Cincinnati is a city in the
U.S. state of Ohio
and the
county seat of Hamilton County
. The municipality is located north of the
Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky
border. The population within city limits was estimated to
be 333,336 in 2008, making it the state's third largest city.
According
a 2008 Census Bureau estimate, the Cincinnati Metropolitan Area had
a population of 2,155,137 making it the largest MSA in Ohio, and
the 24th most populous in the United States
. Residents of Cincinnati are called
Cincinnatians.
Cincinnati is considered to have been the first American
boomtown in the heart of the country in the early
nineteenth century to rival the larger coastal cities in size and
wealth. As the first major inland city in the country, it is
sometimes thought of as the first purely American city, lacking the
heavy European influence that was present on the east coast.
However, by the end of the nineteenth century, Cincinnati's growth
had slowed considerably, and the city was surpassed in population
by many other inland cities.
Cincinnati is home to major sports teams including the
Cincinnati Reds and the
Cincinnati Bengals, as well as events
like the
Cincinnati Masters and
the Thanksgiving Day race.
The University of Cincinnati
traces its foundation to the Medical College of
Ohio, which was founded in 1819.
Cincinnati
is also known for having one of the larger collections of
nineteenth-century Italianate
architecture in the U.S., primarily concentrated just north of
Downtown in an area known as
Over-the-Rhine
. Over-the-Rhine is one of the largest
historic districts listed on the
National Register of
Historic Places.
History
Cincinnati was founded in 1788 by
John Cleves Symmes and
Colonel Robert Patterson. Surveyor
John Filson (also the author of
The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone) named
it "Losantiville" from four terms, each of a different language,
meaning "the city opposite the mouth of the
Licking River."
Ville is
French for "city,"
anti is Greek for "opposite",
os is Latin for "mouth", and "L" was all that was included
of "Licking River".
In 1790,
Arthur St. Clair, the governor of
the Northwest Territory, changed
the name of the settlement to "Cincinnati" in honor of the Society of the
Cincinnati
, of which he was a member. The society
honored General
George Washington,
who was considered a latter day
Cincinnatus, the
Roman farmer who was called to serve Rome as
dictator, an office which he immediately resigned after completing
his task of defeating the
Aequians. To this
day, Cincinnati in particular, and Ohio in general, is home to a
statistically significant number of descendants of
Revolutionary War soldiers who
were
granted lands in
the state.
In 1802, Cincinnati was chartered as a
village.
David Ziegler
(1748-1811), a Revolutionary War veteran from Heidelberg
, Germany
, became the
first mayor. Cincinnati was incorporated as a city in 1819.
The introduction of steam navigation on the
Ohio River in 1811 and the completion of the
Miami and Erie Canal helped the
city grow to 115,000 citizens by 1850.

Cincinnati in 1841 with the Miami and
Erie Canal in the foreground.
Construction on the Miami and Erie Canal began on July 21,
1825, when it was called the Miami Canal, a reference to the
Little Miami
River
, which was its origin, and water was diverted into
the canal bed in 1827. The canal began by connecting Cincinnati to
nearby Middletown
in 1827 and, by 1840, the canal had reached
Toledo
, changing
the Miami Canal to the Miami and Erie Canal and signifying the
connection between the Little Miami River and Lake
Erie.
During this period of rapid expansion,
citizens of Cincinnati began referring to the city
as the "Queen" city. The phrase was cemented in the poem "Catawba
Wine" by
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, who wrote that the city was "the Queen of the
West", giving the city its nickname.
Railroads were the next major form of transportation to come to
Cincinnati. In 1836, the Little Miami Railroad was chartered.
Construction began soon after, to connect Cincinnati with the Mad
River and Lake Erie Railroad, and thus the ports of the Sandusky
Bay on Lake Erie.
In regard to Law enforcement: the first Sheriff John Brown
appointed September 2, 1788; an Ohio Act of January 1, 1802
provided for Cincinnati to have a Village Marshall {James Smith
appointed}; a "
Night
Watch" was established March 29, 1803; in 1819 when Cincinnati
was incorporated as a city the First City Marshal William Ruffin
was appointed. In May 1828 a Police force consisted of 1 captain; 1
assistant and 5 patrolmen; On April 22, 1850 a position of Police
Chief and 6 Lieutenants were established; in 1853 the First Police
Chief Jacob Keifer was appointed/dismissed after 3 weeks.
On April 1, 1853, Cincinnati's Fire Department became a paid
department, the first full-time paid fire department in the United
States. It was the first in the world to use steam fire
engines.
