Over-the-Rhine and Findlay Market

At a glance

Overview

Over-the-Rhine is a Cincinnati neighborhood of mostly 19th-century brick buildings north of downtown, named for the Miami and Erie Canal, which German immigrants crossed to reach it and which Cincinnatians nicknamed 'the Rhine' by 1853. Its northern half began as the Northern Liberties, land outside the city line that James Findlay and Jepthah Garrard platted in 1833 and that Cincinnati annexed in 1849; German immigration in the 1830s to 1850s filled it with churches, newspapers, beer gardens and, by 1860, 36 breweries. Findlay Market, built in 1852 on land given by Findlay's estate and opened in 1855, is the last of the nine public markets the city ran in the 19th century and Ohio's oldest surviving municipal market house. World War I hostility to Germans, Prohibition, the draining of the canal in 1920 and the flight of residents to the suburbs emptied the district over the 20th century, and Appalachian and then African American residents became its majority. Listed on the National Register as a historic district in 1983 after a bitter fight over displacement, it saw riots in 2001 and heavy redevelopment since.

The name

The name comes from the Miami and Erie Canal, which divided the German district from downtown and was jokingly called 'the Rhine.' The Hungarian traveler Ferenc Pulszky wrote in 1853 that the Germans all lived across the Miami Canal, 'which is, therefore, here jocosely called the Rhine.' By 1875 Daniel J. Kenny's Illustrated Cincinnati used 'Over the Rhine' as the district's name and said Germans and Americans alike loved to call it that. (source)

Native American history

No Native village, mound or other site is recorded within Over-the-Rhine in the sources consulted. The neighborhood lies in the Ohio River basin between the Great and Little Miami rivers, land that John Cleves Symmes bought from Congress in 1788; in the 1786 Treaty of Fort Finney, Shawnee leaders had ceded parts of the Ohio country to the United States. Before contact, the region was home to the Fort Ancient culture. Permanent American settlement in the basin became possible only after Fort Washington was built in late 1789, and the fighting that followed did not end until the Treaty of Greenville in 1795; James Findlay, for whom the market is named, was attacked and nearly killed near Portsmouth in the summer of 1794, and a wagon and driver from his store were lost in an attack on the way to Fort Hamilton.

• Treaty of Fort Finney: treaty, Mouth of the Great Miami River; ceded parts of the Ohio country to the United States, January 31, 1786
• Treaty of Greenville: treaty, Ended the Northwest Indian War that made settlement in the Cincinnati basin dangerous, 1795

Stories

Why a canal was called the Rhine

Daniel J. Kenny's 1875 guide described the Miami Canal entering the city from the northwest, with the large district north of it, densely populated almost entirely by Germans, known as 'Over the Rhine.' The nickname was already in use in 1853, when the Hungarian traveler Ferenc Pulszky wrote that the Germans all lived across the Miami Canal, 'which is, therefore, here jocosely called the Rhine.' Kenny gave the district its full due: London had its Greenwich, Paris its Bois, Vienna its Prater and Cincinnati its 'Over the Rhine,' and Germans and Americans alike loved to call it that. A visitor had only to cross the canal to find himself, as Kenny put it, in a foreign land. Kenny admitted the canal was nothing like the real river, with no castle over its banks and no legends in its water, 'but none the less surely Father-land is upon the other side of its bridges.' (source)

The Northern Liberties and General Findlay's market

Until 1849 Cincinnati's northern line ran along Northern Row, today's Liberty Street, and the land beyond it, outside city law, was called the Northern Liberties; it drew bootleggers, entrepreneurs, saloons, gambling houses, dance halls and brothels. Much of it was the wooded tract known as Findlay's Woods, bought by James Findlay, a Pennsylvania-born merchant who came to Cincinnati in 1793, served twice as mayor, commanded a regiment in the War of 1812 and sat in Congress. In 1833 he and Jepthah Garrard platted the Northern Liberties, reserving an open area already used by farmers as a market. Findlay died in 1835 and his widow Jane in 1851; the estate then gave the market ground to the city on condition that the market bear his name. The market house went up in 1852 with an unusual cast- and wrought-iron frame, one of the first in the country, and after contractor disputes opened in 1855. (source)

