January 27, 201015 yr Good God, this is definitely pre-1930! Look at this density ... 1893 Damn ... Pre-1910? 1947
February 8, 201015 yr Great hats and such style. I really like the guy's in the bottom right: Where is the Bijou? This is so cool on so many levels!
February 8, 201015 yr I love these sturdy little houses in Bond Hill... I grew up on a street not much different than that. This is pure Cincinnati. Just for the hell of it, I found the same location on Google Street View:
February 9, 201015 yr I love these sturdy little houses in Bond Hill... I grew up on a street not much different than that. This is pure Cincinnati. Just for the hell of it, I found the same location on Google Street View: Wow, the one on the right should lose those awnings and go back to the shutters. That wonderful stone arch is completely hidden now. It also looks like they both houses have had their porches glassed in. I love the garage door in the original picture as well. I can't say enough about how great this entire photo set is. Wow!
February 9, 201015 yr I liked how there was a Luebbers running for Court of Common Pleas in 1938 and there is a Luebbers on the Court of Common Pleas today.
February 9, 201015 yr >So I'm guessing the last one is Sycamore, right at the turn... I'm guessing that's actually the turn from Klotter onto Conroy. The building on the inside turn of Sycamore is brick and certainly older than these photographs.
May 28, 201015 yr A few more excellent photos turned up on Shorpy recently: Bellevue Incline (maybe), 1905 view from Mount Adams, c. 1909 (left) and (right)
May 29, 201015 yr That's definitely the Bellevue Incline. The street shown is West Clifton Ave. and the building at the far right is UC's old medical college.
June 1, 201015 yr wow check out that funky riverfront stuff where the stadiums are now. i bet those got flooded a lot tho. anyone know -- whats the difference between an incline and a funicular? i ask because there is a modernized funicular subway in haifa, israel. doesn't get much use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmelit
June 2, 201015 yr ^I don't know the difference between the two, but it reminded me of this song: http://www.mainstreetpainesville.org/
August 17, 201014 yr 1848 Daguerreotypes Bring Middle America's Past to Life http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_daguerrotype_panorama/ n 1848, Charles Fontayne and William Porter produced one of the most famous photographs in the history of the medium — a panorama spanning some 2 miles of Cincinnati waterfront. They did it with eight 6.5- by 8.5-inch daguerreotype plates, a then-new technology that in skilled hands displays mind-blowing resolution. ---------------- Here's just one piece, click for the rest and some higher-resolutions! edited 08/27/2010 to correct spelling of "equivalent" in title
August 17, 201014 yr The 10x zoomed view on the wired website is really, really cool. Is there any way to zoom in on all the pics and not just the first one?
August 17, 201014 yr I think it's only the one, as far as I can tell. The article mentions that the Cincinnati Public Library will have a full resolution version up sometime within a year, hopefully soon! The article goes on to say that the image is crisp and clear at 30x zoom, so keep that in mind while you're looking into windows in the 10x zoom!
August 17, 201014 yr This is actually rather amazing. I could spend quite a bit of time studying these photos. Notice on one of the right side (east side) images you can see a stone arch bridge, which I guess crosses either Deer Creek or the Miami & Erie Canal (or both?). Mnt Adams was just getting developed, it seems. The hills are all denuded...wow...and consequently look "shorter" than they do with trees.
August 18, 201014 yr "You can see a stone arch bridge..." The bridge carried Third Street over the Miami and Erie canal. There are some other surviving hand-drawn pictures that include that bridge.
August 18, 201014 yr I was really struck by how low the water level in the Ohio River was in the last picture.
August 18, 201014 yr This is such a fantastic set of images and the restoration sounds amazing. It's fascinating how the city looks reasonably modern in some ways despite this snapshot being 160 years old. It was fun to see this in Wired on a very long and dull day in which the magazine was the only available entertainment. Is a high-res version of the original image no longer available for download anywhere? Granted I did just a couple minutes of Googling but only turned up some online viewers and no download links. I could swear I used to have a pretty high resolution image (before this fancy restoration) that was downloaded from some archive site or other several years ago.
August 18, 201014 yr "I was really struck by how low the water level in the Ohio River was in the last picture." The Ohio River in Cincinnati is impounded by Markland Dam, which was completed in 1964. Before that, it was impounded by Fernbank Dam, which was completed in 1911. Few living people have seen the Ohio River in it's natural state.
August 24, 201014 yr ^ you mean the low water level at that moment. what strikes me right away is that scene is just frighteningly awaiting a terrible flood. this is a fascinating find, something you can look at over and over again and find new stuff -- thanks.
August 24, 201014 yr You can see quite clearly in this photo how much higher downtown Cincinnati is than the riverfront area. The ground level of the Literary Club house (about the only building still standing visible in this photo) is at about the fourth or fifth level of the buildings on the immediate waterfront. Cincinnati is the only spot for hundreds of miles where this happened, where the ancient Ohio deposited silt in this way. It's the entire reason why the city exists.
August 25, 201014 yr Before the most recent remodeling, the Main Branch of the Public Library used to have this entire panorama displayed on a first floor wall, behind the service desk. I always loved looking at it. Jake, is the Literary Club the 3-story building with what looks like a Palladium window above the doorway, to the left of a stepped-up white building? If not, can you try to pinpoint it for us? A good friend of mine lives in the oldest house (pre-dates the Civil War) in Mt. Adams at the corner of St. Gregory and Hill Streets. I think it's in the daguerrotype -- it's kind of a Greek Revival style.
