Complete index
Everything here, all thirty-one of them
Six sections, in order of date. Every page on the site is listed below.
The Landing · 5 pages
- Losantiville, 1788: the Name Nobody KeptJohn Filson coined 'Losantiville' from a hybrid of Latin and Delaware for the settlement opposite the Licking River mouth; Arthur St. Clair renamed it Cincinnati for the Society of the Cincinnati in 1790. This piece traces both names to their sources and explains why the Society's name stuck.
- One Bend, One Terrace, One GridThe Ohio's northward loop at Cincinnati created a natural terrace — the 'basin' — that made the site defensible, flood-resistant by 1788 standards, and reachable by flatboat. Covers the original survey, the street grid and why no other Ohio River town grew as fast in the first fifty years.
- Findlay Market Has Been Open Since FillmoreOhio's oldest continuously operating public market opened in 1852 on land donated by James Findlay; this piece covers the market's physical layout, its Over-the-Rhine context and the vendors who have occupied the same stalls across multiple generations.
- January 1937: the River Takes the City BackThe January 1937 Ohio River flood crested at 79.99 feet (National Weather Service, 1937) — the highest recorded level — and displaced an estimated 60,000 Cincinnati residents. Covers the cresting timeline, which neighbourhoods went under first and what the waterline marks still visible on buildings actually mean.
- When the Steamboats Came BackTall Stacks, the periodic gathering of historic steamboats on the Cincinnati riverfront, drew more than a million visitors to its 1988 inaugural event; this piece covers the boats that appeared, the history they were assembled to mark and what the event said about the city's relationship with a river it had largely stopped using.
Porkopolis · 6 pages
- Two Brothers-in-Law and a Candle Factory, 1837William Procter and James Gamble were persuaded by their shared father-in-law, Alexander Norris, to combine their soap and candle operations in Cincinnati in 1837. Covers the founding conditions — the pork-rendering industry supplying cheap lard, the river giving them a national market — and the Ivory Soap launch of 1879 as the moment the company became something larger.
- Barney Kroger's Single Rule: Never Sell What You Can MakeBarney Kroger opened his first grocery on Pearl Street in Cincinnati in 1883 with $372 borrowed capital and one operational principle — own the bakery behind the shop. This piece traces the chain's Cincinnati origins, its early vertical integration and its move to 1014 Vine Street.
- Empress, 1922: the Stew That Renamed ItselfTom and John Kiradjieff opened Empress Chili in 1922 near the Empress Burlesque theatre, serving a Macedonian-spiced meat sauce over spaghetti in ways — two-way, three-way, four-way — that have no equivalent elsewhere. Covers the recipe's Macedonian origins, the way-system, and the founding of Skyline in 1949 by Nicholas Lambrinides, a former Empress cook.
- What the German Butchers Did with the Pin OatsGoetta — pork and beef bound with steel-cut oats, sliced and pan-fried — arrived with Cincinnati's nineteenth-century German immigrant population and remained almost entirely local until Glier's Meats of Covington began commercial production in 1946. Covers the dish's German origins, its geography (concentrated in the old German neighbourhoods) and why it never spread.
- The French Pot and the Chip That Shouldn't WorkGraeter's has produced ice cream by the French pot process — a two-gallon spinning cylinder that produces intense density — since Louis Charles Graeter opened on Sycamore Street in 1870. Covers the French pot method, the black raspberry chocolate chip product that emerged from it, and why the chip-before-flavour layering technique is native to the process.
- Lager in the Basin: the Breweries the Eighteenth Amendment FinishedBy 1890 Cincinnati had more than thirty breweries, the largest being Christian Moerlein's on Elm Street; Prohibition ended most of them, with Hudepohl surviving as one of two post-Repeal operations of scale. Covers the German lager tradition in the basin, the Moerlein and Hudepohl operations, and Rhinegeist's founding in 2013 in the former Moerlein bottling plant on Elm Street.
Queen City · 6 pages
- Syd Nathan Pressed Everything on Brewster AvenueKing Records, founded by Syd Nathan in Cincinnati in 1943, recorded country, R&B and gospel under one roof at 1540 Brewster Avenue and released James Brown's first records in the mid-1950s. Covers Nathan's deliberate genre-mixing, the physical plant on Brewster, and the argument that King's catalogue made it one of the most significant independent labels in American recording history.
- The First Team That Admitted It Was Paying EveryoneThe 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first openly all-professional baseball club, going undefeated through 57 games under Harry Wright. Covers the decision to go fully professional, the 1869 roster, the cross-country tour and the loss to the Brooklyn Atlantics in June 1870 that ended the streak.
- Riverfront Stadium, 1970–76: What the Machine Actually WasThe Cincinnati Reds teams of 1970–1976 — the Big Red Machine — won back-to-back World Series in 1975 and 1976 at Riverfront Stadium. Covers the roster as a documented record, the stadium's artificial turf context and Pete Rose's place in the documented history of that club.
- Maria Longworth Nichols and the Kiln on Eastern AvenueMaria Longworth Nichols founded Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati in 1880 in a former schoolhouse on Eastern Avenue, producing art pottery that won a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. Covers Nichols's founding of the enterprise, the standard glaze and tiger-eye techniques developed by 1890, and the Rookwood tile installations still visible in the Carew Tower lobby and Union Terminal.
- Eighteen Years on the Ohio Bank Before She Wrote the BookHarriet Beecher Stowe lived in Cincinnati from 1832 to 1850, crossing into Kentucky and witnessing the operations of the Underground Railroad before writing Uncle Tom's Cabin. Covers her time at the Lane Theological Seminary household, the specific Cincinnati episodes that entered the novel and the Walnut Hills house where she lived.
