Man I wish I could go back in time and just walk around one of our old neighborhoods during Cincinnati's glory days, back when we were like the 6th largest city in the U.S. I can't believe the housing stock in this photo. Do you realize how much of this is NOT here anymore? And do you realize this picture doesn't even come CLOSE to showing the entire downtown area?!

Thats just the West End/Queensgate, and only a handfull of the buildings is still standing. 

When I saw the following shot from ColDay and my recent flight, I immediately thought of the shot you just posted, David...not the same angle, but you get the idea:

 

 

Poor quality, with a strut in the way, but you get the idea...hopefully ColDay got a better shot...

 

 

 

Nice contrasting shots... clearly that area was rezoned

hey David, do you have a date on thet picture ?

I found it on a website and I forgot the name of the website. Union terminal was built in the early 1930s right? It would have to be as recent as that.

It is a crime what urban renewal did to cities.  That would have been the best neighborhood anywhere if it were still standing.  All of those buildings flooded in 1937, and I have a feeling that was the beginning of the end for the West End. Urban renewal and the interstate highway system did it in.  Whole blocks were probably demolished at once to make room for modern warehouses.  A true tragedy.

That picture is on Jake Mecklenborg's site (cincinnati-transit.net) and he has labeled it as late 1950s.  I'd be interested to know where that picture comes from, actually.

^ It might be ODOT.  They have some aerial shots of Columbus from the 50s and early 60s that make Columbus look like the second coming of Chicago.

^Is it customary to take a photograph before you kill something?

For highway engineers, yes.

Magyar if you or someone else could muster up those downtown Columbus 1950s-Esque pics or preferably the west side where I lived as a young kid I'd be greatful beyond comprehension  :]

It's not hard, just go to http://www.odotonline.org/photoarchive/

Just filter by Franklin County and Interstates (though I have found ODOT's archiving something not to be desired)

^Thanks for the link.

 

I especially like this pic of BUTLER County! It made me go stark white.

 

^ That's not the Canton football hall of fame?

As I stated earlier.  ODOT's archival work on these photographs is lousy. 

I'm not sure if Inkalin goofed on his own or if ODOT incorrectly described the photo being in Butler County.

Oh come on! :roll: You think I can't recognize Canton? Notice my following comment.."I went stark white." STARK!!!

Oh come on! :roll: You think I can't recognize Canton? Notice my following comment.."I went stark white." STARK!!!

 

Then what was with the Butler County blast?!  Now that we know it was intentional on your part, I find it annoying.

Butler County Blast? Why would I ever want to blast Butler?

 

I was drawing attention to the fact that ODOT has that pic under Butler, when anyone with any general idea of where said county is should be able to easily identify something is not right. I was blasting ODOT.

Talking about density,

In Changing Plans for America's Inner Cities it sez:

"The plan (1925 Master Plan) also recommended the melioration of the housing problem with special reference to the basin, where conditions had become so acute that social agencies found it "impossible ... to provide anything like a satisfactory solution to the family problems which they are attempting to adjust." The problem stood out most starkly in the lower West End, where "the majority of the colored people" lived with six to twelve people per room crowded into the oldest and most unsanitary dwellings. Here, as in other black enclaves outside the basin, rents had more than doubled and families spent at least one-quarter of their average annual income for rent."

 

It was denser than it looks in the pic !

The first pic is in a book I have, I will try to find it and get the date.

so many buildings torn down :(

I really don't think this picture is from the 50's, probably the 40's though.  I say this because if you look at the top middle of it, you can see Crosley Field w/o any surface lots around it.  I know that several of the surrounding buildings were torn down to provide parking for the Red's, but as to what year that started, I don't know.

i wanna go back in time and somehow find a way to preserve this.  absolutely depressing looking at the before and after pics on here if you will.  Oh well, atleast Cincy still has OTR.  Just imagine an endless OTR though. 

what a great photo. and the "after" shot really brings it home. ugh.

 

cinci had 500k peeps at that peak time. still, if you think that is density, imagine up north in clev w/ a slightly smaller total city acreage and around a million people during that same mid-century time period. one way to think about it, just the teardowns and pop loss since then in both cities if put back together in one place would make for a bigger 'new' city than either c today.

