History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 20

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666

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Messrs. Drake and Mansfield seem abundantly justi- fied in their closing predictions of "continued pros- perity in wealth and population. The period is not a remote one when Cincinnati will hold the same rank among cities of the Union that the great State of which she is the ornament now possesses in the American con- federacy."

In May the city was visited by a noble personage, Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach, who after- wards wrote a book of his travels. He said in it, how- ever, nothing of account concerning Cincinnati. His observations on the village of Montgomery, through which he passed in coming here, will be found in the history of Sycamore township.

October 20th, General James Findlay was elected to Congress from the Cincinnati district.

November 18th, the water company begins to supply the city through its ground-pipes and hydrants. On the twenty-seventh Philip Lewis, a colored man, was hanged for the murder of Thomas Isbell, April 4th. He is said to have been the only one of his race hanged here for more than forty years.

At this time, however, says Mr. L'Hommedieu, Cincin- nati "was undergoing the severe ordeal of paying off 'old debts.' Through the branch bank established here by the United States bank, during the years of inflation and extravagance which preceded this period, most of the real-estate owners had become almost hopelessly in debt, and large portions of their property had been taken by the United States bank, and subsequently sold at an advance. Some few obtained the right of redemption, and, by borrowing money in New York and Philadelphia, succeeded in saving their estates; but many, if not a majority, of their debtors went under. Interest ranged from ten to thirty-six per cent., and there was no legal limit. At this period the valuation of the property listed for taxation in our city was six million eight hundred and forty-eight thousand four hundred and thirty-three dollars* -not more than some half-dozen or less of our citizens combined are now worth."

The vote of the city this year was two thousand three hundred and forty-nine. The new buildings put up num- bered four hundred and ninety-six-eight one-story brick, one hundred and thirty-one two-story, seventy-seven three-story, and one four-story; twenty-nine one-story

frames, two hundred and fifty two-story ;- two hundred and seventeen brick structures, two hundred and seventy- nine frame.

May 2 1st, the Miami canal is put under contract from Middletown to Dayton. November 21st, two canalboats start for Middletown, from Howell's Basin, six miles above Cincinnati, in the presence of a large crowd.

The arrivals and departures of steamers at this port, from the first of November, 1827, to the eighth of June, 1828, number seven hundred and thirty-nine.

It is probable that the temperance meeting held at the court house in September of this year, was the first of the kind in Cincinnati. It was only the year before that Dr. Lyman Beecher had delivered the powerful lectures against intemperance, from his pulpit at Litchfield, Con- necticut, which, being widely published, had made a pro- found impression in favor of reform. The American Temperance society was organized the same year, and its branches spread very rapidly. Nowhere in the country, probably, did the customs of society, in the matter of in- dulgence in intoxicants, need reformation more than in Cincinnati; and in due time the movement reached here. Mr. E. D. Mansfield, in his Life of Dr. Drake, gives the following amusing account of the initial meeting :

The meeting was held at three o'clock in the afternoon, and for those days was really large and respectable. Many old citizens were present who were familiar with old whiskey and upon whose cheeks it blossomed forth in purple dyes. To these, and indeed to the great body of people in the west, a temperance speech was a new idea. Dr. Drake was the speaker, and they listened to him with respectful attention, and were by no means opposed to the object. The speech, however, was long. The doctor had arrayed a formidable column of facts. The day was hot; and after he had spoken about an hour without apparently approaching the end, some one, out of regard for the doctor's strength, or by force of habit, cried out: "Let's adjourn a while and take a drink !" The meeting did adjourn, and, McFarland's tavern being near by, the old soakers refreshed themselves with "old rye." The mecting again as- sembled, the doctor finished his speech, and all went off well. Soon after the temperance societies began to be formed, and the excitement then begun has continued to this day.

