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Philip Spiess
Chuck Cole: Thanks for the oral history on Mecklenberg's; I may start to collect these stories, as it turns out to be a significant part of Cincinnati German history, which I don't think has been told before (or, at least, told very well). (When I was about five or six, my mother took Freddie Zacharias, then my best friend, and his mother to Mecklenberg's for lunch after -- maybe -- the first day of school, say, in Kindergarten. I got a hamburger, and it was heavily peppered, and I hated pepper in those days, and it was on rye bread, and I hated rye bread, and then my thumb got pinched in the back seat of the car and I cried all the way home. I avoided Mecklenberg's for years after that! I'll tell you stories about Freddie Zacharias's father, a noted Cincinnati surgeon and a real curmudgeon, at another time.)
And thanks for the info on Lenhardt's. I remember when they first opened their restaurant in 1955 on the northwest corner of Clifton and McMillan Streets (or was it the southwest corner?) in a former dry cleaning establishment's premises. Thereafter they moved east on McMillan Avenue to their long-time location in a handsomely decorated house; I thought that they had closed, but Larry Klein says that they're still open. I did not know about the feud between the brothers (Kristoff and Antone), who I thought were Austrian, but apparently were from Yugoslavia. As of 1980, the daughter, Erika, and her husband were still running the restaurant.
I utilized the same scheme you did, Chuck, at the Playhouse in the Park for ushering at the Cincinnati Summer Opera in the Zoo while I was in college. What glorious days those were: I spent all day working at historical work I loved in air-conditioned splendor at the Cincinnati Historical Society in Eden Park, then went for a swim at Clifton's swim club, then home for a cocktail and dinner, and, finally, attended outstanding opera at the Zoo (more about that later)! Chuck: the "Times" theater -- I remember the name, but don't recall the location (somewhere in western Walnut Hills?).
Dave: Thanks for the description of the science involved in the lighting of the Washington Monument (I assume late in the day). I couldn't have said it better, because, although I am, among other things, a historian of science, I am not a scientist. Your description sounded right to me, but I can add no other data. (And thanks for the note on Howard Johnson's; I could give you all a history of the franchise -- what we call in historic preservation work "commercial archaeology" -- and which I pushed to national prominence in my days at the National Trust for Historic Preservation -- but I won't . . . for now.)
Finally, Chuck, I return to you: You've asked (I think) for a history of Cincinnati Music Hall, one of the great architectural glories of Cincinnati, along with Union Terminal, City Hall, the Plum Street Temple, St. Peter-in-Chains Cathedral, and a host of other buildings and homes which I needn't mention now. I'm well positioned to respond to this, since my Master's thesis in History involved the building, but I'll try to be brief. Following the Civil War, Cincinnati, which had lost its southern markets during the war, sought to regain them through two schemes, the Cincinnati Southern Railroad (first built to Chattanooga and eventually to New Orleans) -- which would take time to build -- and the Cincinnati Industrial Expositions -- which could advertise at once Cincinnati's commercial and industrial potential and products (my Master's thesis was on the latter). Prior to the Civil War, Cincinnati had held Mechanics' Exhibitions from 1838 through 1860. In 1869 a "Great Exhibition" of Textile Fabrics was held in David Sinton's Buildings (Laura Pease, take note). The success of this exhibition led Alfred T. Goshorn, "father" of the Cincinnati Industrial Expositions (1870-1888), and later the Director-General of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition (celebrating the United States' 100th Anniversary, and still later first director of the Cincinnati Art Museum), to direct the Ohio Mechanics' Institute, the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, and the Cincinnati Board of Trade to plan a "Grand Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures" (all of these exhibtions, large and small, were predicated on the "Crystal Palace" Exhibition of 1851 in London, the brainchild of Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert).
