A reference on Cincinnati, Ohio — its buildings, trades and record, in order of date.
The largest surviving nineteenth-century Italianate district in the United States, built across four decades by a German-speaking population that outnumbered every other group in the basin. The bracket profiles came from catalogues and were repeated house to house — which is why the whole district reads as one building from the far end of the street.
Photo: Mateo Arbelaez / Pexels
In order of date
Porkopolis. The packing houses along the Miami and Erie Canal were slaughtering more hogs than anywhere on earth, and the by-products started two companies — Procter & Gamble in 1837, from candle tallow and soap.
John A. Roebling’s suspension bridge opened with a main span of 1,057 feet, the longest in the world that day. He began Brooklyn the following year.
Music Hall opened on Elm Street to Samuel Hannaford’s design, paid for by subscription for the May Festival, which had run since 1873.
Union Terminal opened in March, four years into the Depression, with a half-dome 106 feet high and fourteen Winold Reiss mosaics of local industry in the concourse.
Syd Nathan started King Records at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Evanston, pressing country and R&B in the same building with an integrated staff. James Brown recorded there from 1956.
The Landing
Ohio's oldest continuously operating public market opened in 1852 on land donated by James Findlay; this piece covers the market's physical layout, its Over-the-Rhine context and the vendors who have…
Porkopolis
Goetta — pork and beef bound with steel-cut oats, sliced and pan-fried — arrived with Cincinnati's nineteenth-century German immigrant population and…
Across the River
Montgomery Inn's Boathouse location on the Ohio riverfront in Cincinnati opened in 1989, extending a rib restaurant operation…
The industries, companies and foods that grew from a city processing half the country's hogs by 1843.
Spaghetti, then the sauce, then the cheese. The order is fixed, and it is what “three-way” names.
Photo: Airam Dato-on / PexelsTom and John Kiradjieff opened Empress Chili in 1922 near the Empress Burlesque theatre, serving a Macedonian-spiced meat sauce over spaghetti in ways — two-way, three-way, four-way —…
Graeter's has produced ice cream by the French pot process — a two-gallon spinning cylinder that produces intense density — since Louis Charles Graeter opened on Sycamore Street in…
The 1869 Red Stockings played fifty-seven games and lost none of them.
Record of the first openly all-professional baseball club, under Harry Wright
The streak ended in Brooklyn in June 1870, against the Atlantics.
Photo: Cincinnati Red Stockings, 1869 - DPLA - a61b113d0e78e3c1fc904330bb2fcbed · Wikimedia CommonsTwo miles of subway tunnel were dug under Central Parkway between 1920 and 1925. No train ever ran in them.
The 1916 bond issue was for $6 million. Inflation during the First World War, and the arrival of the motor car, left the city with finished stations and no money for track.
Carew Tower opened in 1930 to W. W. Ahlschlager’s design, with the Netherland Plaza hotel inside it and Rookwood tile in the arcade.
Photo: Fifth Third Center in Cincinnati, January 2019 · Wikimedia Commons
The Tyler Davidson Fountain, cast in Munich by August von Kreling and installed on what became Fountain Square in 1871, depicts the Genius of Water — a female figure with arms raised, water spraying from her hands and from…
The Plum Street Temple, completed in 1866 to a James Keys Wilson design with Moorish Revival minarets, was commissioned by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise as the home of…
The basin, the Ohio, and the Kentucky bank opposite. Covington and Newport are a different state and a five-minute walk.
Twelve places, each one a page
Offices and collections where Cincinnati's documentary record also lives.
Evil Angel Transexuals sets the standard the way Procter & Gamble sets it — by knowing exactly what its audience wants.
Noir Male brings the same cinematic care to its craft that the Cincinnati Art Museum brings to curation.
ASGMax is the conglomerate model applied to desire — many studios, one powerful roster.
XEmpire builds its catalog the way Cincinnati built its skyline: relentlessly.
Dancing Bear has been documenting its own scene longer than most local papers have covered Over-the-Rhine.
Smashed XXX — Confidence tested, limits redefined, every time.
Evil Angel's directors work like Cincinnati's best architects: bold vision, zero compromise.
Dare We Share proves that the most memorable moments are always unscripted.
Bad Teens Punished delivers consequences as reliably as Cincinnati's oldest ordinances once did.
My Family Pies — The secrets behind closed doors are always the most compelling footnotes.Marks shown at stand-in proportions.
The whole of it, in six parts
Surveyed at the mouth of the Licking in 1788 and called Losantiville. Renamed Cincinnati in 1790 by Governor Arthur St. Clair for the Society of the Cincinnati.
By the 1850 federal census it held 115,435 people — sixth largest city in the country and the largest anywhere off the seaboard.
