May 2, 200817 yr Kind of makes you wonder what our city would've been like had the great depression not happened and our subway was built. Can someone say Chicago-like? I don't like to think about it actually. Too depressing.
May 2, 200817 yr well, good news is we have either most of the things moving in the right direction or have things in place already to have a city like Chicago. At least there's actually progress! I was at lunch with my old girlfriend today who lives in Chicago and she has tons of friends up there. She said about 90% of them haven't driven in a month because public transit gets them everywhere. Cincy needs an L line for sure. Good thing the streetcars are in motion.
May 2, 200817 yr ^ The silver lining to this is that The L, while very cool, is louder than hell. Living near that thing must be miserable. If Cincy can somehow build a light rail system in the next 10 years, it will be much cleaner and quieter than The L.
May 2, 200817 yr Kind of makes you wonder what our city would've been like had the great depression not happened and our subway was built. Can someone say Chicago-like? Oh, easily ... especially with Cincinnati and the Rail Road being one of the "Big 4" and the river is still used as a way for transporting goods.
May 4, 200817 yr It was actually the river and canals that put us behind Chicago in terms of growth. Cincy was reluctant to embrace the railroads and instead clung to the canals that were soon to be filled in. Chicago had little option and went with the railroads to compliment their other systems. Industry fled Cincy and as the jobs went - so did the people. That's my understanding at least.
May 4, 200817 yr ^ somewhat ironic then that cincinnati is the only city that built and owns its own railroad...right?
May 4, 200817 yr It is slightly more complicated. 1. Without the Civil War, trade continues mostly in a N/S axis which Cincinnati basically dominated, though we would have competed with Louisville and St. Louis. Civil War happened. 2. After quite a bit of battling, New York City capital picked Chicago as its western home (branch banks and the like), also an effect of being in line with the Erie Canal which made the Great Lakes part of NYC hinterland. Philly and Boston are losing national significance at this point (Cincy had lots of Philly/New Jersey connections). 3. Geography. Chicago is flat though marshy and was easy to spread rail around. Cincinnati had those hills which limited its capacity to act as a rail hub, see the discussions on UO as to getting passenger rail to the urban core. 4. In the post-Civil War era, Cincinnati had notoriously poor intermodal systems (i.e. goods came into Cincinnati but took a long time to get back out), Chicago was really good at it. 5. By the late 1870s, Cincinnati's leading lights realized that we were getting passed by Chicago, they remembered that Cincy's grand moment came with trade to the South, so voila a railroad to Chattanooga.
May 4, 200817 yr ^There's also a bit of geographic inevitability to the importance of certain cities. New York City has the largest deepwater harbor on the Eastern Seaboard. Combine that with the Hudson and the Erie Canal and you have a wholly American version of the St. Lawrence system. Chicago sits at the shortest distance between the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence drainage basin and the Mississippi drainage basin. It is the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal that connects these two most important natural highways of communication. And largely because bulk goods, particularly farm products, are more efficiently trafficked via water, Chicago, sitting at the closest point between these two systems, is the natural deposit point. So the railroads were built (by New York capital as dmerkow said) to this most convenient spot. The same thing happened (to a lesser extent) in Houston at the the beginning of the 20th century.
May 5, 200817 yr >Cincy was reluctant to embrace the railroads and instead clung to the canals that were soon to be filled in. I've actually heard that that's a bit of a myth, like a certain oft-repeated quote by Mark Twain nobody can find the origin of. Cincinnati's fundamental problem was that with the decline of river traffic it changed from an east/west to a north/south trading setup. This means the very cities it was trading with on the river were relatively difficult to reach by rail and/or had the misfortune of traveling through other cities due to the river's route (such as Cincinnati > Pittsburgh via Dayton & Columbus). As for the "decline" in river traffic, let there be no doubt that the Ohio remains an enormous advantage to the city with 30+ towboats passing downtown per day. Even the Licking River has a fair amount of commercial river traffic, about five barge movements per day.
May 5, 200817 yr As for the "decline" in river traffic, let there be no doubt that the Ohio remains an enormous advantage to the city with 30+ towboats passing downtown per day. Even the Licking River has a fair amount of commercial river traffic, about five barge movements per day. I don't know much about barges, but how does having them pass Cincinnati via the river help downtown? Do we have a very active port that I'm unaware of?
