By Henderson Lithographing Co. [1900], Digitized by Library of Congress
If you really want to visit Gas Alley today, you’ll have a bit of an adventure. Less than 300 feet in length, Gas Alley runs south from Longworth Hall to Mehring Way. It is paved with cobblestones interrupted by patches of gravel and surrounded by warehouses, a couple of light industrial sheds and a Duke Energy substation. There’s a street sign at the southern terminus.
No evidence remains of the little alley’s unsavory past. So disreputable was this byway that it lent its name to the entire surrounding neighborhood. The Cincinnati Times, in 1853, summed up Gas Alley’s reputation:
“This neighborhood, located in the Sixth Ward, is the most degraded in the city – rivaling, in some things, the noted Five Points of New York. Its dance-houses and grog-shops are numerous, and are the continual scenes of bloody fights, rows, and not unfrequently murders. The families who reside there, appear to be too fond of the degrading pleasures of the neighborhood; and drunken brawls, between man and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, are not uncommon in Gas Alley. Mothers and fathers are often found dead drunk, and their children ragged, starved and filthy, seen running around the streets, pilfering whatever they can lay their hands upon.”
Gas Alley got its name because it ran alongside the city’s gasworks. Before 1909, the Cincinnati Gas, Light & Coke Company manufactured its own gas, and resisted the use of natural gas. It was this so-called “town gas,” also known as “coal gas,” that was piped into Cincinnati homes. Town gas is manufactured by heating coal and the process results in a noxious and volatile mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and ethylene. By contrast, natural gas is mostly methane. Between 1841 and 1909, Cincinnati’s town gas flowed from a plant located adjacent to Gas Alley.
The Gas Alley neighborhood was centered around a compact triangle bordered by Gas Alley on the east, Second Street on the north and Front Street on the south. Today, Second Street is Pete Rose Way and Front Street is Mehring Way. It is inconceivable now, but there were once 45 tenement buildings plus the gasworks crammed into this little triangle. If you lived in Cincinnati prior to the Civil War, you knew to stay out of the place. A Cincinnati Gazette [2 June 1853] report is tragically typical:
“A man, named John Goller, while walking along the street near Gas alley, Tuesday evening, was attacked by a party of five or six men, who, with clubs and a large whip, beat him in a very severe manner, and left him on the sidewalk for dead.”
With no explanation about why they were fighting, as if no rationale, given the locality, was needed, the Gazette [19 February 1853] related another such incident:
“Thursday evening an affray took place in Gas alley, in which a female named Mary Finn raised a large bar of iron and struck a man over the head, cutting a frightful gash. She has been arrested.”
That summer, the regular disputes turned deadly, according to the Gazette [18 July 1853]:
“Gas Alley, a noted place for rowdyism, drunkenness and murders, was the scene of another bloody affray on Saturday night, which resulted in the murder of a man named Joseph Adams. We learn that a man named James Heffner and Adams got into a quarrel in regard to a trivial matter, when Adams picked up a brickbat and threw it at Heffner, striking him on the back. Heffner drew a pistol and fired back at Adams, the contents entering his forehead and lodging in his brain.”
Almost forty years later, Gas Alley was sadly maintaining its reputation. The Cincinnati Enquirer [1 March 1890] reported yet another melee in the storied neighborhood:
“Bowlders, clubs and clinched fists were the weapons used in a pitched battle last night between the police and a gang of rowdies in that classical thoroughfare, Gas alley.”
In that incident, a band of fifteen young toughs loitered along Front Street, spitting tobacco juice on passersby. Two police officers ordered the group to move along and were rebuffed, so the cops called in reinforcements from the Fourth District Station on Third Street and, according to the paper, “a general tumult ensued.”
Despite the frequency of violent crimes originating in Gas Alley, far too many news items related heart-breaking tales spawned by the oppressive poverty of the neighborhood. In his memoir, “Thirty-Five Years Among The Poor And The Public Institutions Of Cincinnati” (1887), Joseph Emery presents a common Gas Alley tragedy:
“One Sabbath evening, after a hard day’s labor, during the severe frost in January, I was desired to visit a dying woman on Gas Alley, one of the most degraded sections of our city. On entering the dismal room, a dim candle revealed six or seven colored people, nearly intoxicated. On a scantily furnished bed lay the wife of the occupant, who appeared to be past medical aid, and had quite lost the power of speech. On proposing to read and pray, they consented. There was not a chair in the room, but an old box formed the only seat. The only window in the room was left open to let out the smoke, but it let in the strong odor from the Gas House and the sharp breath of winter. During prayer the dying woman wept, but spoke not one word. I left money with a friend, and an order for food on the Relief Union. I then gave a solemn warning to all to give up liquor, which was hurrying them all to perdition. Soon after my departure, and the other friends left, all these wretched people went off drinking, and in the morning the woman was found frozen to death! Her own husband had left her to die alone!”
Over the years, Cincinnati has created quite a few disreputable slums, from Bucktown to Rat Row to Sausage Row to Frogtown to Charcoal Alley. Each has exhibited a unique character. The Gas Alley community distinguished itself because its inhabitants were an incendiary admixture of Irish and African American, two tribes that more commonly segregated themselves into different parts of town. There is every indication that the Irish residents of Gas Alley were too poor to aspire to a hovel on Rat Row and the Black population could not afford to reside in Bucktown.
Despite repeated efforts by the city to vacate the little thoroughfare, Gas Alley has somehow endured. On a recent autumn afternoon, the cobblestones gave not a clue to their storied past of blood and tears. Perhaps Gas Alley needs a historic plaque of some sort. If so, it would appropriately be manufactured of tin rather than bronze.
Photograph by Greg Hand
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