The visit of an English traveller of some distinction, Mr. W. Bullock, "F. L. S., etc., etc.," aids to make inter- esting the annals of this part of the Ohio valley for the year, as connected with a promising enterprise on the Kentucky shore, upon the site of what is now little more than a suburb of Cincinnati-the village of Ludlow. While approaching the city from New Orleans, by river, the traveller's eye was caught by an elegant mansion, upon an , estate of about a thousand acres, a little below the then city, and the property of Hon. Thomas D. Car- neal, an extensive landholder and member of the Ken- tucky legislature. During his short stay here he visited the place, was easily prevailed upon to buy it, and upon it projected "a proposed rural town to be called Hygeia." He evidently thought no small things of his city in the air; for upon an outline map of the United States, pre- fixed to his "Sketch of a Journey through the Western States of North America," he notes no other towns than Cincinnati and "Hygcia." His plan for the place was drawn by no less a personage than I. P. Papworth, archi- tect to the King of Wurtemburg, "etc., etc.," and repre- sents a magnificent town-on paper. The eastern end was to be nearly opposite the mouth of Mill creek, about

*This does not agree, it will be observed, by over three millions and a quarter, with Drake and Mansfield's statement.

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

at the further terminus of the present Southern Railroad bridge, and the western end a mile distant. The extreme breadth, back from the river, was about half the length. The place was elegantly platted, with four large squares in the middle, called, respectively, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Patterson squares. Little parks diversified the border of this great quadrangle. Two other squares, named from Franklin and Jackson, were provided for. The streets were considerably in curves, after the Euro- pean manner. Agricultural, horticultural, and kitchen gardens, a cemetery "as Pere la Chaise at Paris," a chapel therein, four churches, three inns, two shops, a theatre, bath, town hall, museum, library, a school, and another public building, with a statue and a fountain, have all their places upon this plat. Mr. Bullock published it in October, 1826, upon his return to England, with his Sketch of a Journey, adding as an appendix Drake & Mansfield's Cincinnati in 1826, then a brand-new book; but all did not avail to prevent the scheme from joining the grand army of wrecked "paper towns." The old Bullock or Carneal house is still, however, prominent among the most interesting of local antiquities on the Kentucky shore.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT.

The opening of the Miami canal gave fresh life to business. Real estate made rapid advancement in price, and those who had made investments in it, were fortu- nate in their sales. The people were no longer depend- ent on mud roads and the river for their supplies, and provisions were abundant and comparatively cheap. It had before happened occasionally that, during a mild and open winter, the roads had been frightfully bad, even im- passable; and the relief given by the canal was such as is difficult, indeed, to realize under the commercial con- ditions that now prevail. A great calamity was experi- enced, however, December 11th, in the destructive fire that devastated half the square on Main street, between Third and Fourth-one of the most solid business blocks in the city. The weather was extremely cold, and but two engines could play upon the fire. The citizens, women and children included, formed a line to the river, and did what they could in passing fire-buckets; but without much avail.

The valuation of taxable property in the city this year was three millions six hundred and ninety-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-three dollars, and the tax nine and five-tenths mills, yielding, with other receipts, a rev- enue of thirty-five thousand nine hundred and ninety- three dollars and forty-three cents. There were expended by the corporation forty-six thousand one hundred and fifty-six dollars-twenty-two thousand and five dollars for paving streets and alleys, including excavations. A loan of thirty thousand dollars was necessarily made this year, the total expenditures being sixty-five thousand four hundred and twenty-nine dollars and twenty-one cents. Miller & Company's cotton factory went into operation, also the Hamilton foundry and steam-engine factory, Goodloe & Borden's and West & Storm's engine facto- ries, Fox's steam grist-mill on Deer creek, at the terminus of Fifth street, and other business enterprises.

The bills of mortality for 1828 show deaths to the number of six hundred and forty-seven, being one in every thirty-seven of the population-a pretty high death rate, compared with the rates of succeeding years-as one in thirty-four (eight hundred and twenty) in 1831, and one in twenty-seven (one thousand one hundred and seventy) in 1833.

