Over-the-Rhine is approximately 362.5 acres, making it one of the largest urban historic districts in the United States.
The Miami & Erie Canal was completed in Cincinnati in 1828. It ran a course that is now Central Parkway, turning at Plum Street, then heading to the river at Eggleston. The area north of the Miami & Erie Canal was mostly vacant gardens and farms when the canal was completed. As waves of German immigrants started moving into the city, they settled in this area. It became so predominantly German that crossing the canal was said to be going “over the Rhine.”
OTR was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the” Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places in America” in 2006. Fifty-two historic buildings were demolished between 2001 and 2006, and 20 more have been destroyed since the “most endangered” designation – more historic buildings than the number that constitute some cities’ entire historic districts. The neighborhood has now lost about 50% of its historic building stock.
Cincinnati’s oldest existing church was built in 1841, at 12th and Clay Streets. One of the Sunday masses is still performed in German.
Organized in 1838 by Reverend Wilhelm Nast, this regal church with its stone edifice was designed by Cincinnati’s acclaimed architect Samuel Hannaford. Reverend Nast was the grandfather to Condé Nast, founder of Condé Nast Publications. Nast Trinity is located on Race St. next to Emanuel Community Center, also a Hannaford building.
OTR is believed to have the largest collection of nineteenth century brewery buildings in the United States. Around the turn of the century, there were over a dozen breweries in OTR or on its borders. Most have been razed but some remain.
McMicken Avenue is sometimes called Brewers’ Boulevard because most of the remaining Brewery buildings are on or near McMicken. These include the former: Germania Brewery, Bellevue Brewery, Sohn/Mohawk/Clyffside Brewery, Jackson Brewery, Moerlein Brewery, Lafayette Brewery, Kauffman Brewery, Hudepohl office, and Crown Brewery.
Around 1900, OTR had roughly 45,000 residents. Today, it has roughly 4,900.
Hamilton County’s homeless population is concentrated in OTR, largely due to two major shelters located in close proximity to each other and to one the Cincinnati’s most significant landmarks, Music Hall. The number of single, homeless males in Hamilton County is 3,604. One of these shelters, the Drop Inn Center, houses 2,960 homeless male clients, or 82% of the county’s population. Plans are currently underway to relocate the Drop Inn Center.
The Miami & Erie Canal was drained and subway tunnels were constructed in the sunken bed. Central Parkway was built above. Never completed, the unused tunnels still sit under most of Central Parkway, running from the Western Hills viaduct to Sycamore Street.
The Turners, a German society, were largely responsible for making physical education part of the curriculum of public schools. Over-the-Rhine was the first American home of this organization, located at what is now a parking lot on Walnut Street.
There have been three notable riots that made a battle ground out of what is now Central Parkway. In 1855, proponents of a Know Nothing mayoral candidate crossed the Rhine to attack immigrant polling locations. Three days of violence ensued with the canal as a dividing line for ethnic warfare. In 1884, an angry mob left Music Hall, crossed over the canal, and went to the courthouse to lynch a murderer. One of the worst examples of urban unrest in American history resulted. Forty-five people were killed and an estimated 200 were wounded in the streets around the courthouse in three days of rioting. Police and militia blocked off Main Street to prevent entry from OTR. In 2001, riots broke out in protest of actions by the Cincinnati Police, triggered by the fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect. Police in full SWAT gear stood armed in a line down Central Parkway, defending downtown from Over-the-Rhine.
All of the part of OTR now known as Pendleton originally had one owner. It was vacant, open range covered with small bushes. Cincinnatians called it “Texas.”
The area where Memorial Hall and Music Hall sit may be the city’s most sorrowful piece of real estate. It once housed an asylum for orphans of cholera epidemics; a hospital ward for people with terminal, communicable illnesses; and a pauper’s cemetery. The indigent were buried with little care and no headstones, so the bodies of many of them remained when construction began on Music Hall above the former cemetery. Ghost stories began shortly after the building was erected and are still common today. The late, famed Cincinnati Pops conductor Erich Kunzel claimed that they are friendly ghosts.
Acquired by the City of Cincinnati in 1855, it is the city’s oldest public park. The nearly six acre park was once a Presbyterian cemetery.
Located on Sycamore St., the ornate building was the third high school built on land donated by William and Abigail Woodward in 1824. The Woodward’s first grammar school was also the first free high school operated west of the Alleghenies. The cornerstone for the building was laid by President Taft. In 1976, it became home of the School for Creative and Performing Arts and is now vacant, as it has been replaced by a new school near Music Hall .
When initially planned, the streets in Cincinnati were mapped out at equal distance with right angle blocks. Liberty Street was the city’s northern boundary. Because municipal law stopped there, the area above Liberty St. became known as the “Northern Liberties” for its exceptionally permissive approach to vice.
Movies “Rage in Harlem,” “Traffic” and “Eight Men Out” were filmed in Over-the-Rhine. So was the reality show “Taking the Stage” and 3 Doors Down music video “It’s Not My Time.”
