Cincinnati’s City Hall is a building of a different color. It can’t be easily ignored but, although I’ve driven and walked by it countless times, I, like almost all of the participants in Thursday’s tour, had never before been inside. The building’s architect was Samuel Hannaford, who also designed Cincinnati’s Music Hall and many other buildings of note. Construction started in February of 1888. The completed building was dedicated May 13, 1893. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. It has been damaged by fire, insulted by, among other things, having marble wainscoting covered by wood paneling, and, like all too many not-so-new structures, threatened with demolition. I sure do appreciate it sticking around until I could finally find time for a visit.
What I actually found time for was the inaugural Cincinnati Museum Center Heritage Programs Cincinnati City Hall Tour. Unbeknownst to me, tours of the building have long been available and can be arranged directly as described here. CMC Heritage Programs adds a nice presentation on the building’s and the city’s history plus arranging access to a few places not always included in the other tours.
Stone from six different states (Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee, & Vermont) and Italy are used in the building. Inside, beautiful marble staircases connect the four floors with equally beautiful stained glass windows at each landing.
Cincinnati’s mayor and nine member council meet weekly in this chamber. The current arrangement is a recent one. For most of the building’s existence, council met at a circular table in the middle of the room. After people protesting a 2001 police shooting completely filled the space, things were changed so that the officials sit facing the room. At one point, the ceiling was covered with acoustic which has now been removed to reveal four paintings and other details. The massive chandelier was once painted black.
For many, most definitely including me, the highlight of the day was the tower. The clock room was near the midpoint of the climb of 109 steps.
The climb continued to the open level containing the huge bell. The cube at lower right in the first picture houses the clock mechanism. A cable can be seen rising from it to control the bell’s clapper.
The wonderful views from the bell level include the spire of Saint Peter in Chains Cathedral, completed in 1845, backed by the recently relocated headquarters of Pure Romance. The downtown relocation of the nation’s largest seller of “relationship and intimacy aids” was not without controversy.
The view in the first picture is one that the guides alerted us to before the climb. Those with a significant fear of heights can find the sight of the street far below quite unnerving. On the way up, we had paused at this level while the bell rang out 11:00 o’clock. A close look at the second picture reveals the cable running upward from the clock mechanism and the shafts connecting the mechanism to the clock faces.
As we were for most of the tour, we divided into two groups for the tower climb. One group hung out in council chambers while the other climbed. I was part of the first set of climbers and now had the opportunity to check out the view from the gallery and make a brief power grab.
The current building replaced a much smaller one, built in 1852, on the same site. The large metal seal, mounted high in the courtyard of the current building is all that remains from the older one. Terrible riots, in which the courthouse was destroyed, had shaken Cincinnati in 1884. With that in mind, City Hall was built with something of a fortress flavor that can be seen in elements like a “watch room” in the tower and the heavy steel doors on the courtyard.
There is definitely a lot of information in this book. That’s why it’s here. I’ve often said that all my reviews are positive not because I like everything I read but because I see no reason to spend time reviewing something I don’t like. The Authentic History of Cincinnati Chili had me wavering. The subject matter is clearly in my strike zone. History? Check. Cincinnati? Check. Chili? Are you kidding? This looks like a book that could have been written specifically for me, right? Digging into it, however, was not quite as tasty as I thought it would be.
One of the few undisputed facts of Tecumseh’s life is the date of his death. The date of his birth is only known approximately and there are multiple possibilities for its location. He was born about March 1768 somewhere in the Ohio territory. It’s pretty much accepted that he met his end at the Battle of the Thames but that statement isn’t quite as precise as it might appear. While it is generally believed, as most reports indicate, that he died as a combatant in the battle, reports do exist that describe his death as an accidental shooting some distance away from the actual fighting. What no one questions is that Tecumseh was alive on the morning of October 5, 1813, and dead at the end of the day.
Not only did I graduate from high school smack dab in in the middle of the ’60s, it was smack dab in the middle of the Henkalines, too. There were four of them; a girl and three boys. The girl was a few years older than the boys. The oldest boy graduated a year before me and the next a year after. Though I was most familiar with the two boys closest to me in age, I knew them all. It was a small school in a small town in rural Ohio. Everybody knew everybody.
Like most of the world, I had no idea this book even existed before the movie about the New Yorker kidnapped into slavery came out. When I saw the movie, I was moderately less impressed than some but I left the theater with two basic questions: was the book an actual memoir and how close did the movie track it? As I poked around the internet, I encountered no suspicion that either Solomon Northup or the story he told were fiction which made the answer to the first question “yes”. I then located a free PDF copy of the book and set out to answer the second question myself. I had my doubts as I read the book’s early pages but it became apparent before too long that that answer was “very close”.
3. Boar’s Head Festival – 1940
On this day fifty years ago I was a high school junior. I do not even remember most of the day and some that I do remember is foggy and questionable. I remember some very small pieces all too well. I remember going to my chemistry class and taking a seat in the second or third row. It was the rightmost seat facing the teacher’s desk and the wall of blackboards. My memory is that the principal, Mr Pawlowski, entered before class actually started and gave us the news though it might have come from Mr Conrad, the instructor. In my memory, Mr Pawlowski quickly moved on to personally deliver his message in other classrooms so that every student heard the same version. It is logical and might indicate how important he thought the message — and its uniform delivery — was but I cannot be certain that my memory is accurate. The message was, of course, “The President has been shot.”
President John F Kennedy was officially pronounced dead at 1:00 PM CST; The same time as the posting of this article. The scan at left is of an introductory page of my high school’s 1964 yearbook. I imagine something similar appeared in the yearbooks of thousands of schools across the country. I believe the picture is a closely cropped version, with the background removed, of the official one at the beginning of this article.
Everyone loves a winner and, in 1794, the United States Army finally became one. In his earlier work, 
This Flash is not a fleet-footed tights-wearing superhero. It is, or was, a publication, though saying it was about superheroes would not be wrong. The Flash‘s banner reads “A publication of the 78th (Lightning) Infantry Division Veterans Association dedicated to the preservation of the friendships established in 2 world wars”. The association is disbanding. There just aren’t that many friendships to preserve anymore.