Pretty stunning collection. Thanks for taking the time to scan and post those.

 

[Edit:] I found a map of "The Main Portion of Cincinnati, Ohio" in a 1900 Rand McNally Atlas of the World. I scanned it and made it large enough that the street names are legible, so it's pretty big. Rather than post the image file (1.6MB), here's the link.

To take a trip back in time...now that would be amazing.

Post of the year as far as I'm concerned. God those are amazing pictures. Thanks for taking the time to scan all of them.

 

That gorgeous apartment building in # 39 is still there, but is a complete dump. Both of my grandparents grew up near that intersection in price hill. My grandma would talk about how her family would take the streetcars everywhere, to work, down to the river to catch a boat to coney island, up to Mt Adams..... But to this day she still believes that the buses they replaced them with were a better deal because "they could pull over to the curb"  :|

 

My grandpa used to say our family had money until his dad (grandfather?) invested it all in a bunch of horses and put them on a car up the Price Hill Incline....which then broke and killed his entire investment. Never was able to verify that, might just be a family myth....

Thanks for taking the time to scan all this.  It must have taken forever.

 

The high-res scans really do put you right there.

 

Right after that last photo, I was brought back to reality, and realize that development comes together so slowly anymore (not just from the economic downturn).  And even with the slow development, we end up with garbage.

..  woooow .. perfect .. nice ..

please .. where did you find this pictures ... it`s a download ?

.. but where ? .. where you find this pic`s ..?

.. do you have the link ?

thank you

 

Wolfgang

Thanks for sharing your porn collection with us.  What a beautiful city.

The story could very well be true, because part of the reasons the inclines closed up shop was there were a few pretty nasty accidents.

Thanks for all the comments so far. I'm glad you all liked the images. I'll probably scan a few more in over the next day or so and add them to the bunch.  There are some really fascinating ones from inside the streetcars and coaches, and some other city vistas.

I've read a lot of the books in which these pictures appear. I don't remember which pictures go with which books, but they are chock full of fantastic stuff like this. Go on down to the main library and look for Cincinnati history books. Plus, you will have the opportunity to touch a book that I have read and possibly sneezed around.

Awesome.

Amazing thread.  Thanks for putting it together.  I love the inclines.

One thing I originally forgot to point out is that you can see the American Building under construction in this photograph.

This is a wonderful nostaligic journey through Cincinnati history and I very much appreciate the labor that went into creating it. One can readily see why the City eventually earned the name "Queen City" despite an early association with lowly meat processing and packing. So many grand structures were built in the 1800's from the riverbank to the highest hills.

 

The German language captions show how vital the German community was in the City back in the day. The process of change in the streetscape is evolutionary and almost imperceptible on a day-to-day basis, but when compared over a longer time span, say 100 years or more, it is quite dramatic. Cincinnati is very fortunate not to have experienced some of the legendary city-wide fires as in 1871 Chicago and 1906 San Francisco. Most of the losses in the City's historic fabric are due to neglect and the persistent notion that new is somehow always better than old. While the City probably benefited from the demise of polluting industries-resulting in cleaner air-many historic monumental scaled buildings and residences soon disappeared with these industries as well. It would be interesting to somehow have a "today" and "back then" images taken in the same locations to compare the changes in streetscape.

 

To Cincinnati's everlasting credit is that a fair amount of it's "glory days" architecture has survived, making it one of the most pictureque historic cities in America. I believe we have benign neglect and a somewhat less vigorous 20th century urban renewal program to thank for that good fortune, rather than a conscious city-wide effort to save it's architectural heritage. Now the city needs more people to embrace that built heritage, stabilize and restore it so that it can be carried into the future. This wonderful photo series gives a clue to what was lost but also what has been saved as well. Thanks for creating this "labor of love" series.

It would be interesting to somehow have a "today" and "back then" images taken in the same locations to compare the changes in streetscape.

 

I was thinking the same thing...I have some photographs from nearly the same angles as some of these, but others I would need to go out and do.  Maybe that will be my next project.

Great set! Thanks for scanning them.

 

I'm still disgusted at Fountain Square's destruction.

Look at this DENSITY! Man, what we've done to ourselves is a crime.

