Stamm, Charles H., 1901-1983

Charles H. Stamm (1901-1983) was born in Dayton, Ohio but his family moved to the Cincinnati basin area when he was only six months old. His father died while Stamm was still an infant. He attended Guilford School in downtown Cincinnati and Woodward High School. He then worked during the day as a surveyor and attended night classes at the University of Cincinnati.

In the early 1920s, Stamm worked for the City of Cincinnati's Department of Sewerage. He then moved to Florida where he worked with D.W. Caven, a subdivision engineer, the Sarasota County Engineering Department, and then the Southern Construction Engineering Company. In 1926, he returned to Cincinnati where he worked for Cincinnati Rapid Transit Commission during the construction of Central Parkway. During the late 1920s, Stamm worked for the Columbia Engineering and Management Corporation completing surveys for long distance electric lines. He was then an engineer for the Brynes-Conway Company when that firm built the section of the Millcreek Expressway (I-75) through Lockland and Carthage.

From 1936 through 1937, Stamm led a staff of sixty engineers during the construction of the Village of Greenhills, which was a federal greenbelt city project located north of Cincinnati. During the final years of World War II and until 1946, Stamm was Chief Engineer of the War Emergency Pipelines, which built twelve hundred miles of thirty inch oil lines from Texas to Philadelphia and New York. In 1946, Stamm became Executive Secretary of the Mayor's Housing Committee. Following the passage of the Federal Housing Act of 1949, he was appointed to the position of Assistant to the City Manager in charge of Urban Redevelopment.

In 1956, Stamm became the first director of the new Department of Urban Renewal of the City of Cincinnati. In this position, he was responsible for the administration of the city's long-range Urban Renewal Program. Some of these programs included Queensgate I and II, Central Business District and Central Riverfront, Avondale I - Corryville, Kenyon Barr I, Ohio R-5, Laurel Homes and Richmond Homes. Upon his retirement in 1965, Stamm became a professor of Community Planning at the University of Cincinnati.

Stamm was a member of the Executive Committee of the Redevelopment Section of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. He also served two terms as President of the Ohio Planning Conference and was the co-winner of the 1964 Henry A. Bettman Memorial Fund Award. He also authored numerous articles on Urban Renewal.

From the guide to the Charles H. Stamm papers, 1923-1974, (University of Cincinnati, Archives and Rare Books Library)