Six years later, in 1859, Cincinnati laid out six streetcar lines,
making it easier for people to get around the city. By 1872,
Cincinnatians could travel on the streetcar line within the city
and then be transported by rail car to the hill communities. The
Cincinnati Inclined Plane Company began transporting people to the
top of Mount Auburn in that year.
The
Cincinnati Red
Stockings, whose name and heritage inspired today's
Cincinnati Reds, began their career in the
1800s as well. In 1868, meetings were held at the law offices of
Tilden, Sherman, and Moulton to make Cincinnati’s baseball team a
professional one; it became the first regular professional team in
the country, being organized formally in 1869.
During the
American Civil War,
Cincinnati played a key role as a major source of supplies and
troops for the Union Army. It also served as the headquarters for
much of the war for the Department of the Ohio, which was charged
with the defense of the region, as well as directing the army's
offensives into Kentucky and Tennessee. Due to Cincinnati's
proximity to and commerce with
slave
states across the
Ohio River, there
was significant "Southern sympathy" in the Cincinnati area. This is
evidenced by the history of the
Copperhead movement in Ohio. In July
1863, Cincinnati was placed under
martial
law due to the imminent danger posed by the Confederate
Morgan's Raiders.
They came close to
Cincinnati but never actually attacked the city proper, although
several outlying villages such as Cheviot
and Montgomery
were attacked.
In 1879,
Procter & Gamble,
one of Cincinnati's major soap manufacturers, began marketing
Ivory Soap. It was marketed as light
enough to float. After a fire at the first factory, Procter &
Gamble moved to a new factory on the Mill Creek and began soap
production again. The area became known as Ivorydale.
In 1884, one of the most severe riots in American history took
place in Cincinnati. The incident that sparked the riots happened
on Christmas Eve 1883 when two men, Joe Palmer and William Berner,
robbed and murdered their employer, a stable owner named William
Kirk, by hammering in his skull and strangling him to death. The
duo dumped his body near Mill Creek before they were captured. One
of the men, William Berner, was spared the gallows but this
decision would nearly destroy the city.
Beginning on March 28, thousands of citizens stormed the county
jail and burned the Hamilton County Courthouse seeking Berner. A
small group of Hamilton County Deputies, led by Sheriff Morton
Lytle Hawkins, fought to save the jail from a complete takeover.
Eventually, after losing ground, and nearly losing high profile
prisoner Joe Palmer along with the entire jail – they succeeded in
protecting the inmates at cost of the lives of two deputies -
including Captain John Desmond whose statue graces the Courthouse
lobby today. In total, 45 Cincinnatians were killed and 125
injured.
Cincinnati weathered the Great Depression better than most American
cities of its size, largely because of a resurgence of inexpensive
river trade. The rejuvenation of downtown began in the 1920s and
continued into the next decade with the construction of Union
Terminal, the post office, and a large Bell Telephone
building.
The flood of 1937 was one of the worst in the nation's history,
resulting in the building of protective flood walls. After World
War II, Cincinnati unveiled a master plan for urban renewal that
resulted in modernization of the inner city. Like other older
industrial cities, Cincinnati suffered from economic restructuring
and loss of jobs following deindustrialization in the
mid-century.
In the
1970s, the city completed Riverfront Stadium
and Riverfront Coliseum
, as the Cincinnati
Reds baseball team emerged as one of the dominant teams of the
decade. In 1989, the 200th anniversary of the city's
founding, much attention was focused on the city's Year 2000 plan,
which involved further revitalization.
The completion of several major new development projects enhance
the city as it enters the early years of the new millennium.
Cincinnati's beloved Bengals and Reds teams
both have new, state-of-the-art homes: Paul Brown
Stadium
, opened in 2000; and the Great
American Ball Park
, opened in 2003, respectively. Two new museums have
opened: the Rosenthal Center for
Contemporary Art in 2003, and the National Underground Railroad Freedom
Center
in 2004.
The City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County are currently planning
the Banks--a 24-hour urban neighborhood of
restaurants, clubs, offices, and homes with sweeping skyline views,
along the city's riverfront. Cincinnati has received such accolades
as "Most Liveable City" (1993), Partners for Livable Communities,
April 2004; number five U.S. arts destination, American Style
Magazine, Summer 2004; was the highest rated city in Ohio for "Best
Cities For Young Professionals" and 18th overall, Forbes Magazine,
June 2007; and inclusion in the top ten "Cities that Rock," Esquire
Magazine, April 2004.
Geography
Cincinnati's
core metro area
spans parts of Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky. According to
the
United States Census
Bureau, the city has a total area of 79.6
square miles (206.1
km²), of which, 78.0 square miles
(201.9 km²) of it is land and 1.6 square miles
(4.1 km²) of it (2.01%) is water.
