Cincinnati: Middle America's Best Kept Secret

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

Cincinnati is Delta Airlines' second biggest hub yet most visitors come by car from places less than eight hours distant. Yet although 60 percent of America's population lies within 600 miles of this contented city, Cincinnati remains America's undiscovered jewel. The pleasures found in Cincy USA are treasured all the more because they're so unexpected. Many of us know Cincinnati lies somewhere on the Ohio river and we've heard of its museums, symphony, ballet and opera but that's about it all.

Most visitors don't know Cincinnati has the world's largest hand-made stained glass window, or largest free-standing half-dome structure, the world's largest collection of ventriloquist dolls, and, er, the highest number of chili parlors per capita. This bustling city across the river from Covington, Kentucky, can also boast of some American firsts including the first professional baseball team, licensed public TV station, weather bureau, and concrete skyscraper. It was the first city in the nation to establish a municipal university, create a Jewish hospital, build a heart lung machine and mount the world's largest pediatric training program.

That's all in the past, of course, and hardly enough to bring today's tourists. Fortunately there's more. And in human size bites.

The Unknown Cincinnati is easily discovered in a few days because this city with only 350,000 population is quite compact. It's popular with its residents, too. This is the city that nurtured Harriet Beecher Stowe and Steven Spielberg, Stephen Foster and Roy Rogers, Neil Armstrong and Johnny Bench, William Howard Taft and Tony Trabert—and Tyrone Power, Rod Serling, Andy Williams, Doris Day and George Clooney. And a baseball team that's won five World Series from 1869 to 1990 and has 37 members in the Hall of Fame (Johny Bench, we surely remember you).

There's more here than the Cincinnati Reds, from the Paramount Kings Island theme park and the Cincinnati Zoo to a special attraction for physicians: the magnificent collection in the Medical Heritage Center of replica 15th century Cantagalli pharmacy jars. There, too, are the microscopes, archives and awards of Albert B. Sabin, the physician whose work eradicating poliomyelitis saved so many children.

What else to see?

The first immigrants were English followed by Germans, Irish and Greeks, all putting their stamp on their new city especially the Germans; Cincinnati's Oktoberfest is the world's largest after Munich's. Many of the bricks that built MainStrasse were baked by German hausfraus in their own home ovens. Prior to World War I the street signs were in German. To experience this, cross the river to Covington, Kentucky and its MainStrasse village, one of the routes of the old Underground Railway—it's ten minutes in a car from downtown Cincinnati with its Glockenspiel clock, its Carroll Bell Tower, little shops and restaurants like Dee Felice which, unaccountably, serves Cajun food and offers Dixieland jazz.

The nearby Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption whose inspiring Gothic design was copied from Notre Dame's has the required flying buttresses and gargoyles and the world's largest stained glass window. The figures carved on the arched entrance were never completed but statues otherwise abound in Cincinnati ranging from that of Abraham Lincoln, without a beard, to Cincinnatus, the Roman general, from whose prowess 2,500 years ago the city took its name, and a bronze from Rome, a sister city, with Romulus and Remus suckling from the mother wolf.

Mt. Adams, perched high above the river, is like San Francisco, a cool artsy area with interesting boutiques, neat little bars and restaurants with skyline views of the city. Eden Park, adjacent to it, hosts the Krohn Conservatory, the Playhouse in the Park and the Art Museum

Which museums?

The Cincinnati Art Museum is generously endowed. In 1820 Cincinnati was the largest western city in America and there's lots of evidence of old money in town. Cincinnati was the first city west of the Alleghenies to have a museum specially built to show art; its theme clearly is "five thousand years of art."

The Taft Museum, on the other hand, is famed for its paintings, its Chinese porcelains and French enamels. Don't miss the collection of 370 year-old enameled pocket watches or the Jan Steen painting ca. 1663 The Doctor's Visit, or the stunning curved ivory tusk representing the Virgin of St. Dennis, carved about 1260–1280 in France, and called by the locals the "Oldest Virgin in Cincinnati,"

The Museum Center with its jaw-dropping rotunda is a revelation. In 1944 the Union Terminal, a few blocks west of downtown, moved 34,000 passengers a day but as rail travel dropped in importance the vast building, big enough to hold 14 football fields, fell into disuse. Now, as the Cincinnati Museum Center it offers both the History Museum's two magnificent exhibits of Cincinnati at war, and Cincinnati in history, and the superb Museum of Natural History & Science with its Omnimax theater and great hands-on exhibits for children. Check out the hat racks under the seats of its Scripps Howard Newsreel Theater and the original Rookwood tiles in the Ice Cream Parlor.

Where to stay?

The classic hotel is the Cincinnatian (513 381 3000). It opened in 1882 as the Palace Hotel with rooms costing $1.25 to $1.75 and when it closed, decades later, as a rundown flophouse the prices were the same. The building was completely gutted except for its wood and marble staircase. It reopened in 1951 and, in 1987, after $30 million had been spent on it, became today's Cincinnatian Hotel.

Although both Millennium (513 352 2100) and Westin (513 621 7700) hotels sit around the corner—also on Fountain Square—the only competition for nostalgia buffs is the Netherland Plaza now a Hilton hotel (513 421 9100). The Netherland has lobbies of great black-flecked marble and golden sconces as becomes the city's Art Deco hotel.

What’s cookin’?

The best place to dine in Cincinnati for 56 years one block east of the Cincinnatian was always the Maisonette but it closed in 2005, the owner declaring he couldn’t avoid the “cash-flow crunch” of satisfying today’s public. The Palace restaurant in the Cincinnatian still wins plaudits among the city's restaurants, although the Westin's Albee offers the bustle and fun of Fountain Square below its windows.

Worth a lunch visit for both food and decor is the Rookwood Pottery restaurant (513 721 5456) in Mt. Adams, now one of our National Historic Places. You can have a private table in some of the kilns once used in this famous place. Rookwood Pottery was started in Cincinnati by Maria Longworth Nicholls Storer, America's first successful woman entrepreneur. "We have great clay in Cincinnati," says Lois Smith, a local guide. "Gardeners hate it!"

Next door to the Rookwood, with an impressive view and on the same Celestial Street, perches the Celestial Restaurant and Incline Lounge (513 241 4455). Be there for the sunset and the city lights.

Another view, a panoramic one of the Ohio river—and the water freight that each year exceeds that through the Panama and Suez Canals—comes with dinner at the Montgomery Inn Boathouse (513 721 RIBS). Believe that phone number. And reserve your table if you can—this place buzzes at night so expect to wait. After all, it's where Bob Hope always got his ribs.