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Cincinnati, Ohio
Baby if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me
There was a period of my life- just under five years- where the architecture firm that I worked at had a (awful) retail client, and while working for that client was never fun, never rewarding or never even dignified (some might even say they were awful), there was one wonderful benefit. The (awful) retail client was aggressively expanding nationally, which meant for me an opportunity to travel. Most of these destinations were random (if you don’t believe me, check out the four part, twenty three page long 2010 Weekend Trips slideshow) and it afforded me the opportunity to see places I might otherwise skip for yet another trip to Los Angeles or to London or to Maine. There was a lot about this time of my life I really enjoyed but, if given such an opportunity again, I would probably pass on it. Some months I was traveling three or four days a week every week, and while to some extent I am still living off some of the miles I earned then (in more than one way), I’m not sure such non stop travel is something I could really absorb any more.
That said, this past April I found myself once again at Terminal C in Newark waiting to board a plane to somewhere that felt random enough to make me think about those road warrior days gone by. This is Cincinnati, Ohio and (as best I can tell) my fourth visit to the city. And while this time I was not there because of some (awful) architectural client, I was there for a reason that you’ve probably already guessed. I mean this slideshow is actually titled “2024 Eclipse” after all, so yeah, it’s not too hard to figure out what’s going on here.
Cincinnati wasn’t quite in the path of eclipse totality, but it was close, and the flights to CVG were scheduled better than Indianapolis or Louisville, so another visit there started to make sense. There were places I had been there that I wanted to see again, places I had missed during those other three visits, and views like this make you want to come back again and again. And if this view looks better than the last one but also at the same time suspiciously fake, that’s because you’re not looking at the real city but instead you’re looking at a model of the real city, safely located inside the Cincinnati History Museum in Union Terminal.
Union Terminal barely has trains, but even if it had high speed trains to Cleveland, Louisville, Indianapolis and Chicago (it doesn’t), it would still be way, way out of the way and nowhere near downtown. And though you may be nowhere near the center of things, once you’re there, its truly magnificent art deco design makes you feel like you’re in the center of the world. Union Terminal is a wonderful building, even with the fountains turned off, and while the outside is impressive, the inside is something else.
The interior of Cincinnati Union Terminal remains jaw droppingly spectacular, a candidate for the best room in the country. I’m not even sure what the other candidates would be- maybe the Cadet Chapel at the US Air Force Academy, or the lobby of the Old Faithful Inn, or the living room of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. I dare you to visit any of them and, just like here, not take picture after picture after picture, trying to find that one good angle in a room and a place where it seems like there is no bad one.
Next up is Cincinnati’s big art museum, uncreatively named the Cincinnati Art Museum. Like a lot of things here it was better than you might think and also pretty cheap. Or, to be more accurate, it was free.
As for its collection, it was all over the place but had some real gems, including Saul Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati, which you can easily find below (hint: look for the drawing of the Roebling Bridge), and a Joan Miro painting paired with an Alexander Calder mobile (also easy to find since only one picture actually has a mobile in it) and a great big Jaume Plensa sculpture (also easy to find, it’s the one that looks like a great big flat head).
We’ll come down from the mountain (the art museum is located on top of Mount Adams) and into the city or, as the giant sign says, the Queen City. I looked up the history of this, and while Cincinnati has called itself the Queen City since the early 1800s, they’re not the only ones who thought of that name. Wikipedia lists 41 American queen cities (as well as another 9 from Canada, New Zealand and the Philippines), which adds up to a lot of queens. This list includes a lot of obvious ones like Charlotte, North Carolina (there was an actual Queen Charlotte so that makes sense), but it also goes deep with other queen cities like Bangor, Poughkeepsie, Gadsen and Staunton. I have been to all those queens (and even to actual Queens, which was good enough for Prince Akeem) and, well, none of them really are any more of a queen than the other. Maybe its time for a new, less common nickname.
Next up is the American Sign Museum, which (as its description hints at) has a lot of signs.
As a child, my parents would take my sister and I on road trips, a precursor to the random American travel I would grow to love years later. We always, always stayed at Holiday Inns, and while the motels were never anything all that special (despite the fact that they always had free ice and grape Fanta in the soda machines), for me, seeing this sign always meant that a long day of travel was over and we were somewhere different, somewhere new. As for the other sign, the giant genie guy with the welcome sign, that personally doesn’t mean a damn thing to me at all.
The American Sign Museum is spectacular, as much fun as the Neon Museum’s boneyard in Las Vegas, although I wish it was bigger. This is not an insult in any way to the good people at the American Sign Museum, it’s just that I left enjoying it enough that I wish it just kept on going.