The city spreads over
a number of hills, bluffs, and low ridges overlooking the Ohio River in the Bluegrass region
of the country. Cincinnati is geographically
located within the
Midwest and is on the far
northern periphery of the
Upland
South.
Climate
Cincinnati is located within the northern limit of the
humid subtropical climate and the
southern limit of the
humid
continental climate zone, with average temperatures by U.S.
standards. Summers are hot, humid and wet. July is the warmest
month, with an average high of 87°F (31°C) and an average low of
68°F (20°C). Winters are generally cool to cold, with occasional
snowfall. January is the coldest month, with an average high of
38°F (3°C) and an average low of 21°F (-6°C). Precipitation is
fairly evenly distributed each month, averaging 41 inches of
rainfall and 14 inches of snowfall annually. The highest
recorded temperature was 109 °F (43 °C) on July 21, 1934,
and the lowest recorded temperature was -25°F (-32 °C) on January
18, 1977.
Cityscape

Cincinnati Museum Center
Downtown Cincinnati is focused around
Fountain
Square
, a popular public square and gathering place for
many events.
Cincinnati is home to numerous structures
that are noteworthy due to their architectural characteristics or
historic associations including the Carew Tower
, the Scripps Center,
the Ingalls
Building
, Cincinnati Museum Center at Union
Terminal
, and the Isaac M.
Wise Temple
.
The city is undergoing significant changes due to an influx of
new
development and private investment as well as the construction
of the long stalled
Banks project.
Currently, there has been nearly $3.5 billion invested in urban
core of Cincinnati (including Northern Kentucky), and it is
anticipated that even more investment will take place.
Construction has begun on a new building that will dominate the
Cincinnati skyline.
Queen City Square
is scheduled to be open in 2011. The
building will be the tallest in Cincinnati and the third tallest in
Ohio, reaching a height of 660 feet.
In 2008 Cincinnati was ranked the 10th most walkable city in the
United States, and the most walkable in Ohio.
Government
The city is governed by a
nine-member
city council, whose members are elected at large. Prior to
1924, city council was elected through a system of
wards. The ward system lent itself to
corruption and Cincinnati was run by the
Republican political machine of "Boss" Cox from the
1880s through the 1920s with a few brief interludes. A reform
movement arose in 1923, led by another
Republican,
Murray Seasongood. Seasongood eventually
founded the Charter Committee, which used ballot initiatives in
1924 to eliminate the ward system and replace it with the current
at-large system and also to introduce a
city manager form of government.
From 1924 to 1957, the council was selected by
proportional representation.
Beginning in 1957, all candidates ran in a single race and the top
nine vote-getters were elected (the "9-X system"). The mayor was
selected by the council. In 1977,
Jerry
Springer, later a controversial television talk show host, was
chosen to serve one year as mayor. Starting in 1987, the top
vote-getter in the city council election automatically became
mayor. Starting in 1999, the
mayor was chosen in a
separate election and the city manager received a lesser role in
government; these reforms were referred to as the "
strong mayor" reforms. Cincinnati
politics include the participation of the
Charter Party, the party
with the third-longest history of winning in local elections. The
current mayor of Cincinnati is Mark Mallory and the current City
Manager is Milton Dohoney. The nine-member city council is
comprised of Vice-Mayor David Crowley and Councilmembers
Greg Harris, Roxanne Qualls, Jeff
Berding, Y.
Laketa
Cole, Cecil Thomas, Chris Monzel, Chris Bortz, and Leslie
Ghiz.
Race relations
Because of its location on the Ohio River, before the
Civil War, Cincinnati was a border town
between the states that allowed slavery, such as Kentucky, and
those that did not, such as Ohio. Residents of Cincinnati and
surrounding areas played a major role in
abolitionism, but there were also opponents to
this movement.
Social tensions, the press of new immigrants and competition over
jobs sometimes erupted into violence. In 1829 a riot broke out as
anti-abolitionists attacked blacks in the city. Some 1,200 blacks
left the city as a result of rioting and resettled in Canada. The
riot was a national topic of discussion in black communities.
Representatives at the first Negro
Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
in 1830 discussed how to help the
refugees.
As the anti-slavery movement grew, other riots occurred in 1836 and
1841. In 1836 anti-abolitionists attacked a press run by James
Birney, who published the anti-slavery weekly
The
Philanthropist. The mob grew to 700 and also attacked black
neighborhoods.
Tensions increased after passage in 1850 of the
Fugitive Slave Act. Abolitionists
maintained stations of the
Underground Railroad in the area, as
slaves frequently escaped across the river.
Harriet Beecher Stowe lived here for a
while and used the area as the setting for her novel
Uncle Tom's Cabin. She had met
escaped slaves and heard their stories.