 

 

Over-the-rhine and Mt. Adams are still that dense. I think I speak for everyone when I say I wish I could just walk through there around 1900 when Cincinnati was a booming city that everyone flocked too. I want to know what it was like to live in the city back then. It's easy to say "oh what have we done!? The city looks nothing like that now" but if you grew up in Lower Price Hill with trash everywhere, the smell of factories, pollution, sewage, you probably looked at suburban Clifton as heaven. They didn't live in the city because they enjoyed urbanity, they lived there for efficiency and opporunity. I think Cincinnati at least did a decent job of preserving the more notable buildings of that time.

 

That picture of Central Parkway is just depressing. I wish Central Parkway still looked like that!

Question for Cincinnati historians (Maybe DMerkow of Jmecklenborg?). Was Mt. Adams always affluent? I guess I assumed that any neighborhood on a hill was inherently more affluent. Perhaps the toll for inclines priced some people out? Or did the rich live further out, in Clifton proper, Hyde Park, Avondale, Walnut Hills, etc?

 

I would love to see some old pictures of Walnut Hills' business district on McMillan. At one time, it was the second most bustling business district next to downtown.

Good Job Uncle Rando! Some of those I have never seen before.

It would be interesting to somehow have a "today" and "back then" images taken in the same locations to compare the changes in streetscape.

 

I was thinking the same thing...I have some photographs from nearly the same angles as some of these, but others I would need to go out and do.  Maybe that will be my next project.

 

i'm working on a similar project with caroline williams sketches.  im waiting for the rest of the leaves to fall to start taking pictures.  it seems like the sketches i want to take photos of all have trees with no leaves.

There is no way OTR is still that dense.  There are hundreds of gaps.

Great photos!

There is no way OTR is still that dense. There are hundreds of gaps.

 

Hundreds?

On the question about Mt. Adams being affluent.  I don't know for sure when it happened, but I have talked to a few older people that are from there.  One guy I think is still living in a worn looking house on Oregon St.  I talked to him about 5 years ago.  He was in his mid 80's then I think.  He said he'd lived there his whole life.  He told me the whole hill was middle class German and Irish.  He even carried on about teenage gangs being territorial up on the hill.  He said somewhere around the mid 1950's a few people with money started moving up there, but it wasn't until the mid 60's to mid 70's that larger numbers started moving in.  It was mostly spearheaded by Towne Properties.  It used to be a few new homes here and there and the rest of the developments mostly being renovations of old buildings.  It seems for the last 10-15 years they don't even bother to renovate anything anymore.  Once an old building sells, it's torn right down for new construction.  It doesn't personally bother me to see anything torn down in Mt. Adams for the most part b/c most of the older row buildings are not built of high quality.  In contrast, most of the new construction is high end quality down to the construction methods.

 

I went in a house on Martin St. back about 10 years ago when it was for sale by owner.  It's the first house on Martin on the right when you enter Mt. Adams from Rt. 50.  It's a plain looking old house, etc., but the cool part was that it had 2 basements and when you went down through the 1st basement, you entered some cavern type hallway and basically the 2nd basement was literally a hidden shack type whatever it was in the hillside that was part of the underground railroad.  It was pretty cool to see that in person.  It was for sale in the last couple years ago as a 2 family.  If it ever goes on the market again, I'd recommend anyone wanting to see a little piece of history like that to go check it out.  I'm sure this duplex will be razed sooner or later and you could tell from walking around inside that it wasn't built well.  Maybe b/c of shifts in the hill over its approx. 150 years, etc.  I don't know.

 

Back to the original question about Mt. Adams... the only other thing that I thought was strange since Mt. Adams was basically an immigrant middle class area is the fact that Rookwood Pottery was located there.  Rookwood was always a higher end product.  In a book I have on Rookwood, it has photos of the display shop that was in the factory up there and it was very high end looking.  I thought it was pretty interesting in the book to find out that Rookwood was the only pottery that was sold in all Tiffany stores across the country.  So that gives you an idea of how high end Rookwood always has been (except near the end of its initial run in the 1950's).  And if I'm not mistaken, the brick row houses on Filson Pl. were where many artists from Rookwood lived.  I met an elderly lady back in 1996 and she used to take art classes in Mt. Adams back in the 30's or 40's.  She used to take the incline everyday to get to class and everyday she shared the same ride with Kataro Shirayamadani.  His pieces generally sell higher than any other artist and I think one of his pieces holds the record for selling the highest ever for a single piece of Rookwood (around $200,000).  It's pretty amazing the stories you can rack up by having conversations with elderly people.  And from what I've discovered, they're usually more than willing to share all they know and remember.