 

oh well, now we have lots of parking & our beloved burbs. who needs trees to breath and farms to eat, etc.? more ugh.

 

Are there any similar photos out there of Cleveland? That would be interesting to look at.

All I can think about when I see pictures like this is the amazing daydream that goes something like this:

 

How great would it be if I-75 had not been built right outside Crosley Field and the stadium/neighborhood remained today as it was in its prime? The only thing comparable would be Wrigleyville... and it would be right there in Cincy's West End; one of the few crown jewels of American ballparks... a "must see" destination for all sports fans and urban enthusiasts... a vibrant neighborhood full of history, activity, housing, retail, restaurants, bars...

 

wow... there I go again...

^ Only thing is, Crosley wouldn't be seen as a Wrigley Field.

I certainly don't see why not... but I guess this could go down as one of the most pointless disagreements in the history of this forum!

 

regardless - it's something great to daydream about when you see these pictures.

Are there any similar photos out there of Cleveland? That would be interesting to look at.

 

Not exactly analogous but KJP posted some awesomely fascinating Cleveland photos and narrative about lost density at http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2047.0

what a great photo. and the "after" shot really brings it home. ugh.

 

cinci had 500k peeps at that peak time. still, if you think that is density, imagine up north in clev w/ a slightly smaller total city acreage and around a million people during that same mid-century time period. one way to think about it, just the teardowns and pop loss since then in both cities if put back together in one place would make for a bigger 'new' city than either c today.

 

oh well, now we have lots of parking & our beloved burbs. who needs trees to breath and farms to eat, etc.? more ugh.

 

 

Yea its pretty crazy to think about.  Obviously C-Land was overall more dense but was there any 'hood more dense than this pic?  Cincy obviously would never be as dense as C-Land cuz of its geography.

The photo is from a book called "Cincinnati: The Queen City" by Iola Silberstein and was published around 1981.  It is an odd book because it is neither scholarly nor a coffee table book and had a lot of mediocre photos by her husband in it.  I honestly don't know where my dad got it, it and a handful of other Cincinnati books were always on our bookshelf.  My guess is that only a few thousand were printed, and I don't particularly recommend it. 

 

As for Crosley, I am too young by a few years to have seen it in person but I guarantee you all it was a dump.  Because all of the old stadiums were dumps.  I have been to games at Fenway, Tiger Stadium, and Yankee Stadium, and they're all dumps.  Don't let Red Sox people intimidate you with how great Fenway supposedly is.  I got in there and I was like this is it?!  You feel like you're in a temporary stadium that they just kept up.  The surroundings are dumpy and I-90 is only a block behind the Green Monster, just a few feet farther than I-75 was from Crosley's outfield wall.  As for Wrigley, there is a Taco Bell and McDonald's right across from it, as well as a car wash.  That's what makes this whole retro stadium thing so hilarious -- if you were to blindfold someone and put them on Yawkee Way or whatever those streets are around Wrigley and not let them see the stadium, they'd never believe it's there.  It reminds me of my friends who drove up to Point Barrow from Cincinnati about five years ago on that dirt road that parallels the Alaskan Pipeline.  It goes right through the now notorious Arctic Wildlife Refuge.  They said it's for the most part a mosquito and sand fly infested featureless plain.  No arm chair environmentalist down here would EVER believe them; they have this idea it's this paradise of frolicking unicorns.  When it comes down to it, the old stadiums were dumps -- perhaps lovable dumps, but still dumps.       

 

My grandfather does not recall Crosley fondly, when you drove down there you had to pay the neighborhood boys to "watch" your car when you parked on those side streets.  And once the Reds started tearing down the surroundings for parking, it was all over.  As for Riverfront, I can't overemphasize how exciting it was to go to games for me when I was a young kid.  I went to the game before Pete Rose broke the record in 1985 and we sat behind the scoreboard in the center field red seats.  This is before the JumboTron was added and scoreboard expanded.  It was SO exciting and the stadium was so new and modern at that time, even though it was already 15 years old.  Even when they won in 1990, there wasn't a single person who was thinking in just a few years Riverfront would be considered a dinosaur and nearly every team would build a new stadium in an 8 year frenzy. 

