These weren’t really slums. They were just the way folks lived back in the day. My grandmother raised her siblings in a house like this on Kilgore street in Mount Adams after both her parents died. Her mother from disease and her father from a construction accident while building the Mariemont Inn when he fell to his death. She had fond memories from that time period. Here we are so many decades later and my wife and I do our best to live as they did back then. We are business owners and could live a posh lifestyle, but instead choose to heat with wood that we harvest ourselves from our own property and the experience is very rewarding. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
Mount Adams is beautiful all the property I see in the Rust Belt showed on RU-vid seem to ignore the gorgeous looking material and the beautiful houses even in their dilapidated condition
Its hard to imagine that in a hundred years or so ppl of the future will be looking back on on what our life is like today and feel the way we do when we look back I wonder what Cincinnati's going to look like ps if anyone from the future is reading this November 20th and its 4.05pm i am in Batavia Ohio I just wanted to say hello cherish the time that you have on Earth live everyday to the fullest
Thank you so much,my families were from Over the Rhine,both sides were German and tightly interwoven with the beer industry down there...Seeing these pics puts into perspective why my Grandparents kept striving for more and more and never settled for us having less than the best...again thank you !!!
The sign that read " Please Keep the Zink Clean. Bought back memories of my Grandparents both German always said Zink. They live on Colerain Ave the lower end it's call Old Colerain now.
I became a licensed journeyman plumber after high school and my first boss was German. He called it a zink. Such a smart man. I live in northern Kentucky and frequent "Zinnzinatti"
German descendant on both my mother and fathers side. Cincinnati born and raised. My great grandfather helped build the Hudepohl brewery as a boilermaker.
You make me moody for a Hude. I’m originally from Covington, Ky Peaselburg area and growing up I had a few Hudepohls and along with one of my favorites Little Kings. I grew up in the Big Red Machine era when people would sit on their porches and listen to either Al Michaels & Joe Nuxhull or Marty & Joe. I wasn’t bamboozled because I drank some Burger it was from the same place as me. Go Reds!!
My guess would be the majority of those houses was off Eastern Ave. I know the last pic of the tracks and wall running behind the row houses and privy's is between Eastern Ave and the new Columbia parkway. I dig those privy's finding some amazing stuff. Hand lots of blown bottles, and machine made cork top bottles, pottery, china, stoneware, bone tooth brush handles, clay marbles and regular marbles, clay pipes, lead kids toys, and toy china sets, dolls and doll parts, eye glasses, and creepy things like shoes, teeth and bones. Best hobby I have ever had. Bad thing about it is it's very addicting. lol
I felt like the pics in the beginning resembled lower price hill and Clifton area. not really familiar with the east side enough to know about eastern ave
The last set of pics with the railyard is almost certainly of the old B&O switch yard running along Route 50, on the West Side, the pictures taken from somewhere around the intersection of Delhi and River Road, or more possibly (I feel most likely) from Elberon looking down the hill toward the river, just past where the old Waldvogel Viaduct was. The opening shots of the row of mill housing was almost certainly taken somewhere around where Queen City and Wickham intersect, near where the old Lunkenheimer Valve Factory still is. A lot of that mill housing still exists, even if most of it is boarded up and is being slowly "revitalized".
I was thinking...otr isn't much different now . Ive lived in Cincy my whole life and even though I have a car one thing I love to do is catch the bus downtown because you get to see all of the nostalgia there's still a lot of these very old buildings that are vacant boarded up broken windows.... it's amazing
+MoonBabies0o I once lived across the river from Cincy and know what you mean. The OTR area is really old and much is still there, but needs a lot of fixing up. I miss the Reds games ...cheers!
My dad's side of the family lived like this but on the east side. Further east, probably closer to Batavia. I have a picture of what looks like an overgrown outhouse they lived in. They couldn't even afford shoes. My grandma looked old and haggard at the ripe old age of 25. Mid '30s.
Im in and out of these houses daily. Im a residential hvac contractor. I put the first ductwork and furnace and ac in a bunch of them or take the old stuff out from 70s and 80s. Even still see old coal furnaces. Also find old relics
I see scenes like that today and also besides technology, IS it really that long ago? I would say just like today, nothing much has changed. Greed and pride have corrupted men's hearts, leaving the poor with nothing. I would say, seems like only yesterday, have we progressed? I'd say yes, 1930s people would tell us no. Either way, love your neighbor as yourself. Thanks for the slideshow.
It would have been nice to know what streets these homes where on. I don't think you could call these slums from the 30's. At that time the great depression was going on and you had to survive.
Just looking at this makes me realize how rich the history is. These houses are probably over 100 years old already. Imagine how it looked in say, the 1850's.
My parents and grandparents lived in conditions and buildings like this. Although they are sad by todays standards, this was normal in the over the Rhine area, Vine street, Pendleton, Kemper, Symes street, Mc Millan, Mc MIicken I could go on and on.
Some of these buildings are still standing. The house I grew up in was built in the 1880's and is standing and occupied. My Great Grandfather and Grandfather patrolled these neighborhoods as well as myself, so I recognize some of these area's and homes.
