Aerial Photo of Colonial Hills, Riverlea, the Antrim Lake Area and Other Neighborhoods

This black-and-white, aerial photo shows a view of Worthington sometime in the 1950s decade. The photograph is oriented with east at the top and north to the left. 

Along the bottom or west of the photograph is land that operated as a quarry throughout the 1950s and '60s, then would become Antrim Park in 1978. It appears as a mostly featureless gray expanse, with what might be a sand or quarry pit at the north side and a single road leading to the west. Above the quarry land is the Olentangy River, which arcs left to right across the lower quadrant of the photo. 

Across the middle of the photo are (left to right) an undeveloped area that would become Kilbourne Village and, above it, Old Worthington; the Village of Riverlea; Davis Estates and Walnut Grove Cemetery; undeveloped land that would become Broadmeadows Boulevard; and Rosslyn and West Kanawha Avenue. High Street horizontally bisects the photo at approximately the center. Above that are the neighborhoods of (left to right) Old Worthington, Park Highlands, Colonial Hills, Chaseland and Sharon Heights. The Ohio State School for the Blind appears at the far right (south). 

Sinclair Road runs from left to right in the top quarter of the photo. Above that is a patchwork of fields and homes to the east. Homes throughout the photo appear as tiny white and darker dots. The photograph is darkest nearest the bottom and fades as the landscape retreats into the distance at the top. 

The photograph was taken by A.V. Shirk when he was a child, riding in his father's airplane. He writes: 

"In the 1950s, my father, Al Shirk, owned a small airplane, a two-person Ercoupe...in which he would take my mother, my brother, my sister or me flying all over central Ohio. On some of these occasions, I took my Speed Graphic press camera and took pictures. When I wanted to take a photo, I would pull down the window of the cockpit, and Dad would then turn and bank, to give me a good view. I suppose holding a large camera, with a leather bellows, that close to the slipstream would strike some people as chancy, but nothing untoward ever happened. We lived, at that time, at 525 Meadoway Park, in Colonial Hills."