This year came to Cincinnati one of the most remark- able women who ever set foot in the city-one who, un- like all other foreign travellers through the valley, left here a most singular monument of her residence, which endured for more than half a century-the Trol- lopean Bazaar. It was built by Mrs. Frances Trollope, an Englishwoman, who resided here and in the neighbor- hood for a little more than two years. She is probably very poor historical authority, especially in Cincinnati, whose people and institutions she abused so persistently and unmercifully; but she was a woman of unmistakable powers of mind and literary talent-as the mother of Anthony Trollope must have been-and her observations are always entertaining, if often far from just. We shall give some extracts, here and elsewhere, from her subse- quent book on The Domestic Manners of the Americans. She came alone from Memphis, with her son and two daughters, Mr. Trollope and another son joining them here the next year. In the first volume of her book she says :

We reached Cincinnati on the tenth of February. It is finely situ- ated on the south side of a hill that rises gently from the water's edge, yet it is by no means a city of striking appearance ; it wants domes, towers, and steeples ; but its landing place is noble, extending for more than a quarter of a mile; it is well paved and surrounded by neat though not handsome buildings. I have seen fifteen steamboats lying there at once, and still half the wharf was unoccupied.

The sight of bricks and mortar was really refreshing, and a house of three stories looked splendid. Of this splendor we saw repeated speci- mens, and moreover a brick church which, from its two little peaked spires, was called the two-horned church. Certainly it was not a little town, about the size of Salisbury, without even an at- tempt at beauty in any of its edifices, and with. only just enough of the air of a city to make it noisy and bustling. The population is greater than the appearance of the town would lead one to expect. This is partly owing to the number of free negroes who herd together in an ob- scure part of the city, called Little Africa, and partly to the density of the population around the paper mills and other manufactories. I be- lieve the number of inhabitants exceeds twenty thousand.

At that time I think Main street, which is the principal avenue, and runs through the whole town, answering to the High street of our old cities, was the only one entirely paved. The trottoir [sidewalk] is of brick, tolerably well laid, but it is inundated by every shower, as Cin- cinnati has no drains whatever. Were it furnished with drains of the simplest arrangement, the heavy showers of the climate would keep them constantly clean; as it is, these showers wash the higher streets, only to deposit their filth in the first level spot ; and this happens to be in the street second in importance to Main street, run- ning at right angles to it, and containing most of the large warehouses of the town. This deposit is a dreadful nuisance, and must be produc- tive of miasma during the hot weather.

The following passage will be read with considerable amusement by the myriad dwellers on the hills in this latter day :

To the north, Cincinnati is bounded by a range of forest-covered hills, sufficiently steep and rugged to prevent their being built upon or easily cultivated, but not sufficiently high to command from their sum- mits a view of any considerable extent. Deep and narrow water-courses, dry in summer, but bringing down heavy streams in winter, divide these hills into many separate heights, and this furnishes the only variety the landscape offers for many miles around the town. The lovely Ohio is

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

a beautiful feature wherever it is visible, but the only part of the city that has the advantage of its beauty is the street nearest to its bank.

Though I do not quite sympathize with those who consider Cincin- nati as one of the wonders of the earth, I certainly think it a city of extraordinary size and importance, when it is remembered that thirty years ago the aboriginal forest occupied the ground where it stands, and every month appears to extend its limits and its wealth. .

During nearly two years that I resided in Cincinnati or its neighbor- hood, I neither saw a beggar nor a man of sufficient fortune to permit his ceasing his efforts to increase it. Thus every bee in the hive is ac- tively employed in search of that honey of Hybla, vulgarly called money ; neither art, science, learning, nor pleasure can seduce them from its pursuit.

Notwithstanding fourteen hundred new dwellings had been erected the preceding year, the demand for houses greatly exceeded the supply.