 

what sits at the site of crosley field now? I'd like to go over there with my metal detector if at all possible :)

There's just a small warehouse there.  There is a marker of some kind but I haven't tried to find it. 

 

This is from 1962, the park was still in operation until 1970, so as can be seen here things had deteriorated quite a bit by this point.  The recently cleared route of I-75 is clearly visible. 

 

Getting back to my last post, it's hard for people to imagine today but Astroturf, the Westin Lobby, and all these things that are hated today from the 70's and early 80's were really impressive and fascinating when they were new, and of course they were new and not faded like they are now, if they remain at all.  That's why I am so skeptical of what teenagers and what undergrads in design and architecture students seem to think is so fascinating and wonderful now -- it's a new face but largely just repeating past patterns of thought.   

 

 

Great shot of Crosley and its surroundings jmeck!

 

However, be careful to not lump all young students/professionals into one category.  Some certainly do look towards these items that may very well be repeating mistakes of the past.  But there are a large number of young people out there who respect what history has taught them and look to incorporate that knowledge into their own work.  I look at new pieces of work that are coined as 'progressive/inovative' with some skepticism.  I make an informed decision about the things I work towards rather than just trying to do something 'inovative', but I will look to be both respectful and creative at the same time...hopefully there is nothing wrong with that.

The photo is from a book called "Cincinnati: The Queen City" by Iola Silberstein and was published around 1981.  It is an odd book because it is neither scholarly nor a coffee table book and had a lot of mediocre photos by her husband in it.  I honestly don't know where my dad got it, it and a handful of other Cincinnati books were always on our bookshelf.  My guess is that only a few thousand were printed, and I don't particularly recommend it. 

 

As for Crosley, I am too young by a few years to have seen it in person but I guarantee you all it was a dump.  Because all of the old stadiums were dumps.  I have been to games at Fenway, Tiger Stadium, and Yankee Stadium, and they're all dumps.  Don't let Red Sox people intimidate you with how great Fenway supposedly is.  I got in there and I was like this is it?!  You feel like you're in a temporary stadium that they just kept up.  The surroundings are dumpy and I-90 is only a block behind the Green Monster, just a few feet farther than I-75 was from Crosley's outfield wall.  As for Wrigley, there is a Taco Bell and McDonald's right across from it, as well as a car wash.  That's what makes this whole retro stadium thing so hilarious -- if you were to blindfold someone and put them on Yawkee Way or whatever those streets are around Wrigley and not let them see the stadium, they'd never believe it's there.  It reminds me of my friends who drove up to Point Barrow from Cincinnati about five years ago on that dirt road that parallels the Alaskan Pipeline.  It goes right through the now notorious Arctic Wildlife Refuge.  They said it's for the most part a mosquito and sand fly infested featureless plain.  No arm chair environmentalist down here would EVER believe them; they have this idea it's this paradise of frolicking unicorns.  When it comes down to it, the old stadiums were dumps -- perhaps lovable dumps, but still dumps.        

 

My grandfather does not recall Crosley fondly, when you drove down there you had to pay the neighborhood boys to "watch" your car when you parked on those side streets.  And once the Reds started tearing down the surroundings for parking, it was all over.  As for Riverfront, I can't overemphasize how exciting it was to go to games for me when I was a young kid.  I went to the game before Pete Rose broke the record in 1985 and we sat behind the scoreboard in the center field red seats.  This is before the JumboTron was added and scoreboard expanded.  It was SO exciting and the stadium was so new and modern at that time, even though it was already 15 years old.  Even when they won in 1990, there wasn't a single person who was thinking in just a few years Riverfront would be considered a dinosaur and nearly every team would build a new stadium in an 8 year frenzy. 

 

 

well i cant quite get with all of that. i think your view of cinci and riverfront is totally clouded by the success of the big red machine and i dk your age maybe the mighty 1990 reds too. great teams, but it was a notorious crappy cookie cutter stadium downtown yet in the middle of nowhere and frankly i hated it. the new park is so much better and will be even better in the near future (the banks). crosley maybe turned into a dump after that 1962 pic when they ruined the surrounding neighborhood with those parking lots and its reason for existing. i am sure crosley was much better when it was closer to and within an intact urban fabric. what a sad long slide it suffered.

