The history of Over-the-Rhine is almost as deep as the history of Cincinnati. Over-the-Rhine's built environment has undergone many cultural and demographic changes. The toponym "Over-the-Rhine" is a reference to the Miami and Erie Canal as the Rhine of Ohio. An early reference to the canal as "the Rhine" appears in the 1853 book White, Red, Black, in which traveler Ferenc Pulszky wrote, "The Germans live all together across the Miami Canal, which is, therefore, here jocosely called the 'Rhine'." In 1875 writer Daniel J. Kenny referred to the area exclusively as "Over the Rhine". He noted, "Germans and Americans alike love to call the district 'Over the Rhine'."Kenny (1875), pg. 129.
German neighborhood
The revolutions of 1848 in the German states brought thousands of German refugees to the United States. In Cincinnati they settled on the outskirts of the city, north of Miami and Erie Canal where there was an abundance of cheap rental units.Greve 1904, pg. 686Gieck (1992) pg. 125 Until the city annexed the land in 1849 the city's northern border was inside this immigrant area. The border road was called Liberty Street because it separated the city from the outlying land, called "Northern Liberties", which was not subject to municipal law.Findlay Market. Northern Liberties and Over-the-Rhine . Accessed on 2010-08-19. Thus along with immigrants it attracted a concentration of bootleggers, saloons, gambling houses, dance halls, brothels, and others who were not tolerated in the city of Cincinnati.
In 1850 approximately 63% of Over-the-Rhine's population consisted of immigrants from German states, including Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony.Miller and Tucker 1999, pg. 1History of the Brewery District . Accessed on 5/24/2009 The neighborhood soon took on a "German" character influenced by its majority of residents. The new immigrants brought a variety of customs, habits, attitudes, and dialects of the German language. Their range of religions, occupations, and classes characterized the Over-the-Rhine German community for the rest of the century. The community was served by several German newspapers, including the Volksfreund, Volksblatt, and the Freie Presse.
German entrepreneurs gradually built up a profitable brewing industry, which became identified with Over-the-Rhine and the city. The brewing industry was concentrated along McMicken Avenue and the Miami and Erie canal with the Jackson Brewery, J. G. John & Sons Brewery, Christian Moerlein Brewing Company, and John Kauffman Brewing Company in this area, and John Hauck and Windisch-Mulhauser Brewing Companies across the canal in the West End. By 1880 Cincinnati was recognized as the "Beer Capital of the World", with Over-the-Rhine its center of brewing.
During the nineteenth century, most Cincinnatians regarded Over-the-Rhine as the city's premier entertainment district. The author of Illustrated Cincinnati (1875) noted, "London has its Greenwich, Paris its Bois [de Boulogne], Vienna its Prater, Brussels its Arcade and Cincinnati its 'Over the Rhine'."Greve 1904, pg. 879. Over-the-Rhine was recommended for the visitor "bent on pleasure and a holiday". The description continued:
[T]here is nothing like it in Europe; no transition so sudden, so pleasant, and so easily effected. ... There is nothing comparable to the completeness of the change brought about by stepping across the canal. The visitor leaves behind him at almost a single step the rigidity of the American, the everlasting hurry and worry of the insatiate race for wealth, the inappeasable thirst of Dives, and enters at once into the borders of people more readily happy, more readily contented, more easily pleased, far more closely wedded to music and the dance, to the song, and life in the bright, open air.
Before Cincinnati's incline system was built in the 1870s, which allowed development of residential areas on the hills, the city's population density was 32,000 people per square mile.Grace and White 2003, p. 29 By contrast, in 2000 Cincinnati's population density was 3,879.8 people per square mile. Horsecars were the chief transportation, but could not be used on the steep hills.NKU History and Geography Department. "The Relationship Between Transportation and Urban Growth in Cincinnati" , Historical Atlas of Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky University, Accessed on 2009-04-05 Cincinnati's new incline system opened the surrounding hills for settlement, but only for those who could afford the property and demand for new housing was high.
Throughout the 19th century, residents of the city suffered epidemics of cholera,Greve (1904), pg. 587 small pox,Greve (1904), pg. 951 and typhoid fever. These were often spread by travelers on the many steamboats on the river, and through the water supply because of poor sanitation. The epidemics killed thousands in Cincinnati alone, and created panic in the population. Before medicine understood how such diseases were spread, many people believed that vapor from the canal caused malaria.Grace and White 2003, pg. 40. The association of disease with the canal was used in later arguments for converting it for use as a subway and parkway.Singer 2003, p. 18 In addition to overcrowding and disease, those who lived in the river basin suffered from flooding, open sewers, and polluting industrial smoke. Riots in 1853, 1855, and 1884 began or took place in Over-the-Rhine. Those who could afford to relocate to the new suburbs in the surrounding hills did so.Miller and Tucker 1999, pg. 5
The neighborhood, and upper Vine Street in particular, consisted of saloons, restaurants, shooting galleries, arcades, gambling dens, dance halls, burlesque halls, and theaters. Starting in the 1840s, the number of saloons in the area grew steadily.Holian (2000), Vol. 1, pg. 141 The number of saloons on the main streets in 1890 ranged from 34 on Court Street up to 136 on Vine Street.Holian (2000), Vol. 1, pg. 142 Nearly 20 years after its favorable review, the 1893 edition of Illustrated Cincinnati noted, "All or nearly all the leading characteristics [of Over-the-Rhine] which won for it the appellation have passed away. ... The only thing this section of the city is now noted for besides noisy concert and drinking halls and cheap theaters is the great breweries, for which Cincinnati has become so renowned."Kenny, D.J. (1893) Illustrated Guide to Cincinnati and The World's Columbian Exposition. Robert Clarke & Co, Cincinnati. The Pacific Publishing Co. pp. 194-195.
