Posted August 1, 201014 yr It’s an interesting history. Cincinnati was originally and historically the Alpha City of the midwest. Its all about Transportation. Cincinnati is the oldest City in Ohio. (Marietta's a town) Riverboat travel existed before railroads or automobiles. Cincy's booming growth predated that of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland & Detroit's. (The last three really exploded after the industrial revolution, first decades of 20th century.) Just look at the US Census historical records data. Its all there. 200 years ago Cincy's only rival city was New Orleans, maybe St. Louis... both river cities. The emergence of the Railroad in 1880s heralds the arrival of Chicago on the scene as the Midwest’s new King City. Cincinnati peaked with 500,000 in 1960. It’s been all downhill from there... But one can only imagine what kind of city it was back in the Riverboat Era of civil war. That’s when two National Political Conventions were held in Over the Rhine's Music Hall. Back when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was inspired to dub it the "Queen City" in his poetry. Back when German immigrants packed the river basin to give it a truly international feel of a Destination. Back when John Roebling erected what was the Longest Suspension Bridge IN THE WORLD in 1865. A Title only to be surrendered to the Brooklyn Bridge, and eventually the Golden Gate. This was the Golden Era of my city's history, culminating with a Cincinnatian (Taft) in The White House. There's little doubt that the turn of the 21st Century has seen Cin City explode with a plethora of projects revitalizing our urban core. Maybe it's pure coincidence, but at the turn of the Millenium Cincinnati began to invest in itself. The positive effects of these projects remains to be felt in the near future. As population loss has bottomed out, the City is rebounding, and growing again. Many years from now, historians will look back at this point in time and declare this the moment when Cincinnati returned to greatness!!! :clap: :laugh: 8-) All of these mega-projects occured within a 10 year period, just one decade. Here's a list... Paul Brown Stadium New Ballpark CAC NURFC Newport on the Levee Fountain Square Renovation The Ascent Queen City Square The Banks Casino Streetcar System New SCPA Renovation of Washington Park OTR - Gateway Quarter 21C. Hotel & Mariott @Lytle Park Christian Morlein Lager House Central Riverfront Park Convention Center expansion The McAlpin Southshore Tower Parker Flats & Adams Landing Purple People Bridge...
August 2, 201014 yr Unlocked and thread has been cleaned. FYI Mark, Marietta is Ohio's oldest city. Not Cincinnati. Please do some fact-checking. Thanks!
August 2, 201014 yr Cincinnati is the oldest City in Ohio. (Marietta's a town) No, Marietta is a City. Admittedly not as large as Cincinnati, but a city nonetheless.
August 3, 201014 yr I think what he means is that Marietta never developed beyond a largish town. Even in the frontier period I think Lexington and maybe even Maysville (AKA "Limestone") where larger than Marietta. I know Lex was larger than Louisville into the early years of the 19th century, maybe it was larger than Cincinnati, too. What's suprising to me is that Cincinnati was even larger than Pittsburgh during the antebellum era. I always used to think Pbgh was the largest Ohio River city from way, way back, but that doesnt seem to be the case. I think St Louis and Chicago bypassed Cincy around the time of the Civil War?
August 3, 201014 yr ^ http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html You're right, Cincy wasn't surpassed by Chicago and St. Louis until post-Civil War. I don't see Marietta or Maysville ever making an appearance in the biggest 50, and Lexington was never very big either, though.
August 3, 201014 yr In terms of classification of Ohio incorporated jurisdictions. There are villages and there are cities. See here: http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/703.011 After a municipality exceeds 5,000 residents it is automatically classified as a city. Hence, as long as Marietta has more than 5,000 people, it is officially a city. This is why The City of "The Village of Indian Hill" is not a village but a city. When their population exceeded 5,000 they added "The Village of..." in front of the name so they would not gain the negative connotations associated with being a city. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
August 3, 201014 yr ^--- When speaking of said city, I like to call it by it's real name, the "City of the Village of Indian Hill." :-D
August 4, 201014 yr Pittsburgh didn't have its massive growth until after 1870 really w/ the rise of the coal and steel mill economy of the second industrial revolution. Pre-Civil War, Cincinnati was easier to access for the markets throughout the Upper South - which was the broadly wealthiest part of the South (Deep South was much spikier) until the beginning of the 20C. Marietta grew very slowly. Chillicothe was really Cincy's competitor in Ohio during the first couple decades of the city's existence and Chillicothe had more/has more connections to Maysville/Lexington than Cincy (though obviously Cbus has surpassed a lot of those connections).
August 4, 201014 yr So mark glove writes a great threa and we quibble about the definition of city? Lol! Cincinnati is BACK and ready for action. I believe Cincinnati will centripetal pull will only increase as smaller cities (like Dayton) succumb. This will be good for Cincy (and in dayton's case probably not too bad for it either since they are close).
