Among them is one designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright for one-time UC Classics professors Cedric Boulter and Patricia Neils.

Local bird census Dec. 18 & 26

On Saturday, Mergner, Goetz, park officials and neighbors will unveil the refurbished Rawson Woods Arch at 10 a.m. Its new home is the corner of McAlpin and Middleton, behind a park bench and freshly mulched garden bed.

Goetz noted that many Cincinnati parks enjoy rich histories. “Rawson Woods is a great example of this.”

Local parks allow birds “a chance to flourish,” naturalist Giammarinaro added.

People too. “Having parks are integral so that nature can flourish and people can have an appreciation for nature.”

Fans of birds and parks can combine those interests at the annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count, with events Dec. 18 and Dec. 26.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: what is rawson woods bird preserve?