At the turn of the 20th century, the neighborhood population reached a peak of 45,000 residents, with the proportion of German-Americans estimated at 75 percent. By 1915 the more prosperous people left the dense city for the suburbs. They were not replaced in as great numbers because new immigrants were attracted to fast-growing industrial cities in the Great Lakes region.Miller and Tucker 1999, pg. 6 Over-the-Rhine became one of several old and declining neighborhoods that formed a ring of slums around the central business district. Many people thought Over-the-Rhine would eventually disappear, swallowed up by the city's growing business district.
Economic decline
Many German-Americans felt a sense of pride for their homeland; they celebrated early victories by Germany during World War I. Cincinnati's German language newspapers, the Volksblatt and the Freie Presse were especially vocal.Behr (1996), pg. 66. As the likelihood of the United States entering the war increased, the pro-German rhetoric of Cincinnati's German-American population angered some Americans, especially "nativists" who distrusted whether the ethnic Germans were loyal to the United States.Behr (1996), pg. 67. After the US entered the war, anti-German sentiment increased across the country.
In 1917, the year the United States declared war on Germany, half of the city's residents could speak German, and many spoke only German.Behr (1996), p. 64 The community had organized German schools and frequently held religious services in German at many churches. In 1918, the government required German men who had not become naturalized citizens to register as alien enemies.Goodman, Rebecca."WWI brought out anti-German sentiment", Cincinnati Enquirer, Accessed on 2009-05-24 The New York Times reported, "When one spoke of going 'over the Rhine', as the canal was called, he meant that he was disappearing into a realm where all English was left behind." The city passed an ordinance to change all German street names in the city. In Over-the-Rhine, Bremen Street was changed to Republic and Hanover became Yukon Street.Tolzmann, Don Heinrich. (2006) German Cincinnati, p. 111. Arcadia Publishing. , As happened in some other areas of the country with numerous ethnic Germans, the state closed German-language schools, dismissed teachers of German, and banned German-language classes from all public schools. The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County withdrew all German books from its shelves.Cincinnati Enquirer "2000: Cincinnati's Century of Change" , Enquirer, Accessed on 2009-05-24. Many German Americans anglicized their names out of fear of persecution. Some businesses with German names changed them to survive the anti-war sentiment. Cincinnati's German heritage continued to be suppressed until after World War II, a war in which Germany again was opposed by the United States.
Although the effort to gain Prohibition of alcohol had long been part of late nineteenth-century reform movements, during the war it became associated with anti-German sentiment. People who opposed Prohibition were accused of being "pro-German".Holian (2001), pg. 12. With the war still underway the majority of Cincinnatians voted in favor of prohibition as did a sufficient number of states. Nearly overnight Over-the-Rhine's 30 breweries, all of them German-American owned,Behr (1996), p. 65 were closed. Most saloons and breweries tried to serve and brew "near beer" and soft drinks, but few survived. By the end of the 1920s, the demise of the Cincinnati brewing industry was virtually complete, and the city's three most prominent breweries were permanently closed—Moerlein, Hauck, and Windisch-Muhlhauser.Holian (2001), pp. 9 and 53 With the heart of its economic engine gone Over-the-Rhine began a slip into decades of economic decline, which prevented new development and ironically helped preserve much of the neighborhood's historic architecture.
The Miami and Erie canal became obsolete as a means of transportation, and was abandoned by the city in 1877. The canal was like an open sewer within the city, as sanitation systems were limited.Over-the-Rhine Foundation, "A Very Brief History of Cincinnati's Subway" , Over the Rhine Foundation, Accessed on 2009-07-24. In 1920 the city drained the canal and began construction of the Cincinnati Subway in the canal bed. Central Parkway, which follows the path of the canal, runs over top of the subway system's tunnels. Construction of the subway stalled halfway through the project, as the city was overcome by unexpected inflation following World War I. Distractions by the Great Depression, World War II, and subsequent increasing usage of the automobile prevented the city from ever gaining enough local support to finish it.