This street was created in 1918 as part of the Industrial Addition to the City of Seattle. Named for the Buckeye State, it appears to have been so named simply for its proximity to Colorado Avenue S and Utah Avenue S, as it was a state whose name had not yet been applied to a street. (N.H. Latimer and John H. Powell of the Wauconda Investment Company might have chosen Illinois, instead, both having been born there and having named their company after an Illinois town ― but the name had already been assigned in the same 1895 plat of the Seattle Tide Lands that created Colorado and Utah Avenues.)
Ohio Avenue S begins at Diagonal Avenue S and goes nearly ½ a mile south to E Marginal Way S and S Dawson Street. It resumes ⅛ of a mile south of there at E Marginal Way S and S Brandon Street and goes a further ⅓ of a mile south to S Fidalgo Street.
Born and raised in Seattle, Benjamin Donguk Lukoff had his interest in local history kindled at the age of six, when his father bought him settler granddaughter Sophie Frye Bass’s Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle at the gift shop of the Museum of History and Industry. He studied English, Russian, and linguistics at the University of Washington, and went on to earn his master’s in English linguistics from University College London. His book of rephotography, Seattle Then and Now, was published in 2010. An updated version came out in 2015.
