It’s not wrong to think of museums as simply organized — some much more than others — attics. Of course, almost all museums have attics of their own. It’s where they store stuff that exceeds the space available for displays but, like all that stuff in your own attic, is just too good to throw away. The American Sign Museum has always had multiple attics.
The situation became somewhat simplified when the museum moved into its current location in 2012. With the actual museum occupying about half of the approximately 40,000 square-foot building, the other half made a fine attic. I was once treated to a walk through the space when it really was an attic. I was also in the space for the incredible Signmaker’s Circus, a following Coffee With Tod session where museum founder Tod Swormstedt shared some of his thoughts on organizing signs for the Circus, and a presentation on some of the banners borrowed for the Circus (Sideshow Signage). Plans for expanding the museum were well underway when the circus came to town and the cleanup that preceded it could be considered an early step in the expansion. Most of the stuff that was in that section is now stored in other locations and a recent Coffee With Tod session provided a look at one of those locations.
Almost every available sign was pressed into service at the Signmaker’s Circus so I have seen some of the attic’s contents before. The clown and lion trashcan toppers were there. Tod has been on the lookout for the lion’s partners ever since he learned it was part of a Wizard of Oz set. The mortar and pestle hung in the museum’s main section until very recently. After leaving the attic, I stopped by to check out its replacement.
This sign from a closed New York restaurant was in the attached storage area when a retired sign painter stopped by the museum. Tod was there and took the fellow on a personal tour of the area. When they reached this sign, he stopped and stared for a long time then finally announced “I painted that”. “Made my day… my month,” Tod told us.
Letters, we got letters. We got lots and lots of letters. And walls full of neon skeleton signs, too. There are many more individual letters, some much larger than these, stacked around the area. Only about a fourth of the wall of skeleton signs is in the picture.
A couple of long tables were filled with billboard tags. Although I instantly recognized the name Lamar as something I’d seen on billboards, it had never occurred to me that it was something separate from the billboard or that it was collectible in its own right. Guess I never realized that there were so many companies painting billboards, either.
Tod is especially fond of items used by individual sign creators. Here he is showing us a couple of quite old and wonderfully personalized painters kits.
Tod also likes self-promoting signs. This one has the added attraction of being an example of bad design. It includes examples of pretty much every style of lettering the painter is capable of but picking out the painter’s name is quite a challenge and the curious spelling of “windos” makes one wonder if Mack didn’t really plan ahead.
The “ROOMS” and “I.O.O.F” signs are both backlit by candles. Tod opened each of them to show the candle holders but I was at the back of the crowd at the time and missed out on a picture. I am very confident that these unusual pieces will have a home in the museum’s new area.
Most people know that Mohammed Ali’s birth name was Cassius Clay but not everyone remembers that there was a “junior” at the end. The champion boxer’s father was a successful sign painter in Louisville, Kentucky. Cassius Clay, Sr. painted the sign that Tod holds.
Our last stop was outside at three bas-relief sculptures. They and an identical set were once part of Cincinnati Gardens sports arena. The arena was demolished in 2018 and the museum once had the letters from the arena’s name mounted outside the museum. They were removed in preparation for the expansion and will eventually reappear along with this, boxer, basketball player, and hockey player.
Much remains to be done before a completion date for the expansion can be determined. There are expectations that it will be this year and even hope that it might be around summer’s end but no one is foolish enough to make any promises or place any bets. Whatever the date, it’s pretty phenomenal to think the museum will soon double in size and will instantly be almost full. And there will still be an attic.
Amy E. Brownlee is a lifelong Cincinnatian. She naturally learned a lot about the city growing up here then used that knowledge and added much more during her ten years at Cincinnati Magazine. An awful lot of the treasures she writes about in Lost Treasures of Cincinnati were lost before she arrived but a rather frightening number have disappeared during her lifetime. Of course, an even larger number have disappeared during mine. Neither of us is responsible for that. I swear it’s coincidence pure and simple.
