From "Cincinnati Post," January 2, 1926
One hundred years ago, a mere century into the past, Cincinnatians awoke not only to a new year, but to the dawning of a new city. The City Directory for that year encapsulated the change succinctly:
“With the advent of 1926, Cincinnati’s new Council-City Manager form of government became effective on the assumption by the new members of Council of the offices to which they had been elected in November 1925. At the same time, the City Manager, appointed by Council, Colonel Clarence O. Sherrill, became the city’s executive head.”
Gone were the last rotten vestiges of Boss Cox’s graft-fueled political machine. Gone were the bribes and corruption. Gone the patronage jobs offered only to the faithful minions of the Cox machine. Within a decade, Cincinnati would gain renown as the best governed city in America. Vice that flourished under the Cox administration was banished (mostly) from the city, much of it slithering across the river, transferring to Newport a reputation once stained the Queen City. The 1926 City Directory noted changes already underway:
“Determined efforts are being made, with good success, to stamp out gambling of every kind. The city is assured that a continued effort will be waged to eradicate these evils, and already the situation is vastly improved. Pool-rooms are sharing in the blows directed against evil and evil environment.”
The Cincinnati Post’s Al Segal, the conscience of the city under his “Cincinnatus” byline, noted that some of Cincinnati’s problems were caused by national trends, not just local corruption. Segal [January 2, 1926] observed there were 77 murders in Cincinnati during 1925, with 90 percent of them directly related to Prohibition and the sale of illicit hootch. Just three years earlier, Segal reported, Cincinnati suffered only 23 murders.
Although Boss Cox and his cronies were electorally retired, the city continued to suffer from years of neglect due to shady contractors favored by the Cox machine and from shoddy work overlooked because of bribes and kickbacks. As the City Directory complained:
“January 1926, the highways of the city were in a deplorable condition and cried aloud for repairs. Lack of care and funds to repair such conditions had not been forthcoming. Management and the allotment of funds for specific repairs needed readjusting before order could come out of chaotic conditions.”
The City Directory anticipated a much brighter transportation future once the Cincinnati Subway, then known as the “rapid transit loop,” was completed:
“The rapid transit loop, belting the city and calculated to co-ordinate and speed up the city’s car system, nears completion after many years of labor and the expenditure of more than as many millions of money. It is believed that the basin of the city will thus be relieved of residential congestion and that the general health of the city will be, by reason of an exodus to the hill-tops, much higher than at present.”
Unbeknownst to the editors of the City Directory, that brand-new, squeaky-clean city government was even then plotting to shut down the rapid transit loop, concerned that its success might lead voters to think that Cox’s machine, who initiated that project, might not have been that bad. Rumors about cost overruns and flawed design, all spurious, were concocted in the back rooms of city hall.
From the Cincinnati Subway And Street Improvements collection
The 1926 City Directory spilled a lot of ink bragging about Cincinnati’s other major transportation modes—railroads and river—while not, apparently recognizing the tectonic shifts approaching. Touted as a social service, and not as the harbinger of the next stage of urban evolution, the City Directory gave the automobile club a little pat on the head:
“The Cincinnati Automobile Club is by far the largest civic organization in the great Ohio Valley, and the fifth largest club of its kind in the world, bringing to Cincinnati international fame for the building of such an organization devoted to the betterment of motoring. With more than 20,000 members, the Cincinnati Automobile Club, affiliated with the Northern Kentucky Automobile Association branch of this club, renders a service to members throughout the entire Ohio Valley, from the point where the broad Ohio River cuts the Indiana fine, along its entire course until it reaches across into Pennsylvania. Service stations, giving emergency road service at any hour of the day or night, have been located in several hundred cities.”
The Post’s Segal was sure to point out the dark side of the automotive trend, reminding his readers that automobiles killed 130 Cincinnatians during the previous year.
The City Directory spared not a word on the plans to build the magnificent Union Terminal, whose project manager, Henry M. Waite, during the Terminal’s 1933 opening ceremonies, was quoted as saying:
“We will have visitors from all parts of the country to view this station, and I hope it is not too much to wish that they would come by train. I presume, however, they will use their automobiles.”
It goes without saying that the City Directory made nary a mention of airplanes or air travel.
Some other tidbits from the 1926 City Directory:
Cincinnati’s population was estimated at around 411,000. Today’s estimated population is 315,000.
The metropolitan area population was estimated at 650,000. Today’s estimate is 2.3 million.
Although Cincinnati had combined major street railway lines in 1923 to consolidate streetcar operations, the Cincinnati Street Railway Company hadn’t accepted buses as a viable option yet, so 11 independent bus companies competed in the Queen City.
Cincinnati was still a major industrial city, with more than 3,000 factories making soap, clothing, foundry and machine-shop products, radios, woodworking machinery, as well as firms devoted to meat packing and slaughtering, printing and publishing, boots and shoes.
In a city of 411,000 people and a metro area of 650,000, the entire Cincinnati Bell system totaled just 170,000 telephones. The shrinking number of telephoneless people were nicknamed “notels.”
Cincinnati was the third-busiest convention city in the United States with two major couture expositions that year: the Spring Fashion Show at the Hotel Gibson Roof Garden and Fall Fashion Pageant at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra presented twenty pairs of concerts each year at Emery Auditorium on Friday afternoons at 2:30 p.m. and Saturday evenings at 8:15 p.m. Music Hall was used only for Pop concerts at 3:00 p.m. on Sundays.
The Cincinnati Art Museum was free to all on weekends, but cost 25 cents on weekdays, except Thursdays, when admission was just 10 cents.
It was fairly common, during the dry season, for the Ohio River level to drop as low as 9 feet in depth, stifling river traffic.
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