Old home of Ohio archaeologist to be torn down

CINCINNATI (AP) — A neighborhood group has given up efforts to save a small Cincinnati house that once served as the home base for a major archaeological operation.

The vacant one-story house where Dr. Charles Metz once lived and had his office has been condemned. The community council in the east-side Madisonville neighborhood had hoped to stave off this week’s scheduled demolition but has now told the city it doesn’t have the money to repair and preserve the home.

Metz was a physician and amateur archaeologist who in 1879 discovered the site of a village where Native Americans had lived from the 15th through the 17th centuries. Thousands of artifacts were unearthed during years of digging by Metz and others at the site in what is now the Cincinnati suburb of Mariemont.