Cedar Hall has rebranded itself as a community school, in no short order because of the community outcry when the school was threated to be closed. That area has always been a close-knit neighborhood, one many older residents will recall as Blankenberg.
Blankenberg was an area just north of Evansville that probably developed when Unity Coal Mines were founded in the early- to mid-1870s. When the Belt RR and P D & E RR were built in 1881, they intersected near the area which helped foster its growth.
Meanwhile, Lamasco extended north along Fulton Ave using a numbered street convention (21st - 28th Streets). Most of these streets were later joined to the existing Blankenburg streets which explains the jogs along Fifth Ave. Blankenburg was annexed into Evansville sometime around 1888.
In fact, Cedar Hall was originally named Blankenburg School when it was built in 1892. The school was renamed Emma Roach in the 1910s and again Cedar Hall in the 1950s. The original section was torn down years ago and the oldest section (1917) was recently torn down in 2010 after the new school was built. The C.H.A.I.N. Neighborhood Association, which stands for Cedar Hall Association for Improvement of the Neighborhood, expanded on the original Blankenburg area and now encompasses a broader area.
Read more about the Blankenburg neighborhood at HistoricEvansville
Comments