Nasdun is basically right. Mt. Adams was basically working/middle class until the 1960s, when it started the gentrification process. Jmeck may be able to expand on this, but the building of 71/471 really shrunk Mt. Adams quite a bit. I don't think it ever got as poor as the stuff north of OTR, but it was not a premier 'hood.

Over-the-rhine and Mt. Adams are still that dense.

 

ah, no way. Look how many buildings have been torn down in that picture. That picture is before highways, before road widening, and before any large demolitions. The density today is a mere fraction of that.

 

There is no way OTR is still that dense.  There are hundreds of gaps.

 

Thank you, and unfortunately there will be more demolitions. Many buildings are very close to being condemned (we're talking abandoned buildings from the late 1800's, so duh). It's the sad reality of depopulation. OTR is home to about 1/8th as many people as it had at its peak. While there is gentrification getting a foothold, it's nowhere near fast enough to outpace the natural decay of buildings that old. Some are in fact close to falling right onto the street. It sucks. The majority of OTR is abandoned. That's not good.

 

Demolitions are somewhat limited considering its age, but we're going to have to deal with the fact that some of the neighborhood just won't be saved. With many of the buildings in the worst shape, it will be cheaper to tear down and rebuild. :|

 

 

I'm not talking about population density or freeways. It's the same scenario in every city. But you're not going to find as large of a neighborhood that dense, anywhere in Ohio and there really isn't that many surface lots unless it's east of Sycamore near the highway.

I'm sorry? Did I fall asleep and wake up in 17th century England? I wasn't aware Cincinnati was in danger of burning to the freakin' ground. When was the last time a city in the US burned to the ground? Chicago? San Fran? Both WAY before modern fire fighting skills/technology. There may be the odd fire b/c of the abandonment (Grammars during the hurricane), but your apocalyptic scenario of the entire neighborhood burning down is pure fantasy.

 

Two things about those abandoned buildings in OTR: 1.) They are absolute tanks. Built at a time when world class brick layers and architects were just walking around the streets looking for work. Most of them are over 150 years old, they've lasted this long, including the past 50 years or so in a state of extreme neglect. They'll last another 10 or 20 while they get rehabbed. 2.) A great deal of those abandoned buildings are properly boarded up and owned by 3CDC or other redevelopers who have a vested interest in not having their assets destroyed.

 

Along with the success of the Gateway Quarter, and the decent development along Main st, OTR is a lot closer to a comeback than you give it credit for. And if it doesn't happen the way we all hope, it won't be because of a ridiculous fire. Please.

Not to be a dooms-dayer, but I agree with C-dawg.  OTR is VERY fragile.  It was bombed out looking and fragile when I first was there in 1984 as a college student.  Even then, 24 years ago now, there were many people saying that the neighborhood was in dire need of mass renovation as many of the buildings could only take another 10 to 20 years in their current state.  I have witnessed countless buildings come down since then.  Race street in particular has had many gaps added to its once rhythmic frontage of italianate structures.  She still smiles, but it is now turning into a toothy looking grin.  The cohesiveness is quickly disappearing.  Even quality infill cannot replicate authenticity.

 

As for fires.  Don't be so sure that it can't happen.  In August of 1999, I  was in Massachusetts visiting relatives when a fire began in town at a beautiful old large church, that was surrounded by 4 story limestone and brick bow-front apartment houses that were for the most part, occupied.  We were driving to my cousins house in the hills overlooking the city when we saw smoke, and I asked my cousin to go see what was happening.  Long sad story short, we witnessed one of the two gold domed towers slowly melt and collapse into the street as a massive Rose window contorted grotesquely under the heat, and finally fall to the steps below.  We stayed and watched for awhile, but for me, burning historic structures are hard to watch, and we just had to leave.  We saw the story on the news, and the church at that point was a near loss, and the fire had begun to spread to neighboring structures with the aid of light winds.  I went to bed, praying that there would be no loss of life, and that the multi-alarm response could end this fire quickly. When I awoke in the morning, AN ENTIRE CITY BLOCK had burned, with only the church school escaping demolition in the days following the event.  There were still brick walls here and there obviously, but the guts of the buildings had burned, allowing many walls to collapse.  When we went down to see it, there before us was a scene of post WW2 Berlin.  It was pathetic looking.  All of this was caused by kids playing with matches.  The overall density and building type is very similar to OTR, so I do believe this could happen in our beloved neighborhood as well.