August 25, 201014 yr The panorama is still there in the library, or rather I think they redid it. I remember seeing it when I was a kid, then was surprised to see it again in an art history class in college. This is the first panoramic photo ever, or at least the first one that was widely exhibited. It was first exhibited in Philadelphia and then the next year in London. So yes, Cincinnati is the birthplace of the now-ubiquitous panoramic photo. In the history of photography it is Cincinnati's one notable contribution, since for reasons that baffle me it was passed over by many of the country's famous photographers. Wide angle lenses were non-existent in the 1840's so there was naturally an impulse to create panoramas. But this one in particular is very well done as there was then as now some challenge in keeping the camera completely level as it is turned for each shot, and then of course lining the edges up exactly. That task became a lot easier in the 1900's with polaroid proofs, but is still somewhat challenging to hit on the head. I believe that is the literary club basically at top left-center with the porch, and the street running up to it is Lawrence Street. This is the point where the street grid kinks. Okay I checked and yes I'm pretty certain this is it:
August 25, 201014 yr Thanks, Jake. I appreciate the more-recent photo of the Literary Club (what was I thinking?). The Ohio Bookstore on Main Street published "Kramer's Pictorial Cincinnati" a long time ago that included photos of various buildings and landscapes circa the 1890's. I just popped into the bookstore but sadly, they no longer have any copies.
August 25, 201014 yr The picture of the present day Literary Club looks remarkably like Jacob Strader's house at the top of Lawrence in plate #4 of the Cincinnati Panorama and is in extremely close proximity. Unfortunately, the Literary Club is to the east of the Strader House location (just barely). Also, while the Literary Club was in existence in 1848, the building in the present day photograph was not constructed until several decades later. It's likely that it was intentionally designed to resemble the house of one of Cincinnati's most prominent citizens at the time.
August 25, 201014 yr I think you're right. The scale and porch is the same but the roof design is definitely different.
August 30, 201014 yr You can see quite clearly in this photo how much higher downtown Cincinnati is than the riverfront area. The ground level of the Literary Club house (about the only building still standing visible in this photo) is at about the fourth or fifth level of the buildings on the immediate waterfront. Cincinnati is the only spot for hundreds of miles where this happened, where the ancient Ohio deposited silt in this way. It's the entire reason why the city exists. you can also quite clearly see how nice that is for people on the higher ground, but that there is a lot of unguarded looking low ground in those old shots too that looks plenty ripe for flooding problems. and what do you know but like all river cities cinci and the region has a long history of that: http://www.enquirer.com/flood_of_97/history5.html
August 30, 201014 yr Incidentally, Cincinnati's unused subway is well above the 1937 flood level. Its floor is at least 15 feet higher. That hasn't stopped anti-rail forces from declaring that it was flooded, and because of that subways are impossible to build in Cincinnati.
October 28, 201014 yr There are a number of people in that panorama. Some are actually better captured than those two, though they may be the closest to the cameraman. edit- there are some on the steamboat Embassy, towards the aft on the top deck, they may be the closest. There's a group of several people plus a horse and buggy dead center in the photo, and one nearly perfectly developed person standing alone in the middle of the muddy/rocky no mans land just to the left of them. He appears to be wearing a top hat.
October 28, 201014 yr That is totally awesome. I missed the original post because I was on vacation that week...
October 28, 201014 yr This finally made it to the Enquirer: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/ourhistory/2010/10/28/photos-cincinnati-in-1848/ "It's just fate, as usual, keeping its bargain and screwing us in the fine print..." - John Crichton
November 18, 201014 yr ha so does anyone else find this photo just as interesting as that insane kowloon walled city thread over on ssp? i didnt think anything would ever compete with that thread until this photo came up (which i'd heard about before but had never actually seen). i cant get over it - its endlessly fascinating to look at.
November 19, 201014 yr It's been on display at the main library since I was a kid. It's about 20 feet long but it's up high and not detailed enough to where you could see the people. This photo is a part of every standard history of photography class, so it wasn't obscure among art majors. For reasons that are unclear to me, Cincinnati has been completely skipped over by famous American photographers since.
November 19, 201014 yr It's been on display at the main library since I was a kid. It's about 20 feet long but it's up high and not detailed enough to where you could see the people. This photo is a part of every standard history of photography class, so it wasn't obscure among art majors. For reasons that are unclear to me, Cincinnati has been completely skipped over by famous American photographers since. except that people who have been to a main library and have not only attended college but taken photography history courses pretty much excludes not only most of the cinci metro and people in college, but 99.99etc% of americans as well. well wait, i would hope most people in the region have been to the main library at some point, at least on a school field trip or something? the recent publicity is what bumped this photo up into the zeitgeist for the general public.
November 19, 201014 yr I'm surprised that it has interested this many people, because when it comes to old photos, for the most part, people are just interested in the clothes.
November 19, 201014 yr If I'm not mistaken, it's back in the news because of the new level of clarity it was restored to by some professors somewhere. It's not much, much clearer than the older versions are.
November 19, 201014 yr "I'm surprised that it has interested this many people, because when it comes to old photos, for the most part, people are just interested in the clothes." The same goes for recent photos.
December 30, 201014 yr http://cincinnativiews.net/images-4/1920%27s%20Aerial.jpg Enjoy. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
December 30, 201014 yr A quick comparison with this photo, and any equivalent aerial view from Google Maps/Bing Maps/Mapquest, etc. will show that the majority what you see was wiped off the face of the earth. However thankfully, most of the area of Over-the-Rhine & Prospect Hill (sub-neighborhood of Mt. Auburn) seen in this photo has remained intact. I could probably lose a lot of time getting lost in this photo. Can you imagine if the West End remained wholly intact (without the construction of Laurel Homes & Lincoln Court) and the slummy areas were allowed to gentrify to an extent? Sometimes I think the destruction of the West End as seen in this photo might have been as great of a loss in the history of this city as the unfinished subway. Possibly greater.
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