Mount Healthy and Springfield Township Biohazard Cleanup

Places that share 45231

Mail for 45231 goes to Cincinnati, with Mount Healthy accepted as a place name. The ZIP covers all of Mount Healthy and a large share of unincorporated Springfield Township, including much of Finneytown, which also uses 45224 on some streets.

It also reaches part of North College Hill, a separate city of 9,663 along Hamilton Avenue that uses 45224 and 45239 as well. Oddly, the postal list also names Wyoming for 45231, though the city of Wyoming's own ZIP is 45215. All of these places are in Hamilton County and on the same line.

A note on Mount Healthy's history and today's families

Before the Civil War, many Mount Healthy homes served as stations on the Underground Railroad, and the toll house and old Hamilton Avenue storefronts still mark the town's 19th-century core. Houses that old were not built with modern ventilation, so odor from one room can settle into attic insulation or old plaster elsewhere in the home.

Settling a parent's Finneytown or Mount Healthy house from another state is workable: many providers can scope the job from photos and a phone tour, then get in with a key left with a neighbor or the funeral home. Ask for a written scope and photos of the finished rooms, and keep every receipt for the estate.

City police, township police, county coroner

Mount Healthy's 1.49 square miles are patrolled by the Mount Healthy Police Department, 14 full-time officers and a chief working from 7700 Perry Street. Outside the city line, in the unincorporated parts of Springfield Township such as Finneytown, the Springfield Township Police Department responds. That department is based at 1130 Compton Road.

Either department calls the Hamilton County Coroner when a death is sudden, unexplained or unattended. The coroner's investigators, who moved their base to Blue Ash in 2021, release the person who died and the scene. That is where public involvement ends.

From then on, the household or the building's owner chooses who cleans. An executor appointed by the Hamilton County Probate Court has that authority for an estate, and a landlord has it for any of the rental units along Hamilton Avenue or in the township's apartment complexes.

An old pike town inside a post-war township

Mount Healthy was founded in 1817 as Mount Pleasant, on the road between Cincinnati and Fort Hamilton. Residents renamed it around 1850, after a cholera epidemic that struck Cincinnati largely spared them. Its center still has older frame houses and small commercial buildings along Hamilton Avenue, and the city counted 3,390 housing units in 2020.

Springfield Township, with 35,862 residents, grew mostly after World War II. Finneytown alone saw its school-age population jump 368 percent between 1948 and 1958. Most township housing dates from that boom and the decades after it: single-family subdivisions, with apartment buildings closer to the main roads.

In an older Mount Healthy house, a crew may have to work around plaster walls, narrow stairs and a basement with original flooring. In a township ranch, the common issues are carpet over a slab or a finished lower level that takes in odor.

Hamilton Avenue, Compton Road and the Cross County

Hamilton Avenue, US 127, was busy enough by 1840 to become a toll road, and the old toll house now belongs to the Mount Healthy Historical Society. It still carries most north-south traffic through the city and North College Hill. Compton Road, where the township police station stands, is the other route most local drivers know.

In Finneytown, Winton Road and North Bend Road are the main routes; North Bend follows the old North Bend to Carthage trace. The Ronald Reagan Cross County Highway, OH 126, also passes through North College Hill. Winton Woods County Park, 2,500 acres around the county's largest lake, fills a large piece of Springfield Township, so tell the provider which side of the park the house is on.