 

Take a look for yourself at the "after" pics to see how this could easily be just about any block in OTR.  With the right conditions, it could turn into several blocks in an area like OTR where there are soooooo many vacant structures, as open upper story windows allow fires to spread VERY quickly.

 

http://members.tripod.com/HPD231/08291999.htm

 

The fire-prone neighborhoods of the basin were destroyed for I-75. The area where Queensgate is today (Kenyon-Barr), was the sort of cheap wooden housing that could go up in flames real fast. The other area was Bucktown (Eggleston Ave.), but that's been gone for 80 years or so by now. OTR as REK notes is filled with seriously well built buildings. The benefit of being a working/middling-class 'hood rather than a poor one.

In terms of what's left, OTR is a fine example of a pre-1900 urban neighbrohood. The problem is the vast majority is abandoned. This was built for 50,000 people, not 8,000. Even taking into account shrinking household size, that gap will never be made up.

 

That last sentence I think is most important, because in all honesty the neighborhood was not built to house 50,000 people like it once did.  It was extremely overcrowded with inhumane living conditions (just like the old West End/Queensgate/Lower Price Hill areas).  So while abandonment is a part of it, it is also the thinning that is in large part to blame for the population decline.  I think it abandonment is completely erased in OTR in present day then I think it will grow to a population of around 20,000.  I just don't see how it could get much higher than that.

 

There is no way OTR is still that dense.  There are hundreds of gaps.

 

OTR is still pretty much that dense in terms of urban form.  The majority of the density lost was in the northwestern portions of the neighborhood where the breweries once stood.  This was the densest part of OTR and has seen the greatest loss in terms of actual built form.  The rest of OTR has seen its fair share of losses, but it's not overly dramatic, and some of those gaps have been filled in with similar size/scaled structures (see Walnut Street, Pleasant Street, Mulberry Street).

 

OTR today...

 

 

Very nice. For those that complain about what was lost, just be thankful Cincinnati is not Columbus. Our Downtown is 25,000 people short (peaked at 30,000 in 1950 and we went from 3,000 to 5,000 from 2000) and there is only one intact block that doesn't have a parking lot. There are plenty of excellent B&W photos of Columbus, might as well be a totally different city as far as Downtown. Might have to scan those sometime.

ooh wow. i eat these up. thx!

Below are some figure/ground maps from a study titled:

 

Living In The City:  A Housing Strategy for Cincinnati's Downtown and Over-The-Rhine

University of Cincinnati

College of DAAP

School of Planning

Graduate Comprehensive Studio, Spring 1996

 

While OTR is still very dense, these photos of the Washington Park area show how much of the built environment has been lost.  You can argue and extrapolate this sample as it relates to across all of OTR to your heart's desire....

 

On that map alone, I know of even more demolitions since 1990.  So, I go back to my original statement which was brought in to question, and stand by it wholehartedly.  There are literally HUNDREDS of gaps in the fabric of OTR.  Furthermore, as C-dawg I believe first pointed out, and I agree, there are many more to come in the next 5 years.  Too much has been allowed to sit for FAR TOO LONG. 

It is worth noting that the property arrangement in the neighborhood would encourage new construction to follow the original pattern rather than modern suburban mode.

Yeah, I know I bumped an old thread but didn't know where to put this gem.  IT seems this thread has the largest collection of historic photos (unless I have missed THE one.)

 

Anywho...how would you like it if they never fixed the Kroger?  Yikes!

 

I actually like that old Kroger design...

^Me too. In the photo, at least.

^ Me too . . . in that photo.  The base and top are much better but I still think the blue and white checker color scheme was odd.

No way!  The new is much better.

You just can't get a good used car downtown anymore since Kurt's closed!

Hi,

 

I had mentioned in my post on May 17, 2008 that Tri-County was originally an open-air shopping center.  This morning I rediscovered the post card that I have of the original configuration.

