The Lover’s Lookout at Mt. Storm Park

Photograph by Lance Adkins

At the top of a hill overlooking Northside, you’ll find a little slice of old-world Austria. The Temple of Love Gazebo in Mt. Storm Park was designed in 1855 by Adolph Strauch, who apprenticed at the Vienna Imperial Gardens and designed Spring Grove Cemetery as we know it today. He created it for Robert Bonner Bowler, whose estate would go on to become the park. While the grand structure with eight Corinthian columns and intricate frieze work appears strictly ornamental, the Temple of Love was built as a decorative cap for a cistern that would water Bowler’s many greenhouses.

Nonetheless, when the home was razed in 1917, the temple was saved. It serves as the park’s focal point to this day. “It’s a site where we’ve had young couples get married,” says Cincinnati Parks senior naturalist Michael George. “People will go on dates to sit in the shade of the Temple of Love and take in the scenery from the heights of the park.”