Perhaps the most advantageous feature in Cincinnati is its market, which, for excellence, abundance, and cheapness, can hardly, I should think, be surpassed in any part of the world, if I except the luxury of fruits, which are very inferior to any I have seen in Europe. There are no butchers, fishmongers, or indeed any shop for eatables, except baker- ies, as they are called, in the town : everything must be purchased at market. The beef is excellent, and the highest price when we were there, four cents (about twopence) the pound. The mut- ton was inferior, and so was the veal to the eye, but it ate well, though not very fat ; the price was about the same. The poultry was excellent; fowls or full-sized chickens, ready for the table, twelve cents, but much less if bought alive, and not quite fat; turkeys about fifty cents, and geese the same. The Ohio furnishes several sorts of fish, some of them very good, and always to he found cheap and ahundant in the market, Eggs, butter, nearly all kinds of vegetables, excellent, and at moderate prices. From Junc till December tomatoes (the great luxury of the American table in the opinion of most Europeans) may be found in the highest perfection in the market for about sixpence the peck. They have a great variety of beans unknown in England, particularly the Lima bean, the seed of which is dressed like the French harico; it fur- .

nishes a very abundant crop, and is a most delicious vegetable.

The watermelons, which in that warm climate furnish a most delightful refreshment, were abundant and cheap; but all other melons very inferior to those of France, or even of England, when ripened in a common hotbed. It is the custom for the gentle- men to go to market at Cincinnati; the smartest men in the place, and those of the "highest standing," do not scruple to leave their beds with the sun, six days in the week, and, prepared with a mighty basket, to sally forth in search of meat, butter, eggs and vegetables. I have con- tinually seen them returning, with their weighty haskets on one arm and an enormous ham depending on the other.

Cincinnati has not many lions to boast, but among them are two museums of natural history; both of these contain many respectable specimens, particularly that of Mr. Dorfcuille, who has, moreover, some interesting antiquitics. The people have a most ex- travagant passion for wax figures, and the two museums vie with each other in displaying specimens of this barbarous branch of art.

There is also a picture gallery at Cincinnati, and this was a circumstance of much interest to us. It would be in- vidious to describe the picture gallery; I have no doubt that some years hence it will present a very different appearance.

I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amuse- ment as the Cincinnatians. Billiards are forbidden by law; so are cards. To sell a pack of cards in Ohio subjects the seller to a penalty of fifty dollars. They have no public balls, excepting, I think, six dur- ing the Christmas holidays. They have no concerts. They have no dinner parties. They have a theatre, which is, in fact, the only public amusement of this little town; but they seem to care very little about it, and, cither from cconomy or distaste, it is very poorly attended. Ladies are rarely seen there, and by far the larger proportion of females deem it an offense to religion to witness the representation of a play.

. . There are no publie gardens or lounging shops of fashionable resort, and were it not for public worship and private tea-drinkings, all the ladies of Cincinnati would be in danger of becoming perfect re- cluscs.

Mrs. 'Trollope took for a time a country-house at Mo- hawk, then a straggling village along the Hamilton road at the base of Mount Auburn, where Mohawk street per- petuates its name and memory. She, by and by, deter-

mined to set up her son in business here, and projected the scheme which eventuated in the building of the Ba- zaar. The City Directory for 1829 gives the following entertaining account of this remarkable enterprise. It is hardly probable the writer would have been so glowing and enthusiastic in his descriptions, had he foreseen the criticisms which Mrs. Trollope would pass upon Cincin- nati and Cincinnatians in her forthcoming book, to say nothing of the criticisms which the local public and fu- ture travellers, notably Mrs. Trollope's countrymen and countrywomen, would give her remarkable creation on East Third street. The article serves, however, as an excellent means of information concerning the design of the builders of the Bazaar, and the feelings of the citi- zens toward it when the enterprise was new:

THE BAZAAR .- This exotic title carries the imagination directly to Constantinople, so celebrated for mosques, minarets, caravansaries, and bazaars. In soher English, hazaar signifies a fair or market place. The building which is the subject of the present notice, and which is now in rapid progress toward completion, is called the Bazaar, although but a small portion of its ample area is to be appropriated to its legiti- mate uses as a constant mart. The name, albeit, is in good keeping with the style of the edifice, the freestone front of which exhibits a rich and beautiful specimen of arabesque architecture, combining the airy lightness of the Grecian with the sombrous gravity of the Gothic taste. The basement story, which is entered by three several flights of stone steps, contains divers neat and commodious apartments. Those fronting the street are designed for an exchange coffee house, one of them to be fitted up and furnished as a bar-room, the other to be ap- propriated, as the name imports, to the transaction of general com- mercial business. Over the basement is a splendid compartment, sixty feet by twenty-eight, and ornamented by two rows of columns passing through it. This room gives title, if not character, to the building. Here is to be held the bazaar, where, it is presumable, every useful and useless article in dress, in stationery, in light and ornamental house- hold furniture, chinas and more pellucid porcelains, with every gewgaw that can contribute to the splendor and attractiveness of the exhibition. from the sparkling necklace of "lady fair" to the exquisite safety-chain, will be displayed and vended.