 

Tri-County opened in September of 1960 at the intersection of Princeton Pike and Kemper Road in Springdale, Ohio.  Originally constructed as an open air shopping plaza the complex was enclosed and expanded in the late 1960's/early 1970's.

The anchor department stores were Shillito's on the north near the Circle Freeway (I-275) and Pogue's on the south side.  Both of these chains are now only a memory.  Also, I don't recall the use of the designation of I-275 until 1970 or so.  As a kid that road was always the Circle Freeway.

 

Note the lack of development around the area.  Construction of the Circle Freeway began in 1958 and it does not appear to be open at the time of this photo (which I'm guessing was taken when the complex opened).  Note the subdivision off of Crescentville Road in Sharonville which has not been built out.  A small stretch of I-75 can be seen along the top of the photo approximately where the Ikea store is today.  Only farms can be seen in what was then Union Township (now West Chester).

 

A couple of Cincinnati photos were featured on the Shorpy vintage photo blog yesterday:

 

Along the Levee: 1904 and So Inclined: 1904

 

 

Great find! I wonder if any of the Cincinnati inclines ever crashed. It happened sometimes on other sytems; I'm pretty sure I read about at least one in Duluth, Minnesota that was the result of a powerhouse fire.

 

It would be great if Cincinnati could bring back some of theirs; it would make the city more walkable/bikeable. Being realistic, I know it's cost-prohibitive and the idea would meet a lot of opposition.

There were a couple of pretty famous crashes - one of which accelerated their decline.

I really liked the Riverfront image as well because it shows the direct commercial connection between the City and the River that existed throughout the 19th century. Some of the City's oldest commercial buildings stood until the 1930's and later along the riverbanks but all are now gone along with the old residential area along the river once called "Bucktown". In the mid-1800's it was a den of vice and squalor and helped to push the respectable part of the population out of the basin and into the surrounding hills, hence the need for the inclines. Now, of course, even the inclines are long-gone but some structural remnants remain. I imagine the inclines would be as famous as San Francisco's cable cars if they were still around, but they were built for horses and buggies, not cars and trucks.

You can read a bit about the Price Hill Incline's wreck, in which the rider saved himself by diving into the pile of manure he was hauling up the incline!

 

It's on page 63 of this book, which you can preview through Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=qinwVjChJQIC&lpg=PA101&ots=p0uAy_Kflj&dq=cincinnati%20incline%20crash&pg=PA63#v=onepage&q=wreck&f=false

 

 

  There were at least two accidents on Cincinnati's inclines. One involved a wagon load of manure and a wagon load of sand on the Price Hill incline. The horses were killed, but the drivers survived. The other involved a ruanway car on the Main Street incline in which 6 passengers were killed.

 

    There was also a cable car accident where the car got away and rolled down the hill.

 

    Considering that Cincinnati had 5 inclines that lasted about 50 years, the safety record was pretty good.

... I imagine the inclines would be as famous as San Francisco's cable cars if they were still around, but they were built for horses and buggies, not cars and trucks.

 

If you check out the picture postcard view farther down the page on Shorpy, you see a double-set of incline tracks. Some inclines were built like that (for example Pittsburgh's Mon Incline in the old days) with one pair of cars to carry passengers, and in Cincinnati's case, streetcars, and the other was for heavy freight that might be wagons loaded with lumber or stone/gravel or other building materials and heavy cargo. For that matter, even the old streetcars outweighed today's automobiles by quite a lot.

 

Nowadays, there wouldn't be a need to carry cars; roads already exist, and most car commuters wouldn't be inclined (  :-D ) to wait and take a slow ride, when they could drive to their destination more quickly. The draw would be for pedestrians and cyclists, and tourists would be captivated by the great views from them; it's much more unobstructed than from a cable car or funicular.

 

Check out the view from the Johnstown, PA incline:

Nice, I hear there are plans for an incline at Carillon Park in Dayton.

Here are the photos from the Cincinnati Library's collection of Cincinnati history. Very cool incline photos in here including some of the wrecks mentioned. This is my first time on the site and I love it! Very  happy to see others taking interest in our home and its rich history.

Okay I cant find where I initially saw the incline photos but here are a ton of the Riverboat and shore images!

http://wiki.cincinnatilibrary.org/index.php/Inland_Riverboats_Photograph_Collection