DR. KNOW

Q + A

I can’t afford any of the nice houses on Shawnee Run Road in Madeira, but I like driving past them. There’s one house, though, near the Camargo Road train tracks, that’s empty and run-down, with broken windows and structural damage. It’s a dump, surrounded by high-end homes. Surely there’s a story? —HOMELY HOME

DEAR HOMELY: The Doctor humbly confesses he is constitutionally incapable of suppressing any enticement to say Don’t call me Shirley. There, you’ve won. As for that house on Shawnee Run Road: Yes, there is a story.

Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, weekday afternoon deejay on 92.5 FM The Fox. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities at drknow@cincinnati magazine.com

You have been driving past the oldest surviving structure in Madeira, originally built as a schoolhouse (the “McCullum School”). It’s hard to imagine enough Madeirans in 1839 to fill a buggy, much less a school. Over the decades it has also been a church, an auto mechanic’s business, and often a residence. When the current owner purchased it in 2006, he intended to demolish the already-dilapidated structure and expand his rental property, but upon discovering the building’s forgotten significance (and a blackboard behind several layers of wall) he decided to try to save it. Neither he nor the Madeira Historical Society, however, has found financing for a restoration. The poor little schoolhouse hopes to one day be as stately as its neighbors; it may someday even become Blue Book–worthy.

Cincinnati is, happily, one of the last places in America where we can make local phone calls without having to include the 513 area code. My friends say that this will change soon and that every call will require 10 digits even if I’m on a landline calling next door. What? Why? When? —I’M HUNG UP

DEAR HUNG: Times change. Long ago, non-local phone calls required an “operator” who had to manually connect every conversation between cities. Today she’s so extinct that we now must explain to puzzled children who the strange woman is at the end of that Pink Floyd song.

Originally, every locality or region had one telephone area code. But when fax machines and internet modems vastly increased the need for new numbers, “layover” area codes were added to existing ones (Dayton’s 937, for example, added 326), requiring the 10-digit commitment. We of Cincinnati’s 513, however, escaped such befoulment—clearly because we are of superior stock—and so we continue to enjoy seven-digit local calling. Inexplicably, so does Northern Kentucky’s 859,