Illustration by Lars Leetaru
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s special MAD Magazine exhibit is great, and it includes many of the famous “MAD Fold-Ins.” But they show just the flat opened pages, not the folded results! That’s like telling a joke without a punch line. Can you do something to fix this? —WHOA, ME WORRIED
DEAR WHOA:
The Doctor thanks you for justifying his account-expensed ticket to the Cincinnati Art Museum’s special exhibition, currently on view through March 1. It’s very entertaining and impressive, but falls short in this one regard. Imagine a friend saying “Knock, knock,” you saying “Who’s there,” and then the friend just walks away. That’s how you feel when viewing the long wall of MAD’s legendary “fold-ins.” Without an accompanying image of each page’s folded gigglement, the joke literally just hangs there.
The Doctor raised the topic at the museum’s front desk and again in the online survey following his visit. We’ll see if this feedback has any impact on the powers that be. A larger worry is this: Younger fans don’t know that the fold-in was created in 1964 as a parody of Playboy Magazine’s legendary nude fold-outs. Those things are long-gone, except perhaps for some occasionally found under used mattresses.
When I turn the corner from West Third Street onto Central Avenue toward Paycor Stadium, I see a long stone wall that’s about four feet tall and 40 feet long. The wall is left over from a big old building or something, right? It can’t be just some ornate wall. Tell me I’m right. —STONEWALLED
DEAR STONEWALLED:
You are right. The next time you’re trapped in a Who Dey traffic jam at the corner of Third and Central and shouting, “Dammit, I’ve been stuck at this corner for 12 minutes,” take a look over at that stone wall. It’s shouting back, “Screw you, I’ve been stuck at this corner for 143 years.”
You are looking at the remains of Central Union Station, a gigantic railroad complex built in 1883 that once occupied the entire block. It consolidated four railroads, partially solving Cincinnati’s problem of scattered railroad depots all over town. After Union Terminal (today’s Cincinnati Museum Center) provided the ultimate consolidation in 1933, Central Union Station was closed and demolished, forever losing its chance to become anyone’s superhero Hall of Justice.
An entire city block’s worth of stone and brick were torn down and hauled away. The Doctor has not found any official reason why the lower right side of the building’s grand entranceway was left behind.
Maybe it was nostalgia. Then again, perhaps the 1933 repeal of Prohibition inspired the demolition team to quit early.
There’s a rather majestic building in Silverton I drive past every day at the corner of Montgomery and Stewart roads. It’s a funeral home now, but it must have been some rich person’s mansion and manor back when the area was mostly farmland. Can you find its lineage? —THIS BOLD HOUSE
DEAR BOLD:
Perhaps we should rename this column as “Things I Noticed Instead of Paying Attention to My Driving.” Whatever. That handsome mansion in Silverton was built around 1890 and since 1952 has belonged to Thomas-Justin Memorial. The Doctor struggled to find the original owner, because records from early rural suburbia are sketchy. Some neighborhoods didn’t bother having addresses. Yet Tom Justin at Thomas-Justin Memorial (imagine the odds!) provided a clue. He remembered that when they renovated the place some years ago, a large decorative tile was found under the carpet with the initials “CJ.”
Note the Doctor’s brilliant forensics: The 1900 Census of Silverton shows a Clinton Jones somewhere on “Montgomery Pike.” A tattered 1884 map shows a wide swath in Silverton’s “Section 13” belonging to a John Jones. And then a legal notice has Mr. Jones bequeathing many acres in Section 13 to his son Clinton!
Hope you enjoyed the neighborhood, CJ. If you’d waited a century or so, you could be shopping for Valentine’s Day at Kenwood Towne Centre right now.
Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, radio personality and advertising prankster. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities here.
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