BETTS HOUSE BICENTENNIAL EXHIBIT

The Railroad Era

By 1840, the population exploded to more than 46,000.In 1841, the Little Miami Railroad began operatingbetween Cincinnati and Milford, and others followed.The railroads first served the river trade as canals haddone before them, and their terminals were located nearthe river. Over the next two decades, railroads began tochallenge rivers and canals as the primary means of com-mercial transportation.

Charles Cist, one of the city’s early chroniclers, notedthat in addition to the homes of the wealthy, “manyframe cottages surrounded by trees and shrubbery makethis an attractive residence quarter for people of moder-ate means.” The West End was a “port of entry” fornewcomers, and its population became increasinglydiverse, ethnically as well as economically.

As Cincinnati’s black population rose from a few hundredin the 1820s to more than 3,000 by 1850, many of thesepeople concentrated in a part of the West End near theriver. By the 1840s, the West End’s black community hadits own churches, businesses, and a hotel, The Dumas.This trend was to intensify as time passed.

In the mid-1850s, Western Row (Central Avenue) was adesirable residential street. Mixed in with these homeswere shops, churches and small industrial establishments.Larger factories and warehouses, along with most of thearea’s less expensive housing were generally located onthe outer edges.

By the 1860s various institutions had penetrated theneighborhood, including a number of churches andschools. In 1869, a handsome new Cincinnati Hospitalwas completed, spreading over an entire block on AnnStreet between Western Row and the canal. Designed byarchitect A.C. Nash, the hospital was a state-of-the-artcomplex of pavilions surrounding a courtyard allowingfor maximum light and air.

In 1870, an industrial exposition was presented by theBoard of Trade, Chamber of Commerce and the OhioMechanic’s Institute to display the Queen City’s develop-ing technology and products. Washington Park wasselected as the site because the city already owned theland, previously used for an orphan asylum and cemetery,and it was accessible by canal and streetcar. The present-day Music Hall was built on the exposition grounds forthe 1888 Centennial Exposition at the behest theCincinnati Music Festival.

The Robinson Atlas of 1883-1884 shows signs of indus-try around the Betts House. Just north were two lumberyards and a flooring mill. Along the canal were abuilders’ supply store, a wheel manufacturer and a furni-ture factory. The map also shows horse-drawn streetcarlines, which began in the 1860s, running across ClarkStreet and Twelfth and throughout the basin. The street-cars greatly increased the area accessible for developmentin what had heretofore been a “walking city.”

In the last half of the nineteenth century, this part of thebasin came to be characterized by factories and aging andovercrowded houses packed too tightly together. Thepopulation became ever denser as absentee landlordsconverted single-family houses into apartments and builthuge tenements.

The mixed character of these areas prevailed for severaldecades, but in the 1870s and 1880s, an increasing num-ber of the periphery’s affluent residents began migratingto hilltop suburbs, motivated by concerns about diseaseand crime in the increasingly dirty, crowded and noisybasin. The Betts family, for example, found themselvesliving on a busy streetcar line and in 1879 moved toCollege Hill, then an affluent suburb recently madeaccessible by a narrow-gauge railroad.

Jews in the West End

Jews were among those drawn to the West End. In1821, Nicholas Longworth sold a small plot of landnear Chestnut Street and Central Avenue to the smallJewish community in Cincinnati for use as a ceme-tery. There were probably no more than 2,500 Jewsin the city in 1845, but over the next fifteen years,this figure increased fourfold. As the early residentsof the West End moved away to hilltop suburbs,greater numbers of Jews moved in.

Although Cincinnati’s first Jewish congregations werelocated downtown, the Jewish Hospital was built onCentral Avenue, the first site of Hebrew UnionCollege was in the West End, and Bene Israel, one ofthe oldest and largest Jewish congregations inCincinnati, moved there in 1868. By 1900, nine ofthe city’s eleven Jewish congregations were in theWest End.

Ca. 1900 digital map, prepared by Steven Muzik based on “a map of the horsecar lines in 1880,” in Zane Miller, “Music Hall: Its Neighborhood, the City andthe Metropolis” in Cincinnati’s Music Hall, Cincinnati: Jordan & Co, 1978, p. 20.

Birdseye view, 1882, courtesy of Nancy Gulick.

Music Hall and the Industrial Exposition in Zane Miller, “Music Hall: ItsNeighborhood, the City and the Metropolis” in Cincinnati’s Music Hall, Cincinnati:Jordan & Co, 1978.

Cincinnati Hospital in Zane Miller, “Music Hall: Its Neighborhood, the City and theMetropolis” in Cincinnati’s Music Hall, Cincinnati: Jordan & Co, 1978.

Jewish Cemetery, courtesy of Cincinnati Historical Society Library.

1883-1884 Robinson Atlas, courtesy of the Cincinnati Historical Society Library.

III. Industryand Institutions

Streetcars downtown, ca. 1880.