February 8, 201510 yr Looking west along 2nd Street during the construction of Riverfront Stadium. As early in the process as this is I would think it is 1968. If someone can give me a better idea of the time. please post a comment!
January 28, 20169 yr Nice shot of the 1978 Blizzard, Channel 9. http://www.wcpo.com/ "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 28, 20169 yr The Kroger Building, with that pastel curtain wall, and the 5/3 Building, before they put the big logo on top, were so much nicer looking in the 70s and 80s. They were good examples of Modernism, Kroger in particular reminded me of Lever House: Now they are both very generic looking.
January 28, 20169 yr They were indeed both much better looking before and the Kroger Building was a really good example of modernism. It's such a generic blob now. The interior is even worse. Every surface is beige. It's just so terrible now.
January 28, 20169 yr Here's a bigger picture of the Kroger building. I agree that the Fifth Third building looks better without the logo at the top. But I'm less convinced that the old Kroger building looked better. I feel like the pastel colors would probably have faded in a very unattractive way. Now, I'm no fan of the ugly brick base they put on the facade of the first 3 floors. But it looks like the original design also had a hideous windowless first floor. I guess I'm just not a fan of either version of the Kroger building.
January 28, 20169 yr There was a photo in a photography exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum from the 1970s looking south on Vine from the location of the Kroger store back toward the Kroger building. It was a pretty outstanding color photo with a large format camera contrasting the brown and red of Over-the-Rhine with the pastel colors of the Kroger office building. I asked to take a photo of it with my cell phone but the guard flipped out. I think a lot of the modernist towers in Chicago and New York are aging pretty well. I also really like the Ford headquarters in Dearborn, MI. I find them to be a welcome contrast to the boxy stuff from the 80s onward. It seems like a lot of the architects on these top projects really understood form and knew what to do but all of that seems to have been lost in the 80s when everything started looking like a blob (or at least most). I also really liked the World Trade Center towers because the interplay between the two was much more subtle than the average person seemed to notice. Look at all of the bootleg 9/11 graphics -- nobody seemed to understand that the towers were offset in a really perfect way from one another, not side-by-side, and that the corner edges caught the light in a pretty striking way, even on some overcast days.
January 28, 20169 yr I'm definitely in the minority then on the Kroger building. The building was long identified as an architectural failure and an embarrassment to downtown. The gaudy blue and the shades created a look of chaos. And that weird box on top that throws off the symmetry? I think it looks better today. Much more distinguished. From what I understand, it was reskinned due to both aesthetic and energy saving reasons after a study. It took a couple years and was supposed to cut the energy consumption of the building by 30%. Here are some pics. Credit: Cincinnati Enquirer.
January 28, 20169 yr ^ Your comment about energy savings alludes to the boxy aesthetic jmecklenborg mentioned above. Buildings went from having attractive thin cladding, often with single plane glass and aluminum, and steel and concrete that spanned from the interior to the exterior without any thermal breaks, to big boxy framed areas with several inches of insulation, and a skin that was completely separate from the interior. The ability to have a very simple envelope with a thin skin is what helped make many early Modern buildings attractive. The technology and focus on energy efficiency quickly outpaced design styles, which is why a lot of the later buildings that tried to have the same look as stuff from the 50s and 60s looked ugly. I can see why people would think the original Kroger cladding is ugly - one of the reasons I like it is that it's different. The Kroger Building cladding of today makes it look too generic. It looks like the Macy's building down the street, and thousands of other buildings all over the world.