Beer gardens and brewery cellars

Kenny's 1875 guide put beer at the center of life over the Rhine. All of Cincinnati's great breweries stood in or near the district, and the wealthy brewers, he wrote, had 'immense cellars' that pierced the hillsides and ran deep underground; the working brewers thought nothing of forty to sixty glasses a day from the open cask in the brewery corner. Beer gardens were scattered all over the district, led by the old Lowen Garten and the newer Wielert's saloon and garden on Vine Street, and in the evenings wives came along and drank with their husbands at half the tables. Kenny claimed a glass of whisky or brandy was rarely ordered there, that even American visitors soon switched to lager or Rhine wine, and that the district had less crime and drunkenness than almost any other in the country. (source)

War and Prohibition

In 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany, half of Cincinnati could speak German, and the city's German-language papers had cheered early German victories. The backlash was swift. German men who were not citizens had to register as enemy aliens, German classes were dropped from the schools, the public library pulled its German books, and the city renamed German streets, turning Over-the-Rhine's Bremen Street into Republic and Hanover into Yukon. Prohibition, pushed through with the war still on, closed the neighborhood's German-owned breweries almost overnight. By the end of the 1920s Moerlein, Hauck and Windisch-Muhlhauser were gone for good, and the district began a long decline that, as a side effect, spared much of its 19th-century architecture. (source)

A canal turned into a subway that never ran

Beginning in 1920 Cincinnati built a rapid-transit subway under what became Central Parkway, digging the main tunnel in four contracts between 1920 and 1923; a fifth contract in 1927 extended it north to portals still visible from Interstate 75. Construction slowed to a stop in the late 1920s before even half of the planned 16-mile line was finished, and the unfinished line sat through the Depression and World War II. Seven miles between downtown and Norwood were tunneled, bridged or graded and six stations were built, three of them underground, but no track was laid and no subway cars were ordered. Most of the surface work was bulldozed for Interstate 75 and the Norwood Lateral, while the two-mile tunnel under Central Parkway, on the southern edge of Over-the-Rhine, has been continuously maintained. (source)

The fight over the National Register

By 1980 the neighborhood had lost most of its white residents, its population was a fraction of its 1900 peak, and preservationists wanted it on the National Register of Historic Places. Buddy Gray, who ran the Drop Inn Center homeless shelter, opposed listing because its tax credits for developers would, he argued, push out poor residents; he brought some 250 protesters to the 1980 hearing and forced a three-year delay. The nomination was rejected by an 8-to-7 vote in 1983, but supporters appealed to the Keeper of the National Register, who added the district in May 1983. A 1985 city plan backed by Gray reserved at least 5,520 units for low-income housing; the policy was dropped after a 1993 lawsuit, and Gray was killed in 1996. (source)