Levi
Coffin made the Cincinnati area the center of his anti-slavery
efforts in 1847.
Today, the National Underground Railroad Freedom
Center
commemorates the era at its center located at 50
East Freedom Way.
The 20th and 21st centuries had different issues in race relations,
aggravated by late 20th century economic problems. In 2001 a series
of racially charged
riots
occurred after the shooting death of a black male,
Timothy Thomas, by police during a foot
pursuit.
Crime

Crime increased after the 2001 riots,
but has been decreasing ever since.
Before the
riot of 2001,
Cincinnati's overall crime rate was dropping dramatically and had
reached its lowest point since 1992. After the riot violent crime
increased, and in 2005 Cincinnati was ranked as the 20th most
dangerous city in America. The police force "
work
slowdown" correlates with this increase. An article published
in the Cincinnati Enquirer on May 30, 2007 affirmed that incidents
of violent crime, including homicides, were 15.3 percent lower than
they had been in the first four months of 2006. Children's Hospital
saw a 78 percent decrease in gunshot wounds, and University
Hospital had a 17 percent drop. In 2009, the
CQ
Press ranked Cincinnati the 19th most dangerous city in the
United States
In May and June 2006, together with the Hamilton County Sheriff,
the Cincinnati Police Department created a task force to crack down
on crime.
This consisted of an extra twenty deputies
assigned to Over-the-Rhine
and helped reduce the crime rate of downtown
Cincinnati by 29% . This marks a dramatic decrease in crime
but has not reduced the crime levels to pre-riot levels.
In the
general
elections on November 7, 2006, Hamilton County voters rejected
a quarter-cent
sales tax increase which
would have been used to build a new jail system.
The city has attempted to reduce
gun
violence in Cincinnati by using the Out of the Crossfire
program at University Hospital, which is a rehabilitation program
for patients with gunshot wounds. The program attempts to prevent
them from falling back into the cycle of violence which many
gunshot victims return to after leaving the hospital. Mayor Mark
Mallory is a member of the
Mayors Against Illegal
Guns Coalition, a bi-partisan group with a stated goal of
"making the public safer by getting illegal guns off the streets."
2007 saw 68 homicides, nearly a 25% drop from 2006 in which there
were 89. However, this is still not lower than 2000 count of 15
homicides.As of May 2008, violent crime is down by almost 12%
compared to the crime rate at that point last year. At year end
2008, 75 homicides were recorded, an increase from 68 the previous
year.
Demographics
As of 2007, the city's population was 52.0% White (49.3%
non-Hispanic-White alone), 46.5% Black or African American, 0.9%
American Indian and Alaska Native, 2.0% Asian, 1.0% from some other
race and 2.4% from two or more races. 1.7% of the total population
were Hispanic or Latino (of any race).
As of the
census of 2000, there were 331,285
people, 148,095 households, and 72,566 families residing in the
city. The
population density was
3,879.8.0 people per square mile (1,498.0/km²) with a housing
density of 2,129.2/sq mi (822.1/km²). The racial makeup of the
city was 52.97%
White, 42.92%
Black or
African American, 0.21%
Native American, 1.55%
Asian, 0.04%
Pacific Islander, 0.63% from
other races, and 1.68%
from two or more races.
Hispanic or
Latino of any
race were 1.28% of the population. The top 5 largest ancestries
include
German (19.8%),
Irish (10.4%),
English (5.4%),
Italian (3.3%).
There were 148,095 households out of which 25.1% had children under
the age of 18 living with them, 26.6% were
married couples living together, 18.6% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 51.0% were non-families.
42.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.1% had
someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average
household size was 2.15 and the average family size was 3.02.
The age distribution was 24.5% under the age of 18, 12.9% from 18
to 24, 31.6% from 25 to 44, 18.7% from 45 to 64, and 12.3% who were
65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every
100 females there were 89.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and
over, there were 85.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $29,493, and the
median income for a family was $37,543. Males had a median income
of $33,063 versus $26,946 for females. The
per capita income for the city was
$19,962. About 18.2% of families and 21.9% of the population were
below the
poverty line, including 32.0%
of those under age 18 and 14.8% of those age 65 or over.
For several decades the
Census Bureau
had been reporting a steady decline in the city's population. But
according to the Census Bureau's 2006 estimates, the population was
332,252, representing an increase from 331,310 in 2005.
Despite
the fact that this change was due to an official challenge by the
city however, Mayor Mark Mallory has
repeatedly argued that the city's population is actually at 378,259
after a drill-drown study was performed by an independent,
non-profit group based in Washington, D.C.
