Quote:
Originally Posted by xzmattzx
The Western-Southern area looks like a great little historic neighborhood!
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Yeah a fairly hardcore historic overlay enacted in the mid-1960s expired around 2015 and Western-Southern fired up the bulldozers and tore down three old row houses on tiny Arch St. in anticipation of construction of their new headquarters. They also booted the Anna Louise Inn (a historic home for poor single women that was built around 1910) and renovated the building into the hotel that is a weird mish-mash of styles.
The area was much more quaint before 1965~ when much of it was torn down to build I-71. It travels under this area in a tunnel but it's a cut-and-cover so they had to tear up the original park and various surrounding buildings.
The Taft Mansion is home to the Taft Museum of Art. They modified I-71 so that the house would be saved but they probably took out more buildings total than they would have if they had just torn down the house.
The Taft Museum was in the news last week because a Cincinnati-based artist from the 1800s had a painting in the news at Biden's inauguration:
https://www.wlwt.com/article/first-l...nting/35269333
This artist painted the interior walls of the front entrance Taft house in the mid-1800s. It used to be the case that you used the front door to enter the museum and so every tour began with a description of the murals. Now you enter through a recent expansion on the side meaning you don't even realize when you're walking past the front door as you make your way through the museum.
The museum is also famous for having a fake Rembrandt. The painting was the star of the museum's collection for over 100 years until they brought in a bunch of experts in the 1980s and it was declared a fake. The painting has been banished to a corner. The Taft's paid like $100,000 for the fake back in the 1800s, so like tens of millions in today's money.