- 24 May 1935: Crosley Field Turns the Lights OnThe first night game in major league baseball history was played at Crosley Field, Cincinnati, on 24 May 1935, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in Washington to switch on 632 floodlights. Covers the technical installation, the Reds' 2–1 win over the Phillies that night and what the event meant for attendance figures across the league.
Deco & Flood · 5 pages
- A Station Built for 216 Trains a DayCincinnati Union Terminal, designed by Fellheimer & Wagner and opened in 1933, was built to handle 216 train movements daily and is one of the largest Art Deco half-dome structures in the world. Covers the building programme, the Winold Reiss mosaic commission, the terminal's rapid decline after 1945 and its conversion to the Cincinnati Museum Center.
- 574 Feet, and the Tallest Thing Here for 80 YearsThe Carew Tower, completed in 1930 at 574 feet, held the title of Cincinnati's tallest building for eight decades and contains the Netherland Plaza hotel, whose Hall of Mirrors is one of the most intact French Art Deco interiors in the United States. Covers the Shreve, Lamb & Harmon design, the Rookwood tile installation in the lobby and the observation deck's documented sightlines.
- The Tunnels That Never Carried a PassengerCincinnati broke ground on a rapid transit subway in 1920, completed 2.2 miles of tunnel beneath Central Parkway by 1927, and then stopped — leaving the infrastructure intact and unused beneath the city. Covers the funding collapse, the three separate occasions the city voted on finishing it and the current state of the tunnels.
- Winold Reiss Had One Year to Cover 14,000 Square FeetGerman-American artist Winold Reiss produced the mosaic programme for Cincinnati Union Terminal between 1932 and 1933, covering the rotunda and concourse in scenes of Cincinnati industry using Venetian glass tesserae. Covers Reiss's sourcing of tesserae, the industrial subjects chosen for the panels and the mosaic restoration carried out in the 1990s.
- The Waterline Marks Are Still on the BuildingsA companion piece to the narrative account: a structured record of the 1937 flood's documented measurements — crest height, affected street elevations, relief operations and the specific neighbourhoods whose waterlines are still visible — sourced from National Weather Service and Red Cross records dated 1937.
Still Standing · 5 pages
- The Bridge Roebling Built Before He Built the Other OneJohn A. Roebling's Ohio River suspension bridge, completed in 1866 at a main span of 1,057 feet, was the longest suspension bridge in the world at opening and served as the direct engineering prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge. Covers the cable design, the 1866 opening, and the specific structural elements Roebling carried forward to Brooklyn.
- Music Hall: the Building the City Voted to Tear Down TwiceCincinnati Music Hall, opened in 1878 to a Samuel Hannaford design in High Victorian Gothic, was condemned and nearly demolished on at least two separate occasions before a 2017 restoration returned it to use. Covers the original May Festival commission, the two demolition campaigns, the rose window's survival and the 2017 restoration budget (approximately $143 million, as reported by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, 2017).
- The Largest Nineteenth-Century Italianate District in the CountryOver-the-Rhine's roughly 900-block stock of Italianate and Italianate-Romanesque buildings constitutes what the National Register nomination (2003) called the largest such intact district in the United States. Covers the German immigrant settlement that built it, the canal that gave the neighbourhood its name and the cornice-bracket vocabulary that unifies the streetscape.
- Isaac Mayer Wise Wanted Minarets in CincinnatiThe Plum Street Temple, completed in 1866 to a James Keys Wilson design with Moorish Revival minarets, was commissioned by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise as the home of American Reform Judaism's central congregation, K.K. Bene Yeshurun. Covers Wise's theological project, Wilson's design sources and the building's status as one of the oldest continuously used synagogues in the United States.
- The Genius of Water Has Been on Fountain Square Since 1871The Tyler Davidson Fountain, cast in Munich by August von Kreling and installed on what became Fountain Square in 1871, depicts the Genius of Water — a female figure with arms raised, water spraying from her hands and from figures below. Covers the commission by Henry Probasco in memory of his brother-in-law Tyler Davidson, von Kreling's design and the three times the fountain has been relocated within the square.
Across the River · 4 pages
- The Two Towns Cincinnati Needed on the Other BankCovington (platted 1814) and Newport (1795) grew as Kentucky counterparts to Cincinnati — processing industries, lower land costs and, before the bridges, ferry crossings that made them functionally part of the same city. Covers the economic relationship, the German and Irish settlement patterns and how the two cities' downtowns changed after the Roebling Bridge opened.
- From the Covington Anchorage, the Bridge Reads DifferentlyThe Covington anchorage and approach to the Roebling Suspension Bridge present a different engineering reading from the Kentucky side — the Gothic towers, the cable geometry and the original toll plaza approach. Covers the anchorage construction, the original toll structure and what the Kentucky approach reveals about Roebling's design that the Cincinnati side does not.
- Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse: the Ribs and the River, TogetherMontgomery Inn's Boathouse location on the Ohio riverfront in Cincinnati opened in 1989, extending a rib restaurant operation founded by Matilda Gracin in Montgomery, Ohio, in 1951; the piece covers the restaurant's documented history and its riverfront siting rather than its current menu.
- Tod Swormstedt Collected Signs Before Anyone Called It PreservationThe American Sign Museum, founded by Tod Swormstedt in Cincinnati in 1999 and now housed in a 19,000-square-foot former factory in Camp Washington, holds the largest documented collection of American commercial signage. Covers Swormstedt's founding collection, the Camp Washington building and the chronological layout that walks visitors from hand-painted nineteenth-century trade signs to 1980s neon.