The
Cincinnati-Middletown
-Wilmington
Metropolitan Statistical Area
has a population of 2,155,137 people, making it the largest
metropolitan area in Ohio and the 24th largest in the
country. It includes the Ohio
counties of
Hamilton
, Butler
, Warren
, Clermont
, and Brown
, as well as the Kentucky
counties of Boone
, Bracken
, Campbell
, Gallatin
, Grant
, Kenton
, and Pendleton
, and the Indiana
counties of Dearborn
, Franklin
, and Ohio
.
Economy

Scripps Center in downtown
Cincinnati.
Cincinnati is home to major corporations
such as Procter & Gamble,
The Kroger Company, Sunny Delight Beverages Co.,
GE Aviation (suburb of Evendale
), Macy's, Inc.
(owner of
Macy's
and
Bloomingdale's), Convergys, Chiquita Brands International,
Great American
Insurance Company, Western & Southern
Financial Group, The
E. W.
Scripps Company, the United States Playing Card
Company (enclave of Norwood
), and Fifth Third
Bank. Kao Corporation's
United States headquarters are in Cincinnati as well. Altogether,
ten Fortune 500 companies and eighteen Fortune 1000 companies are
headquartered in the Cincinnati area. Statistically, Greater
Cincinnati ranks sixth in the U.S. with 4.98 Fortune 500 companies
per million residents and fourth in the U.S. with 8.96 Fortune 1000
companies per million residents.
Cincinnati has three Fortune Global 500
companies; the most Global 500 companies in the state of Ohio
.
The
largest employer in Cincinnati is the University of
Cincinnati
, with 15,862 employees. Kroger is the second
largest, with 15,600 employees.
Education

University of Cincinnati's McMicken
Hall
The
Cincinnati Public
School district includes 16 high schools, each accepting
students on a city-wide basis. The district includes many public
Montessori school, one of which,
Clark Montessori, was
the first public Montessori high school established in the United
States.Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) also boasts
Walnut Hills High School,
Newsweek's 36 best public school, which offers 28 Advanced
Placement courses and top athletic teams. In recent years, Walnut's
orchestra has been invited to Carnegie Hall in New York and St.
Martin in the Fields, in London.
The city and region is also home to a variety of other schools,
both public and private. In August 2007,
Cincinnati Magazine published an
article rating 36 private high schools in greater Cincinnati.
According
to the 2000 census, the
Cincinnati area has some of the highest private school attendance
rates in the United States, with Hamilton County ranking second
only to St. Louis County, Missouri
among the country's 100 largest
counties.
The Roman Catholic
Archdiocese
of Cincinnati accounts for several
high schools in metro
Cincinnati; ten of which are
single-sex: four all-male, and six
all-female. Cincinnati is also home to the all-girl RITSS (Regional
Institute for Torah and Secular Studies) high school, a small
Orthodox Jewish institution and the
Hebrew Union
College- Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) founded by
Isaac Mayer Wise.
Cincinnati is home to the University of
Cincinnati
and Xavier University
, among other colleges and universities. The
University of Cincinnati, often referred to informally as "UC," is
one of the United States' major graduate research institutions
(with prominence in engineering, music, architecture, and
psychology). In addition, the
University of Cincinnati
Medical Center is very highly regarded. Xavier, a Jesuit
university, was at one time affiliated with
The Athenaeum of Ohio, the seminary of
the Cincinnati Archdiocese.
The
extended Greater Cincinnati area has Miami University
(one of the original "Public Ivies"),
and the 17-thousand-student-strong Northern
Kentucky University
campus in Highland Heights, Kentucky
, 8 miles SSE of downtown, among others.
Specifically, NKU is connected with downtown
Cincinnati directly via the radiating-spoke interstate system:
Daniel Carter Beard
Bridge and I-471 which puts this newest,
eighth public university of Commonwealth of Kentucky
within immediate reach of the Cincinnati city
population, and makes travel to and from NKU to downtown and points
beyond easier than across town. Among other schools,
Cincinnati State is a vocational
school which boasts the
Midwest
Culinary School, one of the best culinary institutes in the
United States.
In 2009 Cincinnati was listed fourth on CNN's Top 10 cities for new
grads.
Culture

Approximately 500,000 attend Taste of
Cincinnati, making Taste one of the nation's largest street
festivals.
Cincinnati is home to numerous festivals and events throughout the
year, including:
- The Cincinnati Flower
Show, organized by the Cincinnati Horticultural
Society in late April. This floral event, endorsed by the
Royal Horticultural
Society, is staged at Symmes Township Park and claims to be the
biggest outdoor flower show in the United States.
- Oktoberfest,
celebrating Cincinnati's German heritage, is the largest
Oktoberfest in the US.
