A Letter on Stewardship

To those considering Mariemont —

Some companies are built around a product. Ours was built around a place. Spinnenweber Builders, Inc. has spent its working life in the Village of Mariemont, Ohio, keeping watch over the storefronts, offices, and public rooms that give this community its commercial heart. Our address is 6880 Wooster Pike, in the very building we consider the village's front door, and we would not trade it for any tower in the city.

To understand what we do, you must first understand what Mariemont is. In 1921, Mary Emery — a Cincinnati philanthropist of rare vision — engaged John Nolen, the foremost town planner of his generation, to lay out a model village on the hills above the Little Miami River. She called it a National Exemplar: a demonstration, in brick and timber and greenery, that an American community could be built with the grace of an English Garden City. Nolen gave her curving lanes and a formal town square; a company of distinguished architects gave her the Tudor Revival streetscape of half-timbered gables, leaded glass, and herringbone brick that still defines the village today. The nation eventually agreed with Mrs. Emery's ambition. In 2007, Mariemont was designated a National Historic Landmark, and in 2008 the American Planning Association named it one of America's Great Neighborhoods.

Our own story is bound to the village's centerpiece. The Mariemont Inn opened its doors in 1926 — three stories of timber and brick presiding over the town square, designed by the architects Zettel and Rapp. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and holds membership in Historic Hotels of America, and it belongs to us in the way an heirloom belongs to a family: legally, yes, but more importantly as an obligation. A hotel of this age does not survive on sentiment. It survives because someone repairs the slate, oils the timber, and polishes the brass year after year, decade after decade. That is the habit of mind we bring to every property we own.

Around the Inn we steward a small portfolio of commercial buildings — the Town Centre, the Strand, the Executive Building — each one a working piece of Nolen's plan. We choose our tenants the way the village chose its architects: carefully, and for the long term. A business that takes space with us joins a walkable village with a loyal and generous local clientele, neighbors who know one another by name, and an architectural setting that no amount of money could build new today.

We consider it a privilege to tend this place, and we take the long view in everything: our leases, our restorations, our relationships. If your firm is looking not merely for square footage but for an address with meaning, we would be glad to show you Mariemont ourselves. The kettle at the Inn is always on.

With regard,
Spinnenweber Builders, Inc.
6880 Wooster Pike · Mariemont, Ohio