From "Harper’s Weekly," June 13, 1874
It’s one of those things Cincinnatians say (like “Please?”) that we rarely think about or analyze. We just accept without dispute that Cincinnati is conservative. Here, for example, is one of the definitions for “Cincinnati” in the Urban Dictionary:
“A pleasantly bland and annoyingly conservative city that’s inexpensive to live in, easy to get around in, and filled with neighborhood festivals.”
Or, a quote from one of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Women of the Year in 2017:
“I love how conservative Cincinnati is and I love that it’s a great place to raise a family.”
We accept this label without question and we repeat it, never actually defining what we mean by “conservative.” Do we mean politically conservative? Or morally conservative? Or culturally conservative? Or fiscally conservative? My colleague in the historical dodge, Dan Hurley, pondered this question almost 20 years ago in the Cincinnati Post [December 29, 2006]:
“Why is Cincinnati so conservative? I get asked that question all the time. Though some people are talking about the dominance of conservative Republican politicians, more often the reference is to our region’s seeming reluctance to take chances or to sit on our hands while other metropolitan areas innovate to their advantage and our disadvantage.”
Pardon me, but that doesn’t sound like conservatism. That sounds like a refined strain of stubbornness verging on plain old pigheadedness.
More recently, David Stradling, in his 2018 book, In Service to the City: A History of the University of Cincinnati, engaged in a more nuanced analysis and suggested that Cincinnati embraced our conservative reputation to excuse our slipping down the ranks of other American cities:
“Cincinnatians tend to think of their city as a conservative place. At the heart of this myth of conservatism is the image of the frumpy Queen City bested by broad-shouldered Chicago, an outcome that was all but ensured by the former’s inability to adapt to a shifting national economy. Cincinnatians tell the story of how Chicago embraced railroads while their own city clung to the steamboat, unable or unwilling to see into the future, where river travel would be less and less important. To some observers, then, Cincinnati’s relative decline among western cities suggested a character flaw, a stand-pat attitude that prevented the city from keeping pace. As Cincinnati slipped behind St. Louis and Chicago in the 1860 census and was then surpassed by Cleveland thirty years later, the myth of conservatism developed in an attempt to make sense of Cincinnati’s relative decline. The myth hides much more than it reveals, however, for through the decades of relative decline Cincinnati was a progressive city, innovative and striving.”
So, pigheaded compounded by some split-personality blame-shifting and a hint of denial? In 1948, Time magazine encapsulated the contradictory essence of the Cincinnati psyche in an infamously snarky announcement about the Terrace Hilton Hotel:
“Dowdy, old-fashioned Cincinnati gets a new hotel this week.”
And yet, in the very same paragraph dismissing Cincinnati as dowdy and old-fashioned, Time proclaimed the Terrace Hilton as “the city’s most revolutionary modern building.” Dowdy and old-fashioned yet simultaneously revolutionary and modern? Some dichotomy!
As Professor Stradling noted, that contradiction runs as a perennial motif through much of Cincinnati’s history. A few years back, Emilio Estevez took some heat for comparing Cincinnati to Paris because, of course, Cincinnati refused to acknowledge the substantial cultural strides we had achieved in recent years. Some Cincinnatians were shocked to discover that, during the late 1800s, Cincinnati was, in fact, nationally known as the “Paris of America.” Here is the Boston Globe [May 6, 1878]:
“Cincinnati is the Paris of America, the musical metropolis and the American art centre. Anything else?”
That nickname was employed, sometimes admiringly, sometimes with more or less irony, by the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Post, the Pittsburgh Post, the New York Sun and the Chicago Daily Telegraph, among others. Throughout this barrage of kudos, even then, some Cincinnatians hesitated to embrace that comparison because, well, Paris was, you know, naughty! That Queen City reluctance didn’t stop the Detroit Free Press [November 26, 1878] from predicting a substantial revitalization on the river:
“Cincinnati, after lying dormant, as it were, for a goodly number of years after the war, has suddenly become as sprightly as a young lady trying to impress a new beau.”
Here at home, D.J. Kenny echoed that enthusiasm in his indispensable Illustrated Cincinnati of 1875:
“Cincinnati is . . . however, undergoing a transformation which will probably result in rendering it a beautiful and magnificent city. After a decade of quiet observation, during which it surveyed its own progress, as it were, and which earned for it the sobriquet of ‘Conservative Cincinnati’ and ‘the solid city,’ it is just now, in 1875, again marching forth with the same wonderful strides that marked its early career. Improvement on improvement crowds the way, and every street and square is being more and more beautified and embellished.”
And yet, fifty years later, the conservative/progressive dichotomy held firm. A national journal, Electrical World [January 16, 1926], while celebrating construction of a state-of-the-art, high-capacity, electrical generating station for the Queen City, still managed to sniff:
“It must be remembered that Cincinnati is an old and very conservative city, which for many years has shown practically no growth.”
Similarly, while devoting a substantial portion of his 1927 book, The City Manager to the dynamic success of Cincinnati’s almost radical charter reforms, Leonard D. White reminded his readers:
“Cincinnati is a very conservative city, strongly Republican, and strongly committed to the principle of party government.”
In 1940, Cincinnati hosted Henry A. Wallace, then campaigning as Franklin Roosevelt’s vice-presidential running mate. Wallace told an enthusiastic crowd:
“I am glad to have the privilege of visiting Cincinnati, a city that is famous for progressive thought and action in business and in city government.”
With that praise from a man who later ran as the Progressive Party candidate for president, Cincinnati still called itself conservative? That’s plain pigheaded!
The dichotomy erupted into the national consciousness yet again in 1990 with the controversial “Perfect Moment” exhibition of Robert Maplethorpe’s photography at the Contemporary Arts Center. Was Cincinnati conservative because of a failed effort to banish that display, or progressive for successfully installing, promoting and defending the artwork and the principle?
It appears that Professor Stradling was correct in defining the myth of Cincinnati conservatism. We may not be all that conservative, but we sure are pigheaded!
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