January 28, 20169 yr The original base on the Kroger building reminds me of the fire station at 5th and Central: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1000352,-84.5193504,3a,75y,84.4h,87.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5GuyNZR3sAV0h5JNa97h8w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 I think I'd have to see it in person as it originally was to make a judgement. A lot of steel-and-glass modernist stuff by, say, Mies van der Rohe, is really nice, but his buildings also tended to use high-quality materials, which a lot of the derivative modernist towers often lacked. “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
January 28, 20169 yr The first story of the original base was indeed terrible. It was a blank wall. We all know how well those worked out. A symptom of the thinking of the time. But the rest of the building, though polarizing, had far more character than the current version does. You could pick the current building up and match it to a building in more or less every single major city in the country. It's nearly as generic as you can get. It would have been nice to have some color in the skyline. The blue might not be to everyone's taste, but it's something other than beige/brown/white/glass. We're sorely lacking in the department. I can understand the desire for more energy efficiency. Modernist buildings aren't exactly known for doing so well in any environment other than 75 degrees, low humidity, and sunny. But at least it had its own character. Something that can't be said about the Kroger building now.
January 29, 20169 yr I think we'd all be happy if this building would have been an office version of The 800 Apartments in Louisville. Maybe?
January 29, 20169 yr It was ugly. I remember Jack Boulton, then-director of the Contemporary Arts Center, saying to a higher-level Kroger exec saying, "You know, if you put mirrors on your building, it might just go away." I don't think we received a contribution from Kroger that year.
January 29, 20169 yr John, which is funny because Kroger didn't own the building until like 1979 or something like that. It was reskinned in 1981 so that should tell you that they knew it as well, even in the early/mid-70s when Boulton was in Cincy. They knew that it was a valid source of public derision. Sour grapes if they withheld contributions for that. Still funny.
January 29, 20169 yr John, which is funny because Kroger didn't own the building until like 1979 or something like that. It was reskinned in 1981 so that should tell you that they knew it as well, even in the early/mid-70s when Boulton was in Cincy. They knew that it was a valid source of public derision. Sour grapes if they withheld contributions for that. Still funny. Had Jack Boulton remained in Cincinnati -- he moved away to manage David Rockefeller's art collection -- I bet he would have been mayor at some point.
January 29, 20169 yr I wanst around for the pre-renovation Kroger building, but did it look like the Drayton in Savannah looked? I've seen that in person and I would understand what is meant by the chaos. Its structure is so minimal that EVERYTHING inside is on view and becomes part of the exterior aesthetic. Crazy, but I can appreciate it in a Bladerunner, Kowloon walled city sort of way. http://onlineathens.com/stories/092902 https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2573/4027794813_b9d682dcf7_b.jpg
January 29, 20169 yr That "chaos" is something Mies van Der Rohe was a master at making a positive. In the Seagrams Building the tinted windows mixed with uniform shades and lighting patterns on the inside meant that the facade was still orderly even though people were using the interior in various ways. It's still an amazingly gorgeous building and its facade is one of the most refined modernist facades out there. If only more cities could have gotten Mies buildings (minus the terrible site planning that is found in more or less all modernist buildings).
January 29, 20169 yr Call me a weirdo, but I really like the Kroger building as it is. Yeah the landing isn't the best and I don't like the skywalk, it could use a lot of work at the base for sure. I just think it's a handsome, simple building and stands well on it's own as a gateway to OTR. It also reminds me of my home town's tallest building and they are about the same size... I also think it's cool how the Kroger building is "pushed out" from the rest of the downtown, it makes it very unique IMO
January 30, 20169 yr Look at this density! 1937 - Great Ohio Flood I think those high-sided, double-ended boats, designed to take waves, were brought in by the Coast Guard. They look funny on the Ohio, and very awkward to load.
February 2, 20169 yr Just came across this image showing Laurel Street behind Music Hall from 1920. Looks like something out of industrial Birmingham or Manchester! If anyone has watched the show Peaky Blinders you'll know what I'm talking about.
February 2, 20169 yr Look at that lamp post! We should have replicated those along over-the-rhine streets.
February 2, 20169 yr ^^ Wow! For as much building stock as we have retained, we have lost so, so much more. Look at that lamp post! We should have replicated those along over-the-rhine streets. agreed 100%
February 2, 20169 yr ^^ Wow! For as much building stock as we have retained, we have lost so, so much more. Look at that lamp post! We should have replicated those along over-the-rhine streets. agreed 100% Is that not the story of most major US cities though? Apart from maybe Boston/NYC/SanFran/ and maybe a few other major cities the loss of grand old architecture is nothing new. Yes, we lost alot, but it doesn't take far to look at nearby cities like Columbus/Cleveland/Indy, and realize how worse we could be, because those cities have truly lost ALOT.