- Thanksgiving Day Race, the sixth-oldest race in the
country.
- The Taste of Cincinnati and
the Jazz Festival, held during the summer months.
- The Tall Stacks Festival, held every
three or four years to celebrate Cincinnati's riverboat
history.
- The
Festival of Lights, hosted by the
Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical
Garden
during the year-end holiday season.
- The Cincinnati
Bell/WEBN Riverfest fireworks display on Labor Day weekend,
attracting annual crowds of over 500,000.
- The Cincinnati Fringe
Festival 12 Days of Theatre, Film, Visual Art, and Music in the
heart of Over-the-Rhine. Ohio's Largest Performing Arts Festival.
Begins the day after Memorial Day each year.
The city plays host to numerous musical and theater operations,
operates a park system currently ranked 4th in the country boasting
that any city resident is within a mile of a park, and has a
diverse dining culture.
Cincinnati's Fountain
Square
serves as one of the cultural cornerstones of the
region.
Cincinnati is identified with several unique foods. "
Cincinnati chili" is commonly served by
several independent chains, including
Skyline Chili,
Gold
Star Chili,
Price Hill Chili,
Empress Chili,
Camp Washington
Chili, and
Dixie Chili and
Deli. Cincinnati has been called the "Chili Capitol of America"
and "the World" because it has more chili restaurants per capita
than any other city in the nation or world.
Goetta is a meat product popular in Cincinnati,
usually eaten as a breakfast food. Cincinnati also has many gourmet
restaurants. Until 2005, when the restaurant closed,
The Maisonette carried the distinction of
being
Mobil Travel Guide's longest running
five-star restaurant in the
country. Jean-Robert de Cavel has opened four new restaurants in
the area since 2001, including Jean-Robert's at Pigall's which
closed in March 2009. Cincinnati's
German heritage is evidenced by the many
restaurants that specialize in schnitzels and
Bavarian cooking. Another element of
German culture remains audible in the local vernacular; some
residents use the word
please when asking a speaker to
repeat a statement. This usage is taken from the German word for
please,
bitte (a shortening of the very formal, "Wie bitte
ist es?" or "How, please is that?" in the literal), which is used
in this sense.
Findlay
Market
is Ohio's oldest continuously-operated public
market and one of Cincinnati's most famous institutions. The
market is the last remaining market among the many that once served
Cincinnati.
In August, 2008
Forbes magazine ranked
Cincinnati as tenth in a list of "America's Hard-Drinking
Cities".
Media and music
Cincinnati is served by
The
Cincinnati Enquirer, a daily newspaper. The city is home
to several alternative, weekly, and monthly publications, as well
as twelve television stations and many radio stations.
Soapbox
Cincinnati was launched in February, 2008, as a free weekly
online e-zine to "tell the new Cincinnati narrative" by focusing on
the creative talent shaping the physical and economic
transformation of the Cincinnati region. Free print magazine
publications include CityBeat, Metromix, and DERF Magazine.com.
CityBeat is a weekly free magazine with an entertainment focus but
also a prominent editorial slant. Metromix is a general interest
weekly publication with a broad focus on light entertainment such
as music, nightlife, dining, fashion, and art. DERF Magazine is
monthly humor-based publication (similar in style to The Onion)
featuring satirical and fake news in addition to local event
listings and extensive nightlife photo galleries.
Movies that were filmed in part in Cincinnati include
Fresh Horses,
The Asphalt Jungle (open shot from
the Public Landing, takes place in Cincinnati but only Boone
County, KY is mentioned),
Rain
Man,
Shawshank
Redemption,
Airborne,
Grimm Reality,
Little Man Tate,
City of Hope (director:
John Sayles),
Milk
Money,
Batman
Forever,
Traffic,
The Pride of Jesse Hallam,
In Too Deep,
Public Eye,
The Last Late Night,
and
The Mighty. In addition,
Wild Hogs is set, though not
filmed, in Cincinnati.
The Cincinnati skyline was prominently featured in the opening and
closing sequences of the daytime drama
The Edge of Night from its start in
1956 until 1980, when it was superseded by the Los Angeles skyline;
the cityscape was the stand-in for the show's setting, Monticello.
Procter & Gamble, the show's producer, is based in Cincinnati.
The sitcom
WKRP in
Cincinnati, and its sequel/spin-off
The New WKRP in Cincinnati
featured the city's skyline and other exterior shots in its
credits, as well as obviously being set, though not shot in,
Cincinnati.
The city's skyline has also appeared in an
April Fool's episode of The Drew Carey Show, which was set
in Carey's hometown of Cleveland
.
