The Ambassador in Avondale: Jewish Cincinnati and Discrimination in Two Directions

The Ambassador, in the Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio, is a court apartment building in the Mediterranean Revival style. The Jewish immigrant Julius Lipsky built it in 1929, as middle-class Cincinnatians were moving out of downtown. Jewish Cincinnatians were part of that movement, and many settled in Avondale. Discrimination shaped both why they came and why they later left — but it ran in two directions: some white Christian Cincinnatians targeted Jewish residents, and some Jewish Cincinnatians discriminated against their Black neighbors.

A question to consider: what larger patterns brought you to your own neighborhood?

Migrating to Avondale

The Ambassador is a small part of Jewish Cincinnati's long story, but it shows the community's relationship with discrimination, migration and assimilation. Julius Lipsky (1897–1983) came from a family that emigrated from Russia in 1906. Like many European countries, Russia had a long history of hostility and violence toward Jews, who were barred from owning property and from certain jobs and suffered pogroms — large-scale antisemitic violence — for centuries, still common in the early 1900s. In comparatively welcoming Cincinnati, Lipsky prospered, eventually owning a grocery, a saloon and four tenement houses before opening The Ambassador in 1929.

His building marked the first chapter of large-scale Jewish movement from the city center to the suburbs. Avondale was a wealthy town just outside the center, and upper-middle-class Jews had come there as early as 1890 because they were unwelcome in other affluent neighborhoods such as Clifton and Hyde Park. There, informal "Gentlemen's Agreements" — real estate agents and landlords refusing to sell or rent to certain groups — kept Jews out, and formal tools such as restrictive covenants, clauses in a deed barring sale to certain people, did so legally.

Jewish migration to Avondale took off in the 1920s, as the Jewish middle class grew and streetcar lines expanded. The Ambassador suited the moment: cheaper than Avondale's large single-family houses, but with light, space and other amenities.

The movement of Cincinnati's Jewish community: from the central business district near the Ohio River, to the West End (about 1900–1925), to Avondale (1926–1950), to the Roselawn cluster (about 1951–1970), then dividing between Northeast and Northwest clusters from about 1971. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Changing demographics

From the 1920s until World War II, about 60% of Avondale's residents were Jewish, and synagogues, kosher butchers and traditional bakeries lined its streets. After the war, Jewish residents began to leave. Some young families moved farther out in search of newer houses; others left as more Black neighbors moved in.

"White flight" is a loaded term here. White Christian society often discriminated against Jews, especially in housing, through informal agreements, contracts and hateful language — one Cincinnati apartment building displayed a sign reading "No Jews or Dogs Allowed." Black and Jewish Cincinnatians faced many of the same barriers, including Gentlemen's Agreements and restrictive covenants. But the director of Cincinnati's Jewish Community Council saw a crucial difference: Jews could live in public housing and could usually find a home in any part of the city, while Black Cincinnatians could not, because realtors kept them out of neighborhoods without a Black population.

Avondale was one of the few suburbs open to Black Cincinnatians; Black families had lived there as early as 1848. In the 1930s, the city pushed Black residents out of their homes in the West End, and some moved into Jewish parts of Avondale — helping to set off Jewish flight from the neighborhood.

The Jewish Community Council tried to stem it. It held an event urging Jewish residents to stay as Black neighbors arrived and distributed material on integration, including a poster titled "Neighbor, where are you running to?", arguing that "all men are entitled to decent homes" and "nobody wants to be forced into a ghetto." Some in the community, recognizing a shared experience of exclusion, challenged their own prejudice. Even so, many of Avondale's Jewish residents had left by 1970.

Discrimination and assimilation

Leaving Avondale, Jewish Cincinnatians built a new community in Roselawn, where almost two-thirds of the city's Jewish population lived by 1970. Over time they moved farther out again, likely because of a perceived "decline" in Roselawn's schools as they became increasingly Black.

Assimilation — cultural practices changing to fit a dominant culture — made that dispersal possible. As fewer Jews kept kosher, for example, there was less need for neighborhood kosher butchers, and Jews were more welcome in non-Jewish neighborhoods as they assimilated. Jewish institutions followed to suburbs such as Amberley Village, but many Jewish residents now live farther out still, in neighborhoods without Jewish institutions, and drive to take part in religious life.

One resident's view

Rosalyn (Roz) Friedman grew up in Avondale. In her high school years her family moved to a street that is half in Roselawn and half in Edgemont, in Springfield Township, where she has lived ever since — moving was common; staying was not. In a 2024 interview with the article's author, she recalled her grandparents fleeing pogroms and revolutions, a childhood street where every family was Jewish, and a wider world opening up at a citywide high school. She described watching neighbors leave Avondale and later Roselawn, and said that while some needed more space, she believed many moved out of fear of Black neighbors. She remembered a real estate agent who worked to sell homes to Black families when others would not — whom she at first blamed for the white flight, before coming to see her as a genuine champion of open housing who became the first president of Housing Opportunities Made Equal and won a class action against racial steering. Asked over the years by acquaintances whether she wasn't afraid to stay, she said she would live there until the day she died.

Why The Ambassador matters

Jews like Lipsky came to the United States from places of severe discrimination, and within the United States, exclusion by white Christian neighborhoods shaped where Jewish families could live. But the story is not only one of being discriminated against: as they assimilated, some Jewish Cincinnatians discriminated against others, moving away from neighborhoods as they became Black. The Ambassador is a fine example of a Mediterranean Revival court apartment building — and a reminder that American Jews could both experience and take part in discrimination. History has room for both truths.

Sources

• Maya Goldenberg, National Council for Preservation Education intern, Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education: "The Ambassador in Avondale, Ohio: Jewish Discrimination in Two Directions," National Park Service, citing records of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Cincinnati (American Jewish Archives), Varady and others (1981) and the National Register nomination for The Ambassador. Rosalyn Friedman's interview is paraphrased and summarized; where the recorded transcript differs from the article about where and exactly when she moved, the article's account is followed.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.