 

i couldn't disagree more about wrigleyville and fenway's back bay neighborhood -- even today these are classic old school and intact walk up to the game urban neighborhoods. the 'oldness' of those stadiums is eternally refeshing if you ask me. tiger stadium was pretty isolated as long as i ever knew, but still to this day was easily my fav baseball stadium ever for enjoying a game. so its not like neighborhoodliness clouds my vision of old stadiums - ha. yankee stadium? well, you have a point there. the mid-70's renovation was absolutely horrible and ruined it and of course the nabe is certainly sketchy. but still, nothing beats it for atmosphere on a big game day. even tho i am no big hok fan, i do appeciate theirs and others new retro stadiums being built back within the more urban grounds of the home city. its so much better than your fulton co stadiums of old, etc.

 

 

I found my copy of the book, it is actually called:

"Cincinnati Then & Now" by Iola Hessler Silberstein

©1982 The League of Women Voters of the Cincinnati Area

 

 

The photo is from page 233 with the caption:

"Cincinnati's West End in 1930, before Laurel Homes was built.  Note the lack of any open space between the buildings."

 

This caption is incorrect, Union Terminal was completed around 1933.

 

>well i cant quite get with all of that. i think your view of cinci and riverfront is totally clouded by the success of the big red machine and i dk your age maybe the mighty 1990 reds too.

 

My point was that we can look back now and wonder how people ever thought those stadiums were great, and I'd answer that I was absolutely fascinated by it when I was young.  The astroturf, how the seats converted for football, even just the gian plaza, all of that was amazing.  At that time nobody really talked about the old stadiums with any reverence.  Building one multi-purpose stadium was much more logical than building two stadiums, then and now, and there certainly wasn't anything wrong with watching baseball in one of those stadiums until someone introduced the idea around 1994. 

 

>i couldn't disagree more about wrigleyville and fenway's back bay neighborhood -- even today these are classic old school and intact walk up to the game urban neighborhoods. the 'oldness' of those stadiums is eternally refeshing if you ask me. tiger stadium was pretty isolated as long as i ever knew, but still to this day was easily my fav baseball stadium ever for enjoying a game. so its not like neighborhoodliness clouds my vision of old stadiums - ha. yankee stadium? well, you have a point there. the mid-70's renovation was absolutely horrible and ruined it and of course the nabe is certainly sketchy. but still, nothing beats it for atmosphere on a big game day.

 

Yeah well the Reds are so worried about being family friendly they won't even let you get rowdy in the stands.  When I go down there with a group of dudes we almost always get threatened with dismissal and some angry looks from moms.  Worst of all is some pudgy 30 year-old dude trying to have a nice first date down there.  They don't want anything coming between them and their big-hipped woman.  Meanwhile, you can go nuts at a Bengals game and nobody cares.  A Yankees game is a football crowd at a baseball game.  The police escort out anyone supporting the visitors once the crowd turns on them.   

 

 

 

 

 

I love Fenway.  Always have; Always will.  No one will ever convince me Great American is better or Riverfront was better.

 

 

 

 

 

When I saw the following shot from ColDay and my recent flight, I immediately thought of the shot you just posted, David...not the same angle, but you get the idea...

 

Just a thought: with Google earth, and a better knowledge of Cincy geography than I possess, you could probably get a fairly precise "after" framing. Just a thought.

At the far right of the photo, just across Linn St from Washburn school, you'd see Laurel Homes, if it was after 1938.  So my guess is it's between 1933 & 1938.

I think it has to be before 1937.  I would think a lot of the buildings were torn down after the 1937 flood.  This whole area was under water at that time.

>My point was that we can look back now and wonder how people ever thought those stadiums were great, and I'd answer that I was absolutely fascinated by it when I was young.