May 5, 200817 yr >Cincy was reluctant to embrace the railroads and instead clung to the canals that were soon to be filled in. I've actually heard that that's a bit of a myth, like a certain oft-repeated quote by Mark Twain nobody can find the origin of. Cincinnati's fundamental problem was that with the decline of river traffic it changed from an east/west to a north/south trading setup. This means the very cities it was trading with on the river were relatively difficult to reach by rail and/or had the misfortune of traveling through other cities due to the river's route (such as Cincinnati > Pittsburgh via Dayton & Columbus). As for the "decline" in river traffic, let there be no doubt that the Ohio remains an enormous advantage to the city with 30+ towboats passing downtown per day. Even the Licking River has a fair amount of commercial river traffic, about five barge movements per day. Right. It's a bit silly to say that the only city to have financed and constructed (and which still owns) its own major railroad had couldn't see the importance of railroads to the post Civil War economy. It seems to me that the biggest 'cause' of the slowing of growth in Cincinnati was the shift in the American economy after the Civil War from being primarily agricultural to one focused on manufacturing. The higher value added of manufacturing meant that they would be able and willing to pay more for transportation, therefore using railroads more than inland waterways (which to this day are utilized primarily by commodities like grains and coal). The rise of Chicago is no surprise (and I believe it passed Cincy in population in 1863), rather, the rise of Cleveland, Detroit, and to a lesser extent, Pittsburgh, really illustrate what happened to Cincinnati. These towns, closer to new booming industries (oil, general manufacturing, coal and steel), and above all, better connected to the East/West Great Lakes/St. Lawrence axis, began to rise at much faster rates than the Queen City. As dmerkow said in an earlier post (possibly in a different thread), the pre-Civil War American economy was largely focused on the economics of slavery. Cotton was the biggest export, the biggest cash crop, and the manufactures of the north largely served the needs of the South that focused almost relentlessly on this incredible money maker. After the Civil War, the tables turned, with what was left of the American cotton-growing industry sending it's product north to be manufactured here rather than to Great Britain (Egypt and other places jumped into the mix in the meantime) and U.S. exports begin to be typified by manufactured goods, rather than just raw materials. There are somethings even a Cincinnati City Councilman can't control.
May 5, 200817 yr Cincinnati has the nation's 4th or 5th largest inland port. They aren't just floating by.
May 5, 200817 yr Cincinnati has the 4th largest inland port in the U.S. -About the Port of Cincinnati: The Port of Cincinnati is comprised of 26 miles of waterways along both banks of the Ohio River and is the fourth largest inland port in the U.S. Each day nearly 200 barges travel through the port carrying commodities that include petroleum, crude materials, manufactured goods, food and farm products. Approximately 4,000 jobs annually are attributed to transportation activities at the Port of Cincinnati.- http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2008/0222.shtm
May 5, 200817 yr One of the other "challenges" that set in economically in the post-war period is that Cincinnati's industries tended need skilled labor rather than the unwashed masses that settled along the Great Lakes. The pluses and minuses of that continue through the present in that the region tends to lag in boom periods but hold up quite well in downturns (though the last half of a century has generally been unkind to the entire Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region).
May 5, 200817 yr Interesting article about the Cincinnati Southern. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B05E6D8173EE233A25750C0A9649C946997D6CF&oref=slogin
May 6, 200817 yr >Cincinnati has the nation's 4th or 5th largest inland port. They aren't just floating by. The Ohio River and the Lower Mississippi can be thought of as the "interstates" of the inland waterways...the action never ends. There are industries all up and down the river from the Great Miami to downtown Cincinnati then they pick back up upstream from the Coney Island bridge. The Licking River has 2 or 3 places that receive barges. Even the concrete plant right in front of Paul Brown Stadium has barges fleeted there.
May 6, 200817 yr Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center stats from 03. http://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/ndc/wcsc/pdf/inlandport03f.pdf
May 6, 200817 yr Take a look at the webcam today! I count 6 bulldozers going full steam! What's that got to do with inland ports and the civil war???
May 6, 200817 yr Oneglove, what does inland ports and the Civil War have to do with the title of this forum? back to the topic of The Banks...how far back will the garage be built?
May 6, 200817 yr Oneglove, what does inland ports and the Civil War have to do with the title of this forum? back to the topic of The Banks...how far back will the garage be built? He's probably being sarcastic. lol I'd guess it stops to where the park begins. Man, I cannot wait until construction of the park begins! Can you guys imagine a Party-in-the-Park down there?
May 6, 200817 yr Can you guys imagine a Party-in-the-Park down there? Even more sandals and Bud Light than at Sawyer Point?
May 6, 200817 yr ^ Yuck, on both counts. Speaking of which, when is Moerlein going to get involved in some of these festival-style activities? There are a ton of Cincinnatians who don't realize that Moerlein is a local beer, and I'm getting pretty tired of my choices consisting of Bud and Miller products. I love when the mobile Warsteiner bar shows up, though!
May 6, 200817 yr Can you guys imagine a Party-in-the-Park down there? Even more sandals and Bud Light than at Sawyer Point? Yep, or Sam Adams! Can't forget about Sam Adams!
May 7, 200817 yr ^ Yuck, on both counts. Speaking of which, when is Moerlein going to get involved in some of these festival-style activities? There are a ton of Cincinnatians who don't realize that Moerlein is a local beer, and I'm getting pretty tired of my choices consisting of Bud and Miller products. I love when the mobile Warsteiner bar shows up, though! The readers of UrbanCincy disagree with that statement: http://www.urbancincy.com/2008/05/christian-moerlein-favorite-local-beer.html back to the topic of The Banks...how far back will the garage be built? I'm pretty sure that it will go to the area where the current wall is now. The one that forms the southern boundary of the current riverfront parking lots.
