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History
The Hillsboro-West End neighborhood is a proactive neighborhood, building on a rich tradition of neighborly concern and neighborhood pride.
The people who make up our neighborhood come from many places and many backgrounds to make this their home place. They share a common link with those who have called Hillsboro-West End home for many years. And they share a common understanding: to preserve this neighborhood, neighbors must be ready to help each other and work with each other to solve common problems.
When the neighborhood faced its most serious challenge -- the challenge of negative perceptions -- residents formed The Hillsboro-West End Neighborhood Association to dispel those perceptions.
That was in 1975. Hillsboro-West End was faced with uncertainty as those who underwrite mortgages and loans assumed that the age of the housing stock, the threat of a major thoroughfare bisecting the neighborhood, the lack of support for public schools, and the immigration to suburbia made investments here less than ideal.
But with time, energy, and concern, neighbors worked to see that the plans for 1-440 were modified to protect the neighborhood; that codes violations were corrected; that crime watches were organized; and that our schools received parental involvement. In 1976 we pulled off our work gloves long enough to celebrate the first neighborhood association picnic and parade during the Fourth of July bicentennial celebration. Pride had been restored, and public leaders took note of the new spirit. National mortgage lenders began reinvesting in the neighborhood.
The Hillsboro-West End Neighborhood Association has increased the involvement of residents in projects that have further enriched this area. Fannie Mae Dees Park was pulled off the drawing board, where it had set since urban renewal days, and has become a reality. Streets and intersections have been improved and landscaped, as have the fire hall grounds at Twenty-first and Ashwood. Eakin School has become so popular that it has expanded onto the former Cavert School building. Hillsboro-West End Neighbors, the neighborhood newsletter, has improved in quality, format, and content. Neighborhood crime prevention efforts have expanded. Neighborhood clean-up projects have become an annual event during Neighborhood Pride Month--a month that is opened by a neighborhood parade like no other!
Hillsboro-West End is a special place, not because it has solved all the stresses of urban living, but because the people who call it home know they can work together to resolve almost any problem.
