Mariemont was to be a model “English garden” community and a self-sufficient town where good planning would prevent common big-city problems.  “Cincinnati, like other areas, had grown so fast that slums had grown up,” said Fred Rutherford, Archive Chairman for the Mariemont Preservation Foundation.  Mary Emery was concerned.  She said, “Let’s go out into the country and build something where people of modest means’ can live.”  “Because of good zoning and planning, it is still intacted,” Mr. Rutherford comments.  Today Mariemont thrives in its eye-catching, harmonious, and mostly English-Tutor style architecture.  Tree-canopied streets with wide, grassy medians set Mariemont apart from other areas around Cincinnati.  The village has a reputation of being charming and quaint with its scattering of mini-parks.  Mariemont also prides itself on having the nation’s only elected town crier, who dresses in colonial costume to call villagers to the non-partisan town meetings. 

Acquisition of the property located about ten miles east of downtown Cincinnati and on a plateau above the Little Miami River began in 1913. The first spadeful of Earth for Mariemont was turned by Mrs. Emery on April 23, 1923.  Twenty-five of the country’s leading architects were employed to work with the plan developed by John Nolen, the eminent town-planner hired by the Mariemont Company to design and build this community on the 420 acres of gently rolling farm land anciently inhabited by Indians.  The first building was completed in 1924-25.  There is only one church in Mariemont, per Mrs. Emery’s design, the interdenominational Mariemont Community Church.