February 2, 20169 yr Just proportionately? Or by volume? Because losing basically the entire West End to Kenyon-Barr, Laurel-Richmond, Liberty-Dalton renewal was a footprint I'd be surprised to see matched. But then again I don't know much about the bulldozing of those cities. OT: Does anybody know where the rubble from all those projects ended up?
February 2, 20169 yr Interesting to note in that photo of Music Hall is the tall turret (now gone), and how much taller those "chimneys" used to be. Also interesting is that it looks that even in 1920, most of those windows were bricked/boarded up.
February 2, 20169 yr ^^ Wow! For as much building stock as we have retained, we have lost so, so much more. Look at that lamp post! We should have replicated those along over-the-rhine streets. agreed 100% Yep. Most people don't realize we have a tiny fraction of what once was, still standing. Spend some time looking at old aerials and the old street improvement photos. You'll cry. Its why some of us go crazy when another demolition is announced.
February 2, 20169 yr ^^ Wow! For as much building stock as we have retained, we have lost so, so much more. Look at that lamp post! We should have replicated those along over-the-rhine streets. agreed 100% Is that not the story of most major US cities though? Apart from maybe Boston/NYC/SanFran/ and maybe a few other major cities the loss of grand old architecture is nothing new. Yes, we lost alot, but it doesn't take far to look at nearby cities like Columbus/Cleveland/Indy, and realize how worse we could be, because those cities have truly lost ALOT. I suppose it is true for the majority of the US, but few cities outside of the Northeast had the level of density or intricate architecture that Cincinnati had and lost. I don't know much about Cleveland, but after spending quite a few years on this forum, I've seen a sampling of what was lost there, and I think you're absolutely correct in stating that they lost much more than we did in Cincinnati. Even when I was up there this summer, there were very few places that had a historic feel or had the type of historic buildings that Cincinnati has all over the place. It was striking to me, and it's probably not surprising that the parts of the city I liked the best (Ohio City, Little Italy, Shaker Square) retained much of the historic architecture and charm. That said, Cincinnati has also lost just an immense amount of historic building stock. As the last photo posted in this thread shows, we destroyed whole neighborhoods that had the densities and aesthetics comparable to neighborhoods in major European cities. While other cities might have lost more in terms of volume, I think Cincinnati's loss in terms of quality would be hard to 'beat'.
February 2, 20169 yr The only place I think beats Cincinnati in terms of loss of high quality architecture is St Louis. They had neighborhoods like OTR around downtown, and not a single one of them remains, all that is left are fragments of Old North St. Louis and the relatively intact Lafayette Square and Soulard (both of which aren't as dense and both are a few miles from downtown where lost neighborhooods once stood and are now giant messy dead zones. They were also super early in starting urban renewal and very zealous with it ever since, this is a pic prior to the arch grounds being cleared: http://photos.mycapture.com/STLT/1092643/31999522E.jpg After: http://www.stl250.org/userfiles/com.stl250/image/12.30.14%20Inaugural%20seen%20at%20the%20foot%20of%20the%20Arch%20in%201969___Source.jpg And even to this day a lot more is gone.
February 3, 20169 yr That before and after makes my heart hurt. I remember learning about Pruitt Igoe, so I knew St. Louis got into urban renewal in a big way, but I had never seen that riverfront shot before. The times I've been to St. Louis, I have noticed that there are large areas of somewhat dead zones in the city, but it still feels larger and more consistently built up than Cincinnati. I've always thought of St. Louis's story as being similar to Cincinnati's mid-late 1800s boom + Cleveland's early 1900s boom + Detroit's 20th century collapse.