August 4, 201014 yr It was anticipated in the 1910's that Cincinnati would become a steel center ancillary to Pittsburgh but nevertheless significant because of the relative ease in transporting newly discovered coal in Kentucky to Cincinnati. Cincinnati could only gain a distinct advantage, however, by construction of a new railroad directly to the coal fields which was also expected to at last provide Cincinnati with a much more direct rail link to Charleston, which is almost the exact same distance as Baltimore. None of this happened because the feds got involved in improving the Ohio River, and private capital withdrew from this railroad proposal and to some extent Cincinnati in general when the feds announced their commitment to canalize the Ohio River. Personally I think this development caused the long-proposed union station being shifted from the Cincinnati riverfront to the much cheaper and inferior West End location. There's an awful lot of pro-canal and anti-canal propaganda from the eaa. It's not tough to determine who was behind and against which proposals. The New York State Barge Canal is probably the biggest boondoggle in the history of state-funded infrastructure projects. That thing cost $100,000,000, they never charged tolls, and it attracted virtually zero traffic because it was intentionally made slightly too small for lake vessels in order to generate transfer business in Buffalo and Albany. A similar improvement to the Miami-Erie canal was mulled for decades later, but generally planned for it to be large enough to accommodate lake vessels, at least small ones.
August 4, 201014 yr To be perfectly honest, I'm glad Cincinnati never became a major steel center on par w/ the eastern Ohio/western PA/NW Indiana/S. Chicago - that seems to have come all to tears.
August 4, 201014 yr It was anticipated in the 1910's that Cincinnati would become a steel center ancillary to Pittsburgh but nevertheless significant because of the relative ease in transporting newly discovered coal in Kentucky to Cincinnati. Cincinnati could only gain a distinct advantage, however, by construction of a new railroad directly to the coal fields which was also expected to at last provide Cincinnati with a much more direct rail link to Charleston, which is almost the exact same distance as Baltimore. This is interesting in light of that steel mill in Newport, the two blast furnaces north of Hamilton and ARMCO. So there was the start of a small steel industry in the region. The tale of a "resource road" to the coal fields reminds me of a similar attempt by Dayton, back in the 1850s. The Dayton, Xenia, & Belpre was projected to exploit the untapped coal fields of Appalachian Ohio (and tap into the pig iron production of the Hanging Rock iron district) to provide materials for Dayton's developing industrial economy, which was starting to specialize in metal work and was at that time limited to water power. Belpre was the terminus because it provided a connection across the river to the Baltimore & Ohio @ Parkersburg. This would've given Dayton a connection to Baltimore and the eastern seaboard. A good 'what-if' for local economic history...would this direct source of materials helped accelerate Daytons manufacturing sector in the 19th century? Capital wasn't available to complete the line; the promoters laid track as far as Xenia and graded as far as Jamestown. There's an awful lot of pro-canal and anti-canal propaganda from the eaa. It's not tough to determine who was behind and against which proposals. The New York State Barge Canal is probably the biggest boondoggle in the history of state-funded infrastructure projects The New York State Barge Canal is the modernization of the old Erie Canal, no? There was a modernization of the old Illinois & Michigan Canal out of Chicago, too. But this wasn't too impresssive compared to the final effort, the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which was more "sanitary" than "ship". The I&M improvement reminds me a bit of the attempts to revive the Miami & Erie, around the same time I think (the 'electric mule' concept). The Miami & Erie probably did as much to boost Cincinnati economic growth as the steamboat trade, since it provided a direct route into the city for passenger & freight from the very productive Miami Valley for about 20 years (say 1830 to 1850) before railroads came into play.
August 4, 201014 yr Is Cincinnati back? Did it ever 'go away'? Seems that the place always was pretty active, always had a downtown department store and better clothing stores and restaurants even before the recent wave. Things do come and go (the 4th Street arts district is an example, if anyone remembers that), but the place seems to endure. The local power structure, the leadership in the business community, never has give up on the center city, as proven by 3CDC and the money local private sector entities put up for the 3CDC equity funds. I'm looking foward to see the Riverfront Park and The Banks. This is going to be one of the better riverfront ensembles in the US when complete.
August 5, 201014 yr It was relatively close to happening. The company was granted a franchise in 1910 and again in 1912, but it appears that the 1911 flood did so much financial damage to area railroads that the funding plan fell apart. It was going to be ugly but it would have brought not only all the passenger trains but all of the interurbans in as well. I've got images of the conceptual drawings but I'm holding off on posting them because they're in the book I'm doing and don't want to blow too many of my "scoops".
August 5, 201014 yr The four main ingredients for steelmaking include iron ore, coal, limestone, and water. Pittsburgh has all four, so naturally it became a steel making center. Yet, all four are available along the Ohio River, and although Cincinnati has neither iron ore nor coal, Cincinnati was an early iron and steel center due to access to these materials. When iron ore of higher quality was discovered in Minnesota, the whole steel picture changed, and the great lakes cities of Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, and Buffalo, along with Youngstown and Pittsburgh became the big steel centers. Coal was transported by railroad and iron ore by ship; these two resources came together at the great lakes ports.
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