Spreading along the north bank of the Ohio River, Cincinnati, whose nicknames range from “Queen City” to “Porkopolis,” was once the largest and busiest city on the western frontier. During the heyday of steamboat travel in the first half of the 19th century, the city’s riverside location made it a prime transportation center, but as the railroad networks converged on Chicago, Cincinnati was eclipsed as the prime gateway to the western United States. Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer products company, started here in the 1830s, making soap out of the abundant animal fat from the city’s hundreds of slaughterhouses. In recent years, the city has welcomed some cutting-edge art and architecture, but has been best known for a variety of less salubrious things: race riots, the fall from grace of baseball hero Pete Rose, and the TV antics of former mayor Jerry Springer. Cincinnati’s declining population, now barely over 300,000 people, ranks it just ahead of Toledo as Ohio’s third largest city, which from a traveler’s point of view makes it an easily manageable and usually stress-free place to visit.
A good first stop in Cincy is the Museum Center (daily; $10; 513/287-7000 or 800/733-2077), in the former Union Terminal on Ezzard Charles Drive, off I-75 exit 1. This 1930s art deco railroad station has been converted into one of the best museum complexes in the country. The city’s most interesting neighborhood, Mount Adams, is east of downtown, high above the Ohio River. This 300-foot-high hilltop neighborhood was once connected to downtown by an incline railway, but is now somewhat cut off by the I-71 freeway. It has emerged from years of neglect as an artsy district of craft shops and cafes. Nearby Eden Park holds the respected Cincinnati Art Museum (closed Mon.; free; 513/721-5204), as well as a planetarium and conservatory amidst acres of greenery. Along the Ohio River downtown, the “Great American Ballpark” (513/765-7400) is home to the Cincinnati Reds.
Unfortunately, most of Cincinnati’s once vibrant waterfront area, known as “The Basin,” has been torn down in the name of urban renewal. What the 1940 WPA Guide to Ohio called “a museum of city history and the building styles of the past century,” has been eliminated in favor of a stadium each for the Reds and Bengals and a contentiously flashy museum on the anti-slavery Underground Railroad. The sole survivors of old Cincinnati are found across the river in Covington, Kentucky. You can get there by crossing the Roebling Bridge, built in 1865 as a precursor to the more famous Brooklyn Bridge. East of the bridge, a line of well-preserved 1820s houses, many of which served as way stations on the actual Underground Railroad, overlook the historic Ohio River boundary between “slave” and “free” states.