Cincinnati gave rise to many popular bands
and musicians, including Nick Lachey,
The Isley Brothers, James Brown, Mood,
Calloway, The Afghan Whigs, Over the Rhine (which is named after
Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine
district), Bootsy
Collins, Blessid Union of
Souls, 98 Degrees, The Greenhornes, The National, Enduser and Heartless
Bastards. In addition, many other bands and musicians
call the
Greater Cincinnati
region their home, including
Adrian
Belew,
Peter Frampton and
alternative Hip Hop DJ, DJ
Hi-Tek, who is one
half of
Reflection Eternal and
Traxxstarr.
3 Doors Down's music video "It's Not My
Time" was filmed in Cincinnati showing parts of the skyline as well
as Fountain Square.
Cincinnati is the broadcasting home of WOXY, The Future of Rock
& Roll (Historically 97.7 or 97X):
woxy.com online and available on
Cincinnati Public Radio Inc.
HD Radio station 91.7-2.
WCET/Channel 48
(now known as CET) is the nation's oldest licensed
public television station (License #1, issued in
1951).
The
Cincinnati May Festival
Chorus is a prestigious amateur choir that has been in existence
since 1880. Music Director
James Conlon
and Chorus Director
Robert Porco lead
the Chorus through an extensive repertoire of classical music. The
May Festival Chorus is the mainstay of the oldest continuous choral
festival in the Western Hemisphere.
Cincinnati's Music
Hall
was built specifically to house the May
Festival.
Cincinnati is home to the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,
Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati
Boychoir and
Cincinnati Ballet.
The Greater Cincinnati area is also home to several regional
orchestras and youth orchestras, including the
Starling Chamber Orchestra.
Sports

A Cincinnati Reds baseball game at
Great American Ball Park.
Cincinnati has seven major sports venues, two major league teams,
six minor league teams, and five college institutions with their
own sports teams. It is home to baseball's
Reds, who were named for America's first
professional baseball team, the
Cincinnati Red Stockings; the
Bengals of the National Football
League; and the historic international men's and women's tennis
tournament, The A.T.P. Masters Series
Cincinnati Masters. It is also home to
three professional soccer teams, two outdoor teams, the Cincinnati
Kings (men's) and Cincinnati LadyHawks (women's), and one indoor
team, the Cincinnati Excite (men's).
Fans often refer to the city and its teams as "Cincy" for short.
Even the Reds' official website uses that name frequently.
Transportation

The highways of Cincinnati.
The purple portion is Cincinnati proper, the light green
portion is Ohio, and the light yellow portion is Kentucky.
Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International
Airport
(CVG) is the major airport
serving the metropolitan area and is located across the river in
Kentucky
. The airport is the fifth largest hub for
Delta and the largest for its
subsidiary,
Comair.
The city has four
other airports; Lunken
Airport
, a municipal airfield used for smaller business
jets and private planes; the Butler County Regional Airport,
located between Fairfield
and Hamilton
, which ranks just behind Lunken in business jets
and has the largest private aircraft capacity of the Cincinnati
area; Cincinnati West
Airport, a smaller airport located in Harrison
, Ohio; and the Blue Ash Airport
, in Blue Ash
.

Government Square is Cincinnati's main
Metro station.
Cincinnati is served by the Metro city passenger bus system,
operated by the
Southwest Ohio
Regional Transit Authority (SORTA). The
Transit Authority of
Northern Kentucky (TANK) serves Northern Kentucky and operates
bus links in Cincinnati at Metro's main Government Square hub.
There is
also rail service by Amtrak with ticket
offices and boarding stations at Cincinnati
Union Terminal
. Several freight railroads service
Cincinnati, the largest being
CSX
Transportation which operates a railroad yard west of
Interstate 75. Other railroads include
Norfolk Southern, which operates a
large intermodal yard in the west end neighborhood of Queensgate
and the
Indiana & Ohio
Railroad which operates several small predecessor yards
throughout the city.The city has a river ferry and many bridges.
The
Anderson
Ferry
has been in continuous operation since
1817.Cincinnati’s major bridges include:

High rise condos overlooking the Ohio
River
Cincinnati is served by three major
interstate highways.
Interstate 75 is a north-south route through
the
Mill Creek valley.
Interstate 71 runs northeast towards Mount
Adams
and Walnut Hills. Interstate 74 begins at Interstate 75 west of downtown and connects to
Indiana
.
The city
has an outer-belt, Interstate 275, and a spur to Kentucky
, Interstate
471. It is also served by numerous U.S. highways:
US 22,
US
25,
US 27,
US 42,
US 50,
US 52, and
US 127.