 

Let me add to my own comment.  A few weeks ago I watched a half hour film on ESPN Classic on the 1970 All-Star game, which was opening night of Riverfront Stadium.  That game was AWESOME, and that's all that matters.  Johnny Bench throwing that dude out was AWESOME.  Pete almost killing Ray Fosse was AWESOME.  The lack of steroids was AWESOME.  The whole stadium building surge of the 90's was a gigantic swindle, "they" introduced the idea that the multi-purpose stadiums were "obsolete", then passed new revenue sharing contracts where luxury box revenue DIDN'T have to be shared meaning EVERYONE now needed these stupid luxury boxes.  We've been paying this sales tax in Hamilton County now for 10 years and have a grand total of one playoff game to show for it.  I can tell you, because I was there, that the atmosphere in Riverfront at times was AWESOME because what was going on in the field was.  The atmosphere at some of my gradeschool and high school games was AWESOME and the bleachers were made of wood planks or parents were sitting on lawn chairs they brought.  If you think that there is some sort of magic to Fenway or Wrigley, you are fooling yourselves.  They are tourist/yuppie traps.  Going to a Cyclones game at the Cincinnati Gardens circa 1994, that was the real thing.     

sure the funding for those stadiums sucks, but sorry jm but i could not agree less re the stadium itself.

 

what was awesome was a winning team. a good game. i'm glad you had fun and being a clev fan i envy your championship memories. thats great.

 

otoh, riverfront and it's ilk were not good stadiums for baseball nor for their communities. the isolated tower in the park drawbacks were well known, shame on them for pushing that failed school of thought forward in the new stadiums of those days. 

 

the nineties stadiums were much better off drawing their inspiration from fenway and wrigley than riverfront, etc were from corbu and shea.  sure they are a fad, but better a fad based upon community integration than upon inhumane isolating starchitecture principals like the 70's stadiums.

 

all the original old stadiums were built within their communities, there was a reason for that. check out a game at fenway and you can still see why. it's nothing to do with yuppies, wrigley/fenway were there long before that term was coined. if and when the banks gets built out and transit improved, you may see the same in cinci one day too regardless of how well the team is doing.

 

bottom line there is no reason why a stadium cannot be more integrated into the community like they used to be. that model worked fine, it was our cities that were torn apart and the 70's era stadiums were a reflection and a response to that. quite a sad one i'd say. today, thankfully we are relooking at our urban core much, much differently.

 

 

 

Ahh I wanna go to Boston. Id love to see Fenway in person... Looks like a nice old facility with a lot of character. :)

 

I love the design of Great American ball Park, it's much more modern but in Boston's case, some technological advancements on the inside would suffice I think.

Which would you rather have -- retro stadiums and steroids or farm boys in flying saucers?  Baseball today is a complete disaster and I have not been to a MLB game on principal since about 2000 due to the steroid nonsense.  I refuse to support in any way an activity so massively corrupted and mismanaged by Bud Selig while Pete Rose remains in exhile down in Florida.  Watch the vintage footage of Pete, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, the cool professionalism of Hank Aaron and so many others and then compare it to that indifferent goof Barry Bonds.  And I just can't believe people aren't more fired up about this and don't boycott the whole damn sport. 

 

 

 

 

   

Umm...I urge you to look at the build of football and basketball players of the past compared to now as well. Hell look at how bodybuilding has evolved. Steroids are not just a problem in baseball it's just that baseball has been getting the publicity. Steroids provide more of an advantage than just strength. It improves a batter's concentration and precision when he's hitting the ball. Jose Canseco was caught and wrote a tell-all book and started the huge mess. If certain players are using 'roids then of course other players are going to as well, as 'roids begin to set the status quo. I don't think people need to boycott baseball, the sport is fading out anyway. It's no longer America's favorite past time.

To answer your question I'd rather they were all tested for steroids and banned for atleast a year if they come up positive. Every single league. MLB,NBA,NFL,PGA, whatever. TEST EVERYBODY. People have no idea how bad steroids are for you, especially for the long-term. A lot of athletes will stack Winstrol with different brands or stack them with Pro-hormones,and it multiplies the amount of stress on your liver and kidneys.