The book opens with “Food and Drink” in Section 1 then covers “Entertainment” and “Retail” in the next two sections. The smallest section, “Media”, is followed by the largest, “Community”. Definitions for those section titles are not particularly rigid and the size of the “Community” section probably indicates that it is the least rigid of all. It is where things like churches and breweries, of which Cincinnati had more than a few, appear.
Most, but not quite all, of the breweries mentioned in the book were gone before I got here. Likewise with restaurants and attractions which together comprise the biggest part of things that have disappeared during my lifetime. I caught one show, Hair, at the Shubert (“Entertainment”) before it was torn down. I also saw one movie at the Albee (“Entertainment”) but I don’t remember what it was. I had one meal each at The Gourmet Room and the Maisonette (“Food and Drink”) before they closed. There are quite a few places in this book where I ate one or more meals or watched one or more movies, plays, games, or concerts. Encountering each of them on these pages prompted memories that went way beyond the single paragraph of text. Reading about places that were already gone when I came to Cincinnati didn’t prompt any memories, of course, but it did make me appreciate just how many treasures have been lost.
I really enjoyed reading Lost Treasures of Cincinnati cover-to-cover front-to-back but as I did, two other ways of reading the book came to mind. With its fairly short standalone essays, it seems like a natural fit for that popular personal reading room with the porcelain furniture. Its use as a reference book also seems rather natural. I don’t mean an every-last-detail reference book to use in conducting deep-dive research but a great place to answer questions like “What was the name of that boat-shaped restaurant?” or “What happened to our NBA team?”. The full index will help the book play that role.
Greg Hand has been a man of letters — or at least a man of words — his entire adult life. He began as a newspaper reporter, moved up to editor, left to head up a university PR department, co-authored three books about the university while he was there, then retired. I was not even slightly aware of any of this as it was happening. I only became aware of Hand’s existence when I stumbled upon the blog he started post-retirement. His knowledge of local history and ability to dig up information to augment that knowledge was immediately apparent and I’ve been an ardent reader of that blog ever since that happy discovery. The blog’s name is Cincinnati Curiosities and it can be found 
In fact, later in the book, Hand offers another very different capsulated view of the city. On December 12, 1890, he tells us, “The Palace Hotel had elephant steak on the menu because an elephant was executed by firing squad that morning at the Cincinnati Zoo. Hundreds of people watched. That pretty much summarizes Cincinnati in 1890.”
“The Sensational and the Senseless” is the fourth of ten chapters. Other chapters tell of monsters in the Ohio River (“The Old Weird Cincinnati”), Fanny Trollope’s visit during the “Porkoplis” period (“Tales From the Old City”), the possibility that striptease was invented in Cincinnati (“Freaks, Flesh, and Footlights”), and a large variety of other topics. The striptease claim is based on Millie De Leon’s orchestrated removal of several garters in 1901, and Hand cites the claim in suggesting that a Striptease Hall of Fame might be an “appropriate addition to our Over-the-Rhine neighborhood”. 
Hand’s usually light-hearted reports are often accompanied by contemporary illustrations. At left is a Pears Soap advertisement based on Lillie Langtry’s famous bath in Apollinaris water at Cincinnati’s Grand Hotel in 1883. It’s in the chapter titled “Nudity, Naughtness, and Negotiable Affection”, and if that doesn’t get you interested in the book I don’t know what will.
This was one of the most flat-out enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long time. I have seen Katie perform many times, heard her talk on the radio several times, and even chatted with her personally a few times. I knew her as a talented musician and entertaining storyteller but I did not know her as a writer. Others, it seems, have been aware of Laur’s writing skills for some time. It’s my impression that nothing other than the foreword, an introduction, and Katie’s acknowledgments was written specifically for this book. In one of the book’s essays, Katie talks of selling her writing and says she sold everything she wrote. From that, I assume that each of the essays and stories that make up Red Dirt Girl has previously appeared in print somewhere. Where I don’t know and regret that where ever it was, it was outside my field of vision. That I am only now seeing the literary side of Katie is very much my loss. This gal can write.