May 7, 200817 yr Awesome. By the way, I'm a smartass by nature so anything that sounds remotely like an argument from me...its not;) I walked down to the site yesterday and I had to really take in the scope of the project. The area of the first phase alone is gigantic. You look down and it's a 25 foot drop to the ground...jeeeeeeeesh!
May 7, 200817 yr The readers of UrbanCincy disagree with that statement: http://www.urbancincy.com/2008/05/christian-moerlein-favorite-local-beer.html Yeah, but I'd argue that the readers of UrbanCincy are much more aware of "all things Cincinnati" than most. Your poll also informs the respondant that Moerlein is in fact, a local brew, meaning that some people might have been drinking it, just not realizing it was local. If you mention to a run of the mill Cincinnatian that Christian Moerlein is a local beer, most of them have no idea. The ones that do know this usually are unaware that it is local again, knowing only that it was originally before being bought out. I'm a huge fan of Moerlein. I like that it's local, I have a ton of respect for the fact that they are buying up as many of the "Cincinnati beer brands" as they can get their hands on, and they have been releasing some killer seasonal beers. I'm very much looking forward to them opening a brewery in OTR, especially if they offer tours like Miller does in Milwaukee. Back on topic, I've always thought that there should be a Moerlein Bar at The Banks, similar to the Goose Island Bar in Wrigleyville. It would be cool if you could buy tickets for the tour at the Moerlein Bar, ride the streetcar to the brewery (possibly included in the ticket price), take the tour and then ride back to the bar for dinner and a few beers.
May 7, 200817 yr ^ Yuck, on both counts. Speaking of which, when is Moerlein going to get involved in some of these festival-style activities? There are a ton of Cincinnatians who don't realize that Moerlein is a local beer, and I'm getting pretty tired of my choices consisting of Bud and Miller products. I love when the mobile Warsteiner bar shows up, though! It's all about the $. To sponsor the big events takes a whole lot of sponsorship money that smaller brewers don't have. Sadly, though, most of Cincinnati likes those beers. In fact, Cincinnati has one of the highest levels of lite beer consumption in the US.
May 7, 200817 yr Back on topic, I've always thought that there should be a Moerlein Bar at The Banks, similar to the Goose Island Bar in Wrigleyville. It would be cool if you could buy tickets for the tour at the Moerlein Bar, ride the streetcar to the brewery (possibly included in the ticket price), take the tour and then ride back to the bar for dinner and a few beers. ^This is on topic?
May 7, 200817 yr I think a Christian Moerlein brewpub, at The Banks, would be a great fit. Ideally I would prefer it be in the Brewery District, but I can definitely see them getting more business at The Banks. They could then do some sort of brewing operations in the Brewery District...that would appease me. The readers of UrbanCincy disagree with that statement: http://www.urbancincy.com/2008/05/christian-moerlein-favorite-local-beer.html Yeah, but I'd argue that the readers of UrbanCincy are much more aware of "all things Cincinnati" than most. Your poll also informs the respondant that Moerlein is in fact, a local brew, meaning that some people might have been drinking it, just not realizing it was local. If you mention to a run of the mill Cincinnatian that Christian Moerlein is a local beer, most of them have no idea. The ones that do know this usually are unaware that it is local again, knowing only that it was originally before being bought out. I know...just throwing it out there.
May 7, 200817 yr ^This is on topic? LOL. Only in that it relates to The Banks and things that could exist there. I think a Christian Moerlein brewpub, at The Banks, would be a great fit. Ideally I would prefer it be in the Brewery District, but I can definitely see them getting more business at The Banks. They could then do some sort of brewing operations in the Brewery District...that would appease me. Yeah, I could see the Brewery District being a good fit for that. If it was open for regular hours, I'd support it. But if it was on site with the brewery and only open limited hours, I'd rather have it operating somewhere else like The Banks.
May 7, 200817 yr If Cincinnatians like their lite beer, perhaps the answer for the Banks brewpub should Hudy De-Light instead of the hoity-toity Christian Moerlein.
May 8, 200817 yr I was actually hoping to have a place where all of the Moerlein-owned beers are available, from OTR to Burger. Don't they own Hudy now? If so, I'd hope to see it on tap as well.
May 8, 200817 yr What about Little Kings . . . Van Halen, hot summer nights . . . those were the days.
May 8, 200817 yr Moerlein owes just about all the Cincinnati brands, including a lot of the original ones. I think he has over 100 labels (not including the new ones) Hudy Delight Hudy 14K (coming back) Burger (coming back) Little Kings (still being brewed)
May 8, 200817 yr Most Kroger's have had Little Kings steadily for years. I've gotten Little Kings recently in Columbus and in a BP in Athens.
May 15, 200817 yr The site is being filled with more and more heavy equipment. Can't wait to see them start on the garage. Bye Bye gigantic poo patch.
Create an account or sign in to comment