Hi! This is awesome. I am writing a paper on the porch entries in buildings throughout Cincinnati and some of these images would be super helpful for my presentation. I've gone through everything that comes up in the LOC database when I search by "Cincinnati" and I still didn't find all the photos you have (I found some of them). Do you have any idea what search terms you used?
When did Mt. Adams first turn trendy? I lived in Carthage '58 to '67 where Mother was from, Dad's family moved in 1922 to then-new Rose Hill. Quite a difference.
Not all of these are slums. The oldest of these buildings might be 40, 45 years old or so ? And some look pretty worn. I find the contrast at 3:47 interesting. To have a quaint (quite nice) house on the left & then what looks to be an apartment house 2 feet to your side. Makes ya wonder what circumstances took place for all that to evolve ? Probably an empty lot & that's what the little house got as a neighbor.
Respectfully disagree. I live in a 1917 bungalow and am very familiar with local architectural styles. The vast majority of exteriors are 1890’s - 1910’s, and were lived in by lower middle class & working class poor. Most were immigrants. There are 2-3 substantially nicer/larger homes added in for comparison
Some characteristics of slum life but an axe leaning in a corner, a kitchen table covered with food and utensils and a prominent wash tub speak more to industrious survival. And those brick row houses?…quite comfortable living in the 1930s.
These structures are stately and strong. I've never been to Cincy but I hope the 50's "urban renewal" bulldozer didn't get them all. If you want to see some real slums--and the heavy-handed leveling of 200 years of really important buildings and history--just find some before and after buildings of Norfolk. That was the first city to receive money from Truman's Housing Act. Now everything's gone in that dead city.
The word slums offends those whom have family/relatives that lived in these days , have you heard of the Great Depression in 1930”s people were dirt poor nothing to eat, no money , if you had any money you be blessed to be able to feed your families, East End was not the Slums, may have been very poor due to Great Depression of 1930”s then world war 2 in the 40”s then Vietnam war in the 70”s , do your research before you label neighborhoods!!!!!
The filth is unsettling. Like no one lifted a finger in the home front. Toilets and all around living/ cleanliness standards are gross. It’s not about where you live nasty is just nasty. I’m from the same area and my grandparents NEVA EVA had their home looking like these peoples, inside nor outside.
German for sink. My grandparents and my first boss in the plumbing trade were German and both called them a zink or zinks. Tripped me out but once I knew I thought it was cool.
I wouldn't call all of these structures slums. As a matter of fact, I don't think any of them were. These people heated their homes and stoves with coal or wood, two dirty sources of fuel. This is the very idea behind the term "spring cleaning". Also keep in mind, these structures were built in the days before indoor plumbing became a normal thing- most before the 1890s, and during the depression, one simply didn't have the resources to redecorate their living room or repaint their house, and they didn't want to!! They lived in a time when you kept more than you threw away, and if you didn't need it, you didn't always want it. Slums of this period were much worse than the homes and apartments shown here. These were working class people, mostly, and they lived a modest lifestyle. This video is an insult to them, and to those of the period who did indeed suffer unbearable conditions during our Great Depression. What we consider filth, they considered the norm, and that's why we need to be greatful, and properly remember our past. Ditch the vid.
Wouldn't call this slums, not like we were doing penny sit-ups in these neighborhoods, but it wasn't the Rockefellers either - Would just say average lower middle class - Grandmother lived in rural Cincy, three room house, 4 brothers and sisters, and had an outhouse and no real electricity till the 40's - not saying they didn't want it, just it was still a norm to be without it
yall need to get out of a fantasy world ,these are the slums... it's dirty and the houses are worn down.... looks like the struggle was real right here!!!!!
I see these images and think how brutal life was for the people that lived there. It's sad that some people are so sick that all they see is a way to angle racial provocation.
These are not.....were not slums.....working class homes.....along Mt. Adams.....you can see the historic church up on the hill in one photo and Rookwood in a couple others.....depression era photos....everyone was BROKE.........
I know they had it rough in those days, but soap and water would have made a difference. Money does nothing next to cleanliness. They didn't care. Or the ice box would have been clean. See how dirty it was. We was poor as hell, but all was clean.
If you’re barely able to afford food and utilities, things like soap can become a luxury. As the descendant of a man whose destitution brought on suicide in the Great Depression, I truly don’t think that many can remotely conceive of how hard things were during that time.
Not much has changed then with some areas shown here. They're still slums. Or, ghettos. Or, low income neighborhoods. This city has always had a lot of poverty in it. Plus, times were different then. A lot of regular folk lived like that because that's all there was for most of the population at that time.
How about the huge and glorious stone, marble, and, brick architecture in Cincinnati in the form of Government buildings and Churches that where here and we did not build at all which was nothing but Free Masonry.
People of that era looked at old pics and said the same thing. Before the ‘30’s horses moved everything. Women wore shoes to their calf because horseshit was often up to their ankles. Flies were everywhere. Your kitchen ceiling would be black with flies. The stench was inescapable. The wealthy would just leave town in the summer. Compared to the 1800’s the folks in the 30’s were pretty clean!
Anybody is watching this video today is 12.19.19 and President Trump is under impeachment if you're watching this in the future I just want to say hello my name is Jay and I have lived in Cincinnati on my life since 1984 it's been a pretty decent City it has its ups and downs but overall not bad