 

Even though Bonds broke the home run record he's gonna have to live with the fact that he didn't do it, the drugs did, and that's a sad reality. I don't even want to know what kind of liver and kidney medication Arnold is on right now just to stay alive. It's so much harder on your body than alcohol. Test every athlete!

^Look at footage and photos of Arnold working out in his prime, he was beyond obsessed.  They probably at that time had some idea that steroids were bad in the long run, and I believe at that time they were in fact legal in body building only because they were so new, but he was too competetive to care about the long run.  There was a photo of him at the beach that ran in the tabloids a year or so ago, he looked terrible.  Obviously as governor he's not able to work out as much, but the dude is also like 58 now. 

 

Looking at sports in recent decades, sports medicine and exercise and weight lifting equipment have made huge strides, but to a large extent that is because people don't grow up working on farms and doing heavy, constant physical work like they did for all of time previous.  Pete Rose cites his winter unloading boxcars in the railroad yard as what put him over the top strength-wise in the minors.  When you do 60-80 hours of manual labor a week, you build up your forearms, wrists, and other areas in much more useful ways than any weight lifting routine.  This is becase when you have to step awkwardly with heavy crap, hand heavy stuff to another dude across a gap, etc., you are building up muscle and support and the way the body works together in ways isolating specific muscles and movements can't.  This is a big reason why guys who lift weights all the time but do nothing else are actually wimps.  Virtually none of today's pro athletes or aspiring ones work physical jobs in the offseason, if they did, I'm convinced they'd be surprised at just what they're missing.     

^Look at footage and photos of Arnold working out in his prime, he was beyond obsessed.  They probably at that time had some idea that steroids were bad in the long run, and I believe at that time they were in fact legal in body building only because they were so new, but he was too competetive to care about the long run.  There was a photo of him at the beach that ran in the tabloids a year or so ago, he looked terrible.  Obviously as governor he's not able to work out as much, but the dude is also like 58 now. 

 

Looking at sports in recent decades, sports medicine and exercise and weight lifting equipment have made huge strides, but to a large extent that is because people don't grow up working on farms and doing heavy, constant physical work like they did for all of time previous.  Pete Rose cites his winter unloading boxcars in the railroad yard as what put him over the top strength-wise in the minors.  When you do 60-80 hours of manual labor a week, you build up your forearms, wrists, and other areas in much more useful ways than any weight lifting routine.  This is becase when you have to step awkwardly with heavy crap, hand heavy stuff to another dude across a gap, etc., you are building up muscle and support and the way the body works together in ways isolating specific muscles and movements can't.  This is a big reason why guys who lift weights all the time but do nothing else are actually wimps.  Virtually none of today's pro athletes or aspiring ones work physical jobs in the offseason, if they did, I'm convinced they'd be surprised at just what they're missing.       

 

I agree, that isolation stuff isn't even that effective. When I go to the gym, the power rack (for doing squats) practically has spider webs growing on it. No one does those, or deadlifts, or rows, or any other compound movement exercise, because it's actually painful and requires a lot of work. You exercise almost 70 percent of the muscles in your body from doing squats.

I agree, Arnold looks like crap and you'd think he'd be able to retain what he's achieved atleast somewhat. I think he does still work out, his body probably just doesn't know how to manufacture hormones anymore after they've been injected so many years.

 

On the other hand look at Sylvester Stallone; he's 60 years old and in the same shape he was in at 25. check out the clip for the new rocky movie. I hope I'm doing this at 60! 

^Well when playing actual sports you are using your whole body and building up useful strength, I am talking mostly about people who just lift weights.  Also, people today usually lift weights in air conditioning instead of garages or beaches like people used to.  People like to work out on that modern equipment so that they know exactly how much they're lifting, what their heart rate is, how many calories they're burning is, and so on. 

 

As for old dudes who can kick my ass, when I was 22 I was on about mile 5 of a 18 mile hike up a 14,000ft. mountain in California, not struggling, but just walking my own speed up the sandy barren slope at about 13,000ft with a light pack.  I saw a dot in the distance bounding across the sand and rocks down from the peak and when it got closer it was a dude who was about 50 JOGGING out in the middle of nowhere at that altitude with just a water bottle.