February 3, 20169 yr That before and after makes my heart hurt. I remember learning about Pruitt Igoe, so I knew St. Louis got into urban renewal in a big way, but I had never seen that riverfront shot before. The times I've been to St. Louis, I have noticed that there are large areas of somewhat dead zones in the city, but it still feels larger and more consistently built up than Cincinnati. I've always thought of St. Louis's story as being similar to Cincinnati's mid-late 1800s boom + Cleveland's early 1900s boom + Detroit's 20th century collapse. Yeah but unfortunately that might not be the case if you choose to visit again in the next 5-10 years. St. Louis is on a tear with there demolitions, more so than Cincinnati, and it's very sad indeed. That said, again, I still think that we are slowly beginning to support preservation. I think that's in part due to OTR, and how popular it has become with Cincinnatians, I feel like there's been a renewed spark of interest in preserving these great historic buildings. Hopefully we can continue to keep the preservation alive. But again, we did lose alot. But I still think our historic stock is still so strong. For a city our size, that's really tiny in comparison to most major cities we have lot of great historic districts. Walnut Hills OTR Mt. Adams. Lower Price Hill Clifton Gas Light District Avondale Northside Old West Side Mt. Auburn Historic District I mean, yeah, it's incredibly sad we had to lose alot in the process.That said, everytime I bring family and friends who have never been to Cincinnati they are always so impressed with our architecture, and constantly compare it back to Baltimore and other coastal cities in there likeness. They are always left impressed, and I think ultimately we have to really create an appreciation for what we currently have and thank god we have the amount of historic stock that we do, and appreciate and protect the gems that still remain rather than lament on the past.
February 4, 20169 yr Look at that lamp post! We should have replicated those along over-the-rhine streets. <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@39.0988374,-84.5158065,3a,75y,315.69h,94.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1suBTf6Qz63it59xJqpc4Qhg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656">McFarland St in downtown</a> has some lamp posts that are similar:
February 23, 20169 yr Does anyone have a photo of when the building at Liberty & Race on Liberty Street was still a KFC (or whatever it was)? Google Street View only goes back to 2007 and it had closed by then, before turning into a cell phone store.
January 12, 20178 yr I prefer the non-80's look... http://otrmatters.com/ https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/ http://www.cincymuseum.org/ http://www.shorpy.com/ Civil War era! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 13, 20178 yr I would love to spend a week in Cincinnati in those times. Awesome photos! Me too ... I was thinking the same!
February 9, 20178 yr For those who haven't seen this yet, the Auitor's office just unearthed 500+ photos of downtown in 1968: http://www.hamiltoncountyauditor.org/vintagephotos.asp Below are a few random shots I picked out of the huge collection: “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
February 9, 20178 yr Bring back Peri's Pancakes! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
February 9, 20178 yr NOW I WANT PANCAKES!!! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
February 9, 20178 yr The collection was found under an employees desk at the auditors office. The photos have been making the rounds, as they were released back in 2014. The Cincinnati Magazine article in this months edition that utilizes the photos are bringing renewed interest. Really is an amazing collection!
February 9, 20178 yr I wish downtown had more of the signage they used to have, would really liven up some areas. I'm OK with it but sometimes I feel OTR in areas is trying to feel too "downplayed" if that is a word? Just seems in the gray, dismal winter month weather, some neon signs and lighting could really liven it up on Main Street.
February 9, 20178 yr ^Blame Apple. Now all signage is minimalist since Apple made minimalism cool. Plus of course the minimalist stuff is way, way cheaper.
February 9, 20178 yr I think I tend to suffer a bit from seasonal depression syndromes, so maybe that is why. It would be different if it was snow and sunshine like in Minneapolis or something. Something I noticed which does help in OTR is the outside lighting on the buildings, but even then, hard to tell when walking on the sidewalk with buildings on your side. Even though I am not a big fan of Nashville, they do a good job of livening it up so when you get there it's like woah, this is hopping. In Cincinnati, it's kind of like meh.... and it doesn't need to be!! Yes, OTR is very European centric, but we are still in America
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