Greg Hand

Among the victims of FC Cincinnati construction in the West End is a distinctive yet decrepit theater most recently occupied as a worship center by Lighthouse Ministries. Known for decades as the State Theater, this old auditorium is among the few reminders of the West End’s long history as the heart of Cincinnati’s Jewish community.

Who murdered Billy Fee on the night of August 25, 1890? And, why? No one ever confessed. No one was ever convicted. The guilty parties got away. Maybe that’s why Billy’s restless ghost haunted the Ohio River down near Lawrenceburg.

As early as 1882, Cincinnati candy makers banded together in a Confectioners Union to agree on reasonable standards of purity in the production of candy, but it was only the intervention of city, state and federal inspections after 1920 that allowed a level of confidence in the safety of the Halloween haul.

Anyone marking a 100th birthday was truly unusual and multiple newspapers celebrated centenarians—almost always women—in Cincinnati.

“Among the many low, disreputable dives with which this city is infested there are none that enjoy a more unsavory reputation than that kept by a blonde female of uncertain years known as Hester Clark, alias Hattie Black.”

It is unlikely that anyone will ever install an historic marker on the tiny remnant of George Street that survives in downtown Cincinnati. If such a marker ever materialized, however, it would have many tales to tell—but not in polite company.

One hundred years ago, more than 2,200 Cincinnatians died from a disease known then as “Spanish Flu.”

Cincinnati’s last airdome sputtered into obscurity around 1929.

In 1880s America, there were basically three urban housing options: mansions with a full allotment of servants for the affluent, residential hotels for the merely well-to-do, and tenements for the great unwashed. The Emery brothers built Cincinnati’s first apartment buildings with suites of three to five rooms all on one floor.

Penny arcades were cesspools of depravity. Who knew?