The long and the short of it is that at the same time, the Nord-Amerikanisches Saengerbund (an international German choral society, with headquarters in Cincinnati) was to meet in Cincinnati, and it erected a large wooden hall for the Saengerfest (this was the origin of the Cincinnati May Music Festivals) west of Elm Street at 14th Street, an auditorium which was later to be turned over to the Industrial Exposition. Over the several years of the annual Industrial Expositions (1870-1875), the wooden buildings surrounding Saengerfest Hall were added to, extending across Elm Street into Washington Park (Art Hall, for example, had to be disconnected from Mechanics' Hall, in case of fire, and there was also Horticultural Hall, with waterfalls, etc.).
The expositions were discontinued after 1875 for two reasons: Alfred Goshorn, the director, was now in Philadelphia directing the U. S. Centennial Exhibition (1876), and it had been decided to make Saengerfest Hall and the Exposition Buildings permanent. Thus our present Cincinnati Music Hall arose (designed by Cincinnati architects Hannaford and Procter), funded in large measure by Reuben Springer (the central auditorium is still officially Springer Hall), and completed in 1879, with the center portion being Music Hall (for Saengerfests and concerts) and the two wings, north and south, being for the Cincinnati Industrial Expositions (on the north, Machinery Hall with belted operations of machines -- Richard Montague, take note -- and on the south Horticultural Hall on the upper floor and Art Hall below). This is why, if you look, you will see decorations of floral, and art, and mechanical, and music motifs in the brickwork on the two wings of Music Hall (Floral Hall, upstairs in the south wing, later became, in the 1950s, the Topper Ballroom, a night club, first decorated with Egyptian motifs, and later, in the 1960s, with a Hawaiian panorama of Diamond Head). The continual expansion of these expositions led to additional temporary buildings being added in Washington Park across Elm Street, culminating in the Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States (14th Industrial Exposition) in 1888, with Venetian gondolas on the roofed-over Miami & Erie Canal behind Music Hall (now Central Parkway).
The Great Organ, center stage, by Hook & Hastings of Boston, was (unbelievably) operated by water power from the Miami & Erie Canal behind Music Hall, and was played in free concerts every Sunday afternoon in its early years. Its magnificent paneled wood carvings, by Fry and Pitman (he of shorthand fame), both of Cincinnati, who led Cincinnati's important school of wood-carving, were a significant part of this organ. Unfortunately, in the late 1890s, the proscenium arch was added to the Music Hall auditorium stage (originally intended for choirs), and it effectively cut off much of the sound from the great organ. (I remember Robbie Delcamp, in the class behind ours at WHHS, performing Weinberger's "Polka and Fugue" from his opera, Schwanda, der Dudelsackpfeiffer -- Nelson, you know this? -- on the organ with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.) Somewhere in the early 1970s, the organ was removed to make room on the stage for operatic productions, and its carved wooden panels were hung "artistically" in the orchestra pit.
In the early 1970s, the Cincinnati-based Corbett Foundation, which had been a strong supporter of the internationally famed soprano Beverly Sills, financed the restoration/renovation of Cincinnati Music Hall in order to move the Cincinnati Opera from the Cincinnati Zoo to Music Hall, where it has been ever since. The Exposition Halls, North and South, were turned into rehearsal halls for music and ballet, scenery storage areas, and reception/dining rooms for supporting patrons of the Symphony, the Opera, and the Ballet, as well as the Trustees meeting room. I might note that Cincinnati Musicians' Union No. 1, the first professional musicians' union in the United States, began in 1920 by unionizing and starting the Cincinnati Opera at the Cincinnati Zoo (where a German beer garden band played classical music at that time), in order to keep Cincinnati Symphony musicians employed during the summer months. I believe the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra played, in the 1920s, at Emery Auditorium, rather than at Music Hall, but the history of the Symphony, and, indeed, the May Festival (which has been discussed much earlier in these pages by me and Ann Shepard Rueve and others) is yet another story. Cincinnati Music Hall was honored by a U. S. commemorative postage stamp in the late 1970s (at which time I wrote an article on the building for Preservation News, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's monthly newspaper).
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