HARVEY KANIS

Harvey Kanis was born on March 25, 1888 in Kanawaha County, West Virginia. He was the second born child of John Kanis II and Emma Wolf Kanis. Harvey was the younger brother of Clarence Kanis, who was also born in West Virginia just two years earlier. At the time, John Kanis II was apprenticing in the grocery trade in the city of Charleston. 

In late 1899, John Kanis II and his wife Emma returned from John’s apprenticeship in West Virginia to their hometown of Cincinnati Ohio with Harvey and Clarence in tow. Harvey was just 11 years old at the time. There they bought the property at 2410-12 Harris Ave in Norwood. On that property stood a commercial building and a house. John Kanis II opened his own grocery business in the building and moved his family into the house next door.

Sometime after Harvey finished his schooling in Cincinnati, he met a young woman named Alma Ritterhoff. The two dated for a period and were eventually married. At first, Harvey and Alma lived above a jewelry store just off Montgomery Pike in Norwood. Jerry and Tom Kanis remember visiting their Uncle Harvey and Aunt Alma there. Harvey and Alma never had children. 

In 1928, upon the death of John Kanis II, the property on Harris Ave. was divided. Harvey inherited the old John Kanis Store building at 2410 Harris Ave. Harvey and Alma rented out the lower floor and lived in the apartment above. Harvey’s brother, Clarence, inherited the house on the adjacent property at 2412 Harris Ave. This is where both the Clarence Kanis Family and then the Earl Kanis Family would live for the next 28 years.

Harvey was an attractive man. He was a man of stature, had a chiseled jaw and sported a mustache. Harvey was always very well dressed. He worked for the Socony Oil Company (Standard Oil Company of New York, now known as Mobil Oil) and traveled quite a bit. Aunt Alma was a woman of slight build, she had red hair that was always put up and was seldom seen without her housecoat.

While Harvey was away, his wife Alma was known to have “men friends” up to the apartment. Members of the family became aware of this over time but never spoke of it. Years later, Mary Frances Kanis I strongly expressed her disappointment and disapproval of Aunt Alma's promiscuous ways.

The apartment above the store was very sparse as the Kanis children recall. In his retirement years, Harvey built a gravel surfaced “beer garden” behind the store building. He had strung lines of incandescent bulbs on the perimeter to "draw out" the bugs. Tom Kanis recalls Harvey and Aunt Alma sitting outside in the summertime and drinking until well after the Kanis children’s bedtime. Jerry Kanis also recalls his Uncle Harvey making all kinds of whirligigs from beer and soda cans and decorating the beer garden with them. Harvey also grew sunflowers along the railroad spur which ran between his property and the building.

Over the years, the building at 2410 Harris Ave. lived many lives. First as John Kanis II’s grocery store, then as Clarence Kanis’s cigar store. Also, for a time, it was rented out as a butcher shop, an ice cream parlor and finally Ryan’s Café. The store also stood empty for periods of time during the depression and post World War II years of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. 

Harvey Kanis died in 1954. In 1956, as Norwood was becoming more and more industrialized, the Kanis family sold the properties and moved to the burgeoning eastern suburbs of Cincinnati. Just a few years later, in the early 1960’s, both buildings were razed to make way for the Norwood Lateral Expressway.