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Philip Spiess
And to rejuvenate our resusitated "Forum," I offer:
A Little Note on a Social Center of Cincinnati's Early Days:
Recall, if you will, the days when the term "Far West" meant the Old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and half of Minnesota) and the term "the Western Frontier" meant the Mississippi River. In those long ago, bygone days, Cincinnati was reckoned the metropolis of the West -- the West beyond the eastern seaboard and the Allegheny Mountains -- and, if you were a traveler at that time in those parts, the place to put up, a place of elegance and eclat, was Cincinnati's Burnet House hotel, which was, and remained for much of the 19th century, one of America's premier hotels.
Named because it stood on the site of Hamilton County Judge Jacob Burnet's former elegant town house (a site which, following the house's passing, had become a park-like resort of evening entertainment called Shire's Garden), the Burnet House was located at the northwest corner of Third and Vine Streets. Located near the city's major businesses, halfway between the shipping warehouses of the Cincinnati Wharf (i.e., the Cincinnati Public Landing, where all major Ohio River commerce had to dock) and the burgeoning banks and shops along Fourth Street, it was the obvious spot for a first-class lodging establishment. Built by a corporation of prominent businessmen, the edifice thus needed a topnotch architect to design a hotel worthy of its location.
Such an architect was Isaiah Rogers. Rogers was an architect from Massachusetts who designed modern hotels and other prominent civic buidings. He had become renowned by designing Boston's famed Tremont Hotel (1829; the first with indoor plumbing), the John Jacob Astor House hotel in New York (1836-1913), and the Merchants Exchange buildings in New York (1836) and Boston (1841). He later built the famed Maxwell House hotel in Nashville, Tennessee (begun 1859, completed 1869; destroyed by fire, 1961), which later became known for the quality of its coffee when President Theodore Roosevelt, staying there, remarked, "Maxwell House coffee is good to the last drop!" (still Maxwell House Coffee's slogan today, though the original hotel is long gone). Rogers also designed the most attractive of the several Hamilton County Courthouses (the one that was burned in the Cincinnati Courthouse Riots of 1884), and he was also one of the architects of the Ohio Statehouse (state capitol) in Columbus, completing it in 1861.
The cornerstone of the Burnet House was laid in October, 1848; the 340-room hotel was completed and officially opened to the public on May 3, 1850, with a grand ball, the magnificence of which, it was said, had "never been witnessed in this Country." It included a "splendid supper and enchanting music." Indeed, Isaiah Rogers knew how to design a hotel, making it not only lavish, but practical as well. The Third Street front of the hotel consisted of five units; the central block, five bays wide and 6 storeys high, was led up to by a grand staircase surmounted by a columned portico entrance; this block was capped by an impressive dome and cupola, which helped light the interior central staircase. On either side of the central block were two inset units, four bays wide and five storeys high (with dormers), and on either side of these were two massive wings, four bays wide and five storeys high, which extended out to Third Street. The lowest storey of the wings and insets (on either side of the central block's entrance staircase) comprised storefronts designed for quality shopping. Breakfast was served from 7 to 10 a.m.; dinner, with a fixed price, took place at 1 p.m. in the "Gents' Ordinary" and at 2:30 p.m. in the "Ladies' Ordinary"; tea was at 6 p.m.; and supper was served from 9 p.m. to midnight. Servants and children were served separately (servants could not enter the "ordinaries," a very British way of doing things).
An important practical feature of the Burnet House was the use of marble floors and stairs in the public areas (a signature of Rogers' hotels); not only was this elegant, but its use was specifically due to the unhygienic habit of the men of the period (cigar smokers and tobacco chewers all) spitting tobacco juice on the floors (cuspidors, that is, "spittoons," only came into use gradually). This habit, of course, was ruinous to hotel carpeting, but marble floors could be mopped down daily (or more frequently if necessary). Aside from that, the furniture in the "ladies' drawing room" cost $7,000 (ladies in high-class establishments -- and even often in rural taverns -- had a room for themselves, not only to use the "facilities" -- often just a "potty chair" -- in private, though we'll assume the Burnet House had Rogers' indoor plumbing, but also to avoid any untoward advances by the single male guests); the furniture for the entire hotel cost $70,000).
Over the years, many prominent individuals stayed at the Burnet House: Abraham Lincoln stayed twice (first as a young attorney assisting lead lawyer Edwin M. Stanton, later Lincoln's Secretary of War, in the important McCormick Reaper patent trial being held in Cincinnati, and later as President-Elect on his way to Washington); Edward Albert ("Bertie"), Prince of Wales (Queen Victoria's eldest son, later King Edward VII); newspaper editor and publisher Horace Greeley; singer Jenny Lind; and actor Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes Booth). After the battle of Shiloh (1862), the hotel served as a hospital for wounded troops; it was run by the Cincinnati Sisters of Charity. Among the statesmen who stayed here were Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Jefferson Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, future president James Buchanan, and Salmon P. Chase (prominent Cincinnati lawyer, later Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury and eventually Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who, being a good friend of the architect Isaiah Rogers, appointed him Supervising Architect of the United States, in charge of, among other things, the design and building of U. S. Custom Houses).
But perhaps the most significant event to be held at the Burnet House occurred in May, 1864, when Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Philip H. Sheridan (the first two natives of Ohio), met in Parlor A of the Burnet House to finalize the plans for the Union's Civil War campaigns in Georgia and South Carolina, campaigns which came to be known as "Sherman's March to the Sea," which burned Atlanta to the ground, and which broke the back of the Confederate South, leading to its surrender.
And one more significant Burnet House event: In his 1895 book, The Mixicologist, Chris Lawlor, bartender at the Burnet House, included the first-ever recipe for a "High Ball": "Put in a thin ale-glass one lump of ice; fill with syphon selzer to within an inch of the top, then float one half jigger brandy or whiskey." (His book also features a recipe for a "Brandy and Soda," another sort of highball, and the "Splificator" -- essentially another Whiskey Highball, apparently one made with Irish Whiskey, as "splificated" is, or was, Irish slang for "drunk.")
By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the Cincinnati Public Landing was no longer the bustling scene of commerce it had been; it had long since been replaced by the railroads. The center of business activity in downtown Cincinnati had moved uphill to Fourth and Fifth Streets and further north along Vine, Walnut, and Main Streets; the area south of Fourth Street, downhill towards the Public Landing, had become industrialized and semi-derelict. The new luxury hotel in the downtown area was now the Hotel Sinton (1907-1964), at the southeast corner of Fourth and Vine Streets (among other things, during Prohibition it was the headquarters of Cincinnati's "King of the Bootleggers," George Remus, of whom I wrote in a previous post; in the early 1960s, I attended several philatelic shows in its ballroom). Sadly, the Burnet House, the dome of which had been removed sometime previously (as early 20th-century photographs show), closed in 1926 and was torn down that same year.
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