PHOTOGRAPH BY LANCE ADKINS
I apologize. This month’s column was supposed to focus on a long, tall, gorgeous mural currently celebrating its 25th anniversary at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. The mural will, I promise, get its due somewhere in the paragraphs below, but while I was gathering information about it I became distracted by something else.
It seems that the mural, one of many outstanding artworks by Cincinnati’s formidable C.F. Payne, is attached to a wall that’s attached to a lobby that’s attached to a building that’s the oldest part of the Playhouse theater complex—a hand-built bungalow several lifetimes older than the organization itself. I have fallen in love with this eccentric stone building. Its long journey, mostly unknown until now, compels me to give it top billing. Thank you for your patience.
Let us begin by recalling the very first Star Trek movie. (I know, I know, but stay with me.) In Star Trek the Motion Picture, Kirk and Spock and the whole Hee-Haw gang confront an enormous galactic-sized entity calling itself V’Ger, which turns out to be (spoiler alert!) an artifact of 20th century Earth. V’Ger began as a Voyager space probe from NASA, but after centuries in the cosmos it collected countless layers of cosmic debris and became a surprising pearl deep inside a colossal oyster.
Don’t laugh when I suggest that we here in Cincinnati have our own version of V’Ger, because we absolutely do. The oyster is Playhouse in the Park. Its surprising pearl is the Rosenthal Shelterhouse, a humble structure that’s added on layers of mass and majesty for 150 years.
The original Shelterhouse almost didn’t get built at all, and its opponents had a point. Isn’t it ridiculous, people said, to put anything on Eden Park’s highest, most isolated hilltop? This was 1874, remember. Not even a footpath went up there. No Ida Street running along the bottom, no Paradrome Street, nothing.
It could have been the most inaccessible hill in our beloved City of Seven Inaccessible Hills. Why were tax dollars being wasted on an overblown barn that nobody could reach without a mule team?
The city built it anyway, and damned if people didn’t start showing up. Those who slogged up the hill on hot summer days received two rewards: a spectacular view of Cincinnati that was safely distant from our famous pig-induced stink, and a refreshing glass of ice water from Jim Homer, retired lion tamer and superintendent of the Eden Park Shelter House. Today Shelterhouse is just one word, often paired with benefactors such as Thompson, Kaplan, Rosenthal, etc., but that name came with the building.
Fast-forward almost a century, and the Shelterhouse is barely surviving after decades of punishing use and neglect. If a guest book existed, it would show countless pages of dances, political rallies, business parties, midnight teen drinking, squatters, police busts for “men acting improperly,” and fertilizer storage. By the 1950s demolition seemed inevitable.
But then in 1960 the Shelterhouse was rescued and rehabbed by local arts enthusiasts who renamed it Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and scheduled a full season of theater shows. Once again, damned if people didn’t start showing up.
Success made the Playhouse quickly outgrow itself, prompting the first V’Ger layer in 1968: a large new sister venue called the Marx Theatre. The original overblown barn was given back its Shelterhouse name, but there was a downside. As the Marx Theatre flourished, the Shelterhouse Theatre got fewer plays and less attention, and maintenance lagged.
Not long after the old building’s 100th birthday, it failed the city’s new fire codes and was shut down. Eventually another V’Ger project was launched to revive it, with even more growth happening later. Every buildout, I am delighted to point out, has preserved the surprising pearl that is the Shelterhouse.
Consider the most recent renovation that demolished the entire Marx Theatre and created Moe & Jack’s Place–The Rouse Theatre. We’ve now seen more than 60 years of knockdowns and replacements, but the Playhouse has consistently stood by its overblown barn. I am clearly not alone in my irrational affection for it. Away from the Playhouse, however, the Shelterhouse is criminally overlooked.
There’s no excuse for it, really. The Shelterhouse never appears on any list of the city’s historic structures despite being older than Music Hall, Memorial Hall, City Hall, Cincinnati Art Museum, the Mt. Lookout Observatory, and others. Hey, it turns 150 this year. As Arthur Miller’s most famous play insists, “Attention must be paid!” So please, next time you’re at the Playhouse, give the Shelterhouse wall an affectionate pat. Thank you for indulging my obsession.
Now, about that mural. Playhouse in the Park went full V’Ger in the mid-1990s and added a new space adjacent to the Shelterhouse: the Kaplan Lobby. Its wrap-around wall of windows looks out on a still-spectacular view of Cincinnati (now stink-free), and our beloved mural rests above. A description here would be as fruitless as describing a sunrise, so I will be brief.
You stroll the 100-foot length of the mural’s curves to see a picnic-like gathering of famous playwrights sharing tables with characters they created who have come to life on Playhouse stages. Everything is whimsically intermingled with familiar Cincinnati items and landmarks.
The mural, titled A Playful Gathering, was created by illustrator C.F. Payne, another local treasure. Payne concluded many years ago that he is an “illustrator” rather than an “artist,” because when you’ve gotten a call from Time magazine and they want something for next week’s cover by Friday but it’s Wednesday and the internet hasn’t been invented yet so you fax them a sketch and they like it but want some changes and you say “OK” and scramble to revise the finished piece and then race down I-75 like a fleeing bank robber to the FedEx office at CVG, it’s hard to think of yourself as an “artist.”
The Shelterhouse mural was no Wednesday-to-Friday project. It took Payne and his assistant about two years to complete. After all, blending famous playwrights with Cincinnati paraphernalia requires some methodical and careful daydreaming.
The logistics were daunting: Acquiring enormous, heavy canvas panels. Beaming sketches onto them with a slide projector and tracing everything. Getting those famous C.F. Payne colorations to look the same on canvas as they do on paper. Stretching between ladder rungs to touch up a face. Concocting an adhesive backing for the canvas that doesn’t bleed through and ruin the colors. Holding your breath as wallpaper experts on cherry pickers attach the finished panels. And getting the seams to line up drove everyone crazy.
Was it worth all of the effort? Here’s a suggestion: Go see the Shelterhouse and the lobby mural for yourself! Enjoy some live theater!
Nobody seems to have ever captured a worthy image of the mural, so I decided to try. I hired videographer Jason Powell, whose drone elegantly dodged light fixtures along the mural’s path. Our video can be viewed here.
I often stand at historical sites and imagine being there when the history happened. I can see those guys signing the Declaration of Independence or that one guy lopping off Marie Antoinette’s head. I am at Music Hall watching its inaugural performance, and I’m with those people climbing an Eden Park hill in 1874 to enjoy the view from a newly-built overblown barn.
Then I snap back to 2024 and marvel at C.F. Payne’s mural. I imagine the launch of a fictitious space probe in an old Star Trek movie, because it reminds me of my new favorite historical building: the Shelterhouse Theatre. May it live long and prosper.
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