Cincinnati has an
incomplete subway
system. Construction stopped in 1924 when unexpected
post-
World War I inflation had doubled
the cost of construction. As a result, the funds that were
originally set aside were not enough to complete the subway system.
There have been several attempts by
SORTA to utilize
the subways for a modern
light rail
system within Hamilton County. All of these initiatives have thus
far failed when placed on the ballot, with the most recent
(
a $2.7 billion plan) failing 2 to 1 in
2002. Today the subway is used as a conduit for fiber optic and
water lines.
There have been numerous attempts over the past decade to build
commuter rail from Milford (in nearby
Clermont County) to the Downtown Transit Center in Cincinnati. The
most recent of these began gaining support in early July 2007. The
$411 million plan currently calls for using and upgrading existing
rail lines and new diesel cars called
DMU (diesel multiple units).
Cincinnati is also currently planning
a streetcar line to connect
Downtown, Over-the-Rhine
and the area around the University of
Cincinnati
. An initial study conducted by Omaha-based
HDR Engineers was completed on May 31, 2007 and estimated the cost
to be around $100 million. Additions made later, of a connection
from Over-the-Rhine to Uptown and a loop through Uptown, have
raised the overall estimated cost to $185 million. It is predicted
that the system could generate more than $1.4 billion in new
private investment over the next 15 years through property
redevelopment and attracting new residents. However, the plans have
faced opposition from some groups arguing that there are more
urgent needs on which to spend public funds. Opening of the first
streetcar line would not take place before 2011 or 2012.
According to Forbes Magazine, Cincinnatians spend 20% of their
income on transit, which makes the city the sixth most expensive
city for commuting in the United States. , the port of Cincinnati
is ranked 5th by trip ton-miles for an inland port.
Sister cities
Cincinnati has seven
sister cities:
A sister
city relationship with Harare
(Zimbabwe
) was suspended in protest of irregularities in the
2008 Zimbabwean
presidential election.
See also
References
- census.gov Population Estimates for the 25 Largest
Metropolitan Statistical Areas in 2008. Accessed on
2009-08-12.
- Writers' Program, Cincinnati: A Guide to the Queen City and
its Neighbors, Washington, DC: Works Project
Administration
- Best Cities For Young Professionals -
Forbes.com
- The Cincinnati Historical
Society
- Carter G. Woodson, Charles Harris Wesley, The
Negro in Our History, Associated Publishers, 1922, p. 140
(digitized from original at University of Michigan Library,
accessed 13 Jan 2009
- "The Pro-Slavery Riot in Cincinnati",
Abolitionism 1830-1850, Uncle Tom's Cabin and American
Culture, University of Virginia, 1998-2007, accessed 14 Jan
2009
- Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the reputed
president of the underground railroad: being a brief history of the
labors of a lifetime in behalf of the slave, with the stories of
numerous fugitives, who gained their freedom through his
instrumentality, and many other incidents, Cincinnati: Western
tract society, University of Michigan Library
- Kelley, Eileen and Jane Prendergast. "Good news: Crime's down".
Cincinnati Enquirer. 5/30/07.
- Out Of The Crossfire - Cincinnati
- Cincinnati city, Ohio - ACS Demographic and Housing
Estimates: 2005-2007
- " Facts & Figures." Cincinnati USA. Retrieved
on November 2, 2009.
- "Best Private High Schools", Cincinnati
Magazine
- "No Girls Allowed: Boys' Schools", Cincinnati
Magazine
- "A League of Their Own: Girls' Schools",
Cincinnati Magazine
- Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, Community
Directory
- (center of the plaza could mark a publicly accessible, easily
visible from space (Google Earth) reference point for the campus
and a gathering space)
- Top 10 cities for new grads
- OKTOBERFEST ZINCINNATI is Cincinnati Octoberfest
the largest Octoberfest in North America
- MSN, Food Capitals of America. Accessed on
2009-07-23.
- Cliff Lowe, The history of Cincinnati Chili. Accessed on
2009-07-23.
- Human Resources, University of Cincinnati
- City
Beat
- DERF
Magazine: Welcome!
- 1866 to 1875
- 1876 to 1881
- 1882 to 1889
- Search Results | Reds.com: Search
- Anderson Ferry - Cincinnati Ohio, Northern
Kentucky
- Recent Cincinnati Commuter Rail and Light Rail
Planning
- Prendergast, Jane (December 23, 2008). "NAACP: No Streetcars".
Cincinnati Enquirer.
- Forbes Magazine. America's Most Expensive Commutes: 6. Cincinnati,
Ohio. Accessed on 4/12/2009.
- Mallory cuts off Zimbabwe sister city | Cincinnati
Enquirer | Cincinnati.Com
External links