In the rear of the bazaar is an elegant saloon, where ices and other refreshments will lend their allurements to the fascinations of architect- ural novelty. This saloon opens to a spacious balcony, which in its turn conducts to an exhibition gallery, that is at present occupied by Mr. Hervieu's picture of Lafayette's Landing at Cincinnati. Above the bazaar is a magnificent ball-room, the front of which, looking over the street, will receive the rays of the sun, or cmit the rival splendors of its gas-illumincd walls, by three ample, arabesque windows, which give an unrivalled lightness and grace to the festive hall. The walls and the arched and lofty ceiling of this delectable apartment arc to be deco- rated by the powerful pencil of Mr. Hervieu. The rear of the room is oceupied by an orchestral gallery, whence dulcet music will guide " the light fantastic toe " through the mazes of the giddy dance.

Behind the ballroom is another superb saloon, issuing also to a bal- cony. This division is assigned to the accommodation of gentlemen's private parties, where the beau monde may regale themselves when and how they list. Over this is a circular structure of exceedingly light and beautiful proportions, which is intended for panoramic exhibitions; and around it is constructed, in concentric circles, an airy corridor, from whence the eye, that has been already delighted to satiety by the exhi- bitions of art, may recreate itself amid the varied beanties and bland- ishments of nature.

The rear of this antique and multifidous edifice presents a noble facade of Egyptian columns, which will vie, in magnificence and novelty, with the Arabian windows that decorate its front. The apartments are all to be lighted by gas, furnished by Mr. Delany. The whole arrange- ment and architectural of this superb building reflects great credit upon the taste and skill of Mr. Palmer, the architect. The interior dimen- sions of the building are : Length, one hundred and four feet ; width, eighty feet ; height to the top of the spire, which is to surmount the cupola, eighty feet ; height from base to cornice, thirty-three feet.

The Bazaar stands on Third street, cast of Broadway.

'The building was still new when sold at sheriff's sale to

HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

pay the mechanics who worked upon it, and underwent important changes at the hands of its different owners, especially in the addition of another story to its height. It has been occupied for many uses in the course of fifty- two or three years, from the original occupation by the Mechanic's institute down to its habitation largely by women of ill-fame. Of late it had fallen into utter disre- pair and dilapidation, except one room, which has been occupied by a rolling-mill office. Long ago the paint- ings with which Hervieu decorated its walls and ceilings (the ceiling of the large hall is said to have been very elaborately adorned), disappeared under successive coats of whitewash and then of wall-paper-"a striking exhibi- tion of vandalism," says Mr. Foote, in his Schools of Cincinnati, "as the putting them on these walls was an act of folly ; for, although not works of very high art, they possess too much merit to be defaced." The observa- tions of her son Anthony, the famous novelist, upon his visit to Cincinnati in the winter of 1861-2, will have in- terest here :

I had some little personal feeling in visiting Cincinnati, because my mother had lived there for some time, and had there been concerned in a commercial enterprise, by which no one, I believe, made any great sum of money. Between thirty and forty years ago she built a Bazaar in Cincinnati, which I was assured by the present owner of the house was at the time of its erection considered to be the great building of the town. It has been sadly eclipsed now, and by no means rears its head proudly among the great blocks around it. It had become a Physico- medical institute when I was there, and was under the dominion of a quack doctor on one side and of a college of rights-of-women female medical professors on the other. "I believe. sir, no man or woman ever made a dollar in that building ; and' as for rent, I don't even expect it." Such was the account given of the unfortunate Bazaar by the present proprietor.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 20

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co. Number of Pages: 666

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666