Timeline

• 1793: James Findlay brought his bride Jane to Cincinnati and opened a log store near the river with partner James Smith. (source)
• 1818: St. Peter's, the city's first Roman Catholic church, was built at the northwest corner of Liberty and Vine, just outside the city line in the Northern Liberties. (source)
• 1825: Ohio's canal act of February 4 authorized the Miami and Erie Canal, whose Cincinnati end would later divide downtown from Over-the-Rhine. (source)
• 1829: The city built the Canal Market on Court Street, selling produce and livestock shipped down the canal one block north. (source)
• 1833: On June 3 James Findlay and Jepthah Garrard recorded a Northern Liberties town plat that laid out Findlay, Green, Race and Elm streets and a market site on what became Elder Street. (source)
• 1840: A wave of German immigration between 1830 and 1840 spread the German community north of the canal into the Northern Liberties. (source)
• 1845: The 274-mile Miami and Erie Canal was completed from Cincinnati to Toledo at a cost to the state of $8 million. (source)
• 1849: The Northern Liberties, until then outside municipal law beyond Northern Row (now Liberty Street), became the first suburb annexed to Cincinnati. (source)
• 1850: About 63 percent of Over-the-Rhine's people were immigrants from German states, including Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony. (source)
• 1852: Findlay Market's iron-framed, open-sided market house was built on Elder Street between Elm and Race, designed under City Civil Engineer Alfred West Gilbert. (source)
• 1853: Bavarian-born Christian Moerlein opened his brewery in Over-the-Rhine, making 1,000 barrels in its first year. (source)
• 1853: Traveler Ferenc Pulszky's book White, Red, Black recorded that the Miami Canal was jokingly called the 'Rhine.' (source)
• 1855: After disputes with contractors and trouble with the new iron construction, Findlay Market finally opened. (source)
• 1860: German entrepreneurs were running 36 breweries in the area. (source)
• 1875: Daniel J. Kenny's Illustrated Cincinnati described 'Over the Rhine' as densely populated, almost wholly German, and home to all of the city's great breweries. (source)
• 1877: The city abandoned the Miami and Erie Canal as a transportation route; it lingered as an open, polluted ditch. (source)
• 1890: Vine Street alone had 136 saloons. (source)
• 1900: The neighborhood's population peaked at 44,475, an estimated 75 percent of them German or German American. (source)
• 1902: Findlay Market's central masonry tower was added; the market house was soon enclosed and given plumbing and refrigeration. (source)
• 1918: Amid anti-German feeling in World War I, the city renamed German street names; in Over-the-Rhine, Bremen Street became Republic and Hanover became Yukon. (source)
• 1919: Prohibition shut the neighborhood's German-owned breweries, including Christian Moerlein, then among the ten largest breweries in the country. (source)
• 1920: The city began building a subway under what became Central Parkway; the main tunnel was built in four contracts from 1920 to 1923 and never carried a passenger. (source)
• 1934: The bell of the razed Pearl Street Market, on a market site used since 1804, was moved to Findlay Market's tower. (source)
• 1960s: Over-the-Rhine's population fell by more than half, to 15,025, while its African American population doubled as people displaced from the West End by highway building and urban renewal moved in. (source)
• 1972: The Findlay Market building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 5. (source)
• 1973: Findlay Market was renovated in 1973-74 under the federal Model Cities program. (source)
• 1983: After the nomination was rejected by a narrow 8-to-7 vote, the Keeper of the National Register added the Over-the-Rhine Historic District to the Register in May. (source)
• 1996: Buddy Gray, homeless advocate and leader of the neighborhood's anti-displacement movement, was shot to death by a mentally ill man he had helped. (source)
• 2001: In April, after a white police officer shot and killed a 19-year-old Black man, who was found to have no weapon, near Republic and 13th streets, several days of rioting struck Over-the-Rhine and downtown. (source)
• 2001: In August City Council created the Over-the-Rhine (North) Local Historic District north of Liberty Street, covering about 950 buildings. (source)
• 2003: The Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), a private nonprofit developer focused on downtown and Over-the-Rhine, was formed in July. (source)
• 2010: The revived Christian Moerlein company moved its brewing back to Over-the-Rhine. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Over the Rhine
• en.wikipedia.org: History of Over the Rhine
• en.wikipedia.org: Findlay Market
• en.wikipedia.org: Christian Moerlein Brewing Co.
• en.wikipedia.org: Miami and Erie Canal
• findlaymarket.org: history
• archive.org: whiteredblacksk00pulsgoog
• archive.org: illustratedcinci00kennrich
• cincinnati-transit.net: subway
• en.wikipedia.org: History of Cincinnati
• en.wikipedia.org: Fort Finney (Ohio)
• en.wikipedia.org: Symmes Purchase
• commons.wikimedia.org: Category:Over the Rhine