Holy Cross Immaculata Church adorns Mt. Adams: a stone sanctuary atop a sedimentary clay promontory. You stand in front of the main entrance, as if on a platform, looking down the steep, chutelike steps that pilgrims climb on Good Friday burdened with heavy crosses. The sloping street below is lined with handsome, freshly painted houses.
There is something about the scene–the clear light, the tilted angle, the glittering jumble of downtown towers in the background–that reminds you of that famous picture of Victorian houses in San Francisco. Home and office, work and play, in a single shot. It is a warm autumn evening, and strains from choir practice drift out an open door.
To the left of downtown, almost touchable, flows the Ohio River. Reflected in its current are the lights of bridges, including one so delicate that it looks like a toy. It is the Roebling Bridge, the prototype for the most photographed span in New York. (Yes, in this Midwestern city whose claims for firsts invariably include the qualification “west of the Alleghenies” stands the original Brooklyn Bridge.)
The fortress blocking a part of the Ohio is Riverfront Stadium. It is one of the grim, high-walled girdles that were constructed in the 1970s, often in waterfront cities: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. Putting an enclosed stadium on a river is like building a windowless vacation house on the beach. What were we thinking back then? Baseball as a mystery cult? (Bullrings are never open at one end.) Or were our cities just too dreadful to contemplate from the upper deck?
Today we know better. Our stadiums have opened up to reveal–in Baltimore and, to the horror of Cincinnatians, Cleveland–brilliant, embraceable skylines. It seems only civic justice, when you stand at the entrance to Holy Cross and look out over this upright city, that the Indians made it to the World Series this year and the Reds did not.
For so long Cincinnati was Ohio’s pride, the first city west of the Alleghenies to have a permanent opera, symphony, fill in the blank. And its baseball team, when the Indians were floundering, won with machinelike precision.
“Cleveland,” a local says with genuine wonder, “used to be such a dirty place. You’d never go to Cleveland.”
Cincinnati was different; its German immigrants gave it a disciplined orderliness. (When they don’t understand you, some Cincinnatians will still say, “Please?” instead of “Excuse me?” a direct translation of the German “Bitte?”)
The air had improved since Anthony Trollope’s visit in 1862, when he wrote of “the odour of hogs going up to the Ohio heavens.” (Cincinnati, a k a Porkopolis, was the true “hog butcher of the world,” producing not only sausages but soap; Procter & Gamble is still one of the major employers.)
Cincinnati was never compared in jokes to the Titanic. Unlike Columbus, it produced no Thurbers to mock its Midwestern respectabilities. Its famous native sons and daughters have tended toward entertainment: Steven Spielberg and Rosemary Clooney, whose actor-nephew George talked recently on “The Tonight Show” about his pet pig. (Not, his father, Nick, asserts, a nod to his hometown’s past.)
But now that Cincinnati has been eclipsed in its own small state–no World Series, no Hall of Fames–it is talking of building a new stadium for the Reds. You walk the access areas around Riverfront–a vast concrete wasteland suspended over a cemented riverbank and Pete Rose Way–and you see why. There is nothing on a human scale; the lunchtime power walkers pump like dwarfs and the river, just below, looks remote and insignificant.
A little to the east runs a pleasant river walk, but the mistake of the stadium cannot be erased. It becomes even more painfully clear across town at the history museum housed inside the old Union Terminal. “Nineteen-thirties,” a man outside says, looking up at the mammoth curved facade. “When we had all the answers.”
The train station has been beautifully restored, and now contains two museums–one on local, one on natural history–as well as wonderfully poignant, high-ceilinged waiting rooms. The trains still stop here, so you can board Amtrak for Washington on the same tracks from which Cincinnati boys left for World War II. It is, in these halls, impossible not to think of them.
Among the exhibits in the historical society museum is a magnificent rendering of the old waterfront. A riverboat, big enough to walk onto, is docked next to brick warehouses, and cobblestone streets lead past butchers and taverns. The detail is worthy of a Disney exhibit, and with very little effort you can imagine how it would look today–refinished and buffed and alive at night with restaurants and clubs, the sounds of jazz carrying across the water. If only it all hadn’t been cleared away.
Deprived of a central riverfront neighborhood, Cincinnati is concentrating on one that in name at least carries the association: Over the Rhine. It is the area just north of downtown, on the other side of a paved-over canal that the Germans who once lived in the neighborhood nostalgically called the Rhine. Handsome brick buildings stand along Main Street, black iron fire-escapes zigzagging down their facades.
Over the Rhine is to Cincinnati what Ybor City is to Tampa–a once-thriving, densely populated ethnic neighborhood that fell on hard times and is now trying to come back as an entertainment district. Wurst makers, instead of cigar-rollers, now replaced by cruising singles. Two microbreweries already have sprung up, following not only a national trend but a local tradition.
It may make it–Xavier and the University of Cincinnati both supply the city with useful numbers of thirsty scholars. But Cincinnati has always been a city of neighborhoods, many of them self-sufficient and happy to be away from downtown. Some Cincinnatians will tell you proudly how they drive through Kentucky to get home in the evening–a claim that says as much about the breadth of the city as it does about the curvature of the river.
There are the neighborhoods on the west side for the real Cincinnatians (it was here, in Sedamsville, that Pete Rose grew up) and those on the east side for the transplanted newcomers.
There is University Heights for undergraduates and the unofficially named “Pill Hill” for medical centers. Indian Hill is home to wealthy industrialists (Rose moved here after he made his millions, though, unlike his neighbors, he still brought home buckets of takeout chili), while Hyde Park, with its bookstores and cafes, is more for the intellectual (or yuppie) crowd.
Covington, Ky., rehabilitated in recent years, was long the watering hole for Cincinnati’s sinners and Mt. Adams attracted artists before the rents went up. It is still, however, the place for penitents and lovers of views.
DETAILS ON CINCINNATI
Getting around: Downtown, including the riverfront, is easily walkable but, unfortunately, pretty dead after dark. To get to the livelier neighborhoods, you need a car or taxi.
Lodging: There are the usual city chains. The Cincinnatian (601 Vine St., 513-381-3000) is regarded as one of the best hotels; rates start at $195.
Restaurants: The Maisonette (114 E. Sixth St., 513-721-2260) is Cincinnati’s pride: a French restaurant that has been awarded five stars by Mobil for the last 31 years. (Expensive.) There are not as many German restaurants as you might expect. Chili is a staple, but some outsiders (like me) find it too sweet and cinnamony.
Sights: The historical society museum inside Union Terminal is superb, and it’s worth a trip just to see the 1930s train station. The gift shop sells little pink rubber pigs, and will give you a pink information sheet explaining their significance. There’s also an attractive, old-fashioned ice cream parlor.
Over the Rhine is interesting, especially in the evening. There are also fine parks, an excellent zoo and some good art museums.
Information: Contact the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau, 6th and Plum Streets, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202; 800-246-2987.
