C + D + C - 72 hours in Ohio

[plinko]

In late January I took a trip to Central and Southwestern Ohio to visit a friend and to hit up the United States Air Force Museum. I’ve been to Toledo and Cleveland a number of times, but had never managed to make it further south. Columbus and Cincinnati were the two largest MSAs in the US I had never been to and since I wanted to go to the museum, I decided to hit up both on the trip.

Columbus I found interesting. The downtown area is pretty sedate and felt much like Charlotte (new and sanitized). The LeVeque Tower is a total gem. BTW, don’t waste your money staying in the hotel in that tower. It’s absolutely not worth it. The state capitol building is really interesting and very pink inside. The riverfront is very nice on both sides and has great views of the city. Short North felt like numerous college towns I have been to, just bigger. I only spent a total of 24 hours in the city, so I didn’t get anything other than a snapshot. And no, since I went to HS in Michigan, I did not visit THE most pretentious state degree mill on the north side of the city. That hospital they are building is huge though. I did drive through Germantown and wish I had spent more time there.

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My friend wanted to go see Ohio Caverns. About an hour drive west of Columbus out in the middle of nowhere. It was interesting, and we had the place to ourselves…
Plenty of snow outside the city…

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Back to Columbus!

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Off to Dayton. I wanted to hit up the AF Museum, as well as the Wright Brothers Museum and downtown Dayton.

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It’s not Indiana, but whatever…

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The 5th vehicle with powered flight, and the first one that was re-useable…

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Dayton is also the home of the cash register, and this particular museum had quite the collection…

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The National Museum of the United States Air Force put me in my happy place. It is absolutely huge and has a collection of aircraft that rivals any (even the Museum of Flight and Smithsonian). So many great planes. I was by myself (a rarity) and thus spent about 6 hours strolling, thinking about the properties of airflow over surfaces and how landing gear survives the stresses of impact. So cool.

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One of the main planes I came to see, the B-58 Hustler. This is about the best preserved one left and was the United States first mach 2+ bomber. It may have been quickly surpassed by the SR-71/A-12 in terms of performance, but this delta winged bitch is a beauty. Interestingly, Convair’s lead designer of this aircraft, Joseph Widmer, went on to design both the F-15 and F-16 fighters.

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I wonder if the tail gun worked at mach 2? Would the bullets just drop?

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Cincinnati was kind of a throw in on this trip. “If I get there…” I left Dayton about 5pm and hauled it down I-75 to a city I had long heard about and wanted to discover, even though I needed to fly home the next day from Columbus. It did not disappoint.

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I’ve now seen a few of Roebling’s bridges. This one is by far my favorite and preceded Brooklyn by 20 years!

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The hotel gods smiled upon me…

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What did this crown look like before it ‘melted’?

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[mrnyc]

very nice job — you sure did a lot on a brief visit.

i especially liked the foggy cinci pix.

just a nit, but its german village neighborhood in columbus.

although there is a small germantown, ohio west of dayton.

[edale]

Very comprehensive- thanks for sharing your photos! You can see why I tell people I'm from Cincinnati rather than Ohio when asked

Downtown Columbus is so boring and sterile, even though it's come a long way. I pray they one day have an Austin or Nashville style boom, because it's honestly embarrassing to have such a crappy downtown for a city that's growing so much. High Street is cool, but I see what you mean about it feeling like a large college town strip. German Village is quaint but pretty and nice. Overall, I'm kinda meh on Columbus, though it has really stepped up its game in the past 20 years.

Dayton is kind of sad, though they have the Oregon District which is a cool urban neighborhood. Not much else of note beyond that. Though the inner suburban neighborhood of Oakwood has some absolutely beautiful old homes and a nice little downtown retail strip. And of course the little hippy town of Yellow Springs is in Dayton's orbit, which gives it some cool points imo.

Cincinnati is, by far, the prettiest city in Ohio and the one with the best/most interesting topography and architecture. Downtown can be a bit dead, though it's a cool built environment with some great buildings, and there are numerous large conversions of historic office buildings to residential. But the real charm of Cincinnati is the neighborhoods. You captured OTR and Mt. Adams, which are both great, but there are many others that are very charming and vibrant. Clifton, Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout, Walnut Hills/East Walnut Hills, Northside....lots of great neighborhoods with their own clearly defined neighborhood business districts. Hope you get a chance to go back and explore more, and hopefully you'll get some better weather! Btw, this is what the top of the PNC tower used to look like before the crown was removed. With the crown, the building was just over 500 feet, but without it, it's just under. Sucks for skyscraper nerds like me when looking at number of 500'+ buildings!

[Murphy de la Sucre]

CIN082 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr[/QUOTE]

I have comments on this pic.

1st of all, it s kinda silent hilly eh, nice weather.
2ndly, I can imagine and admire the amazing highway and skyline view from the backyard windows of those uphill houses, just pure highway and full skyline view without obstacles. waking up with the whole city in front of you every morning and falling asleeping with the whole night light city by side. every urban lover's ultimate dream

[Murphy de la Sucre]

Originally Posted by plinko

[/url]
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I have comments on this pic.

1st of all, it s kinda silent hilly eh, nice weather.
2ndly, I can imagine and admire the amazing highway and skyline view from the backyard windows of those uphill houses, just pure highway and full skyline view without obstacles. waking up with the whole city in front of you every morning and falling asleeping with the whole night light city by side. every urban lover's ultimate dream

[geomorph]

Originally Posted by plinko

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This looks like an interesting event, tell us the story!

[craigs]

Great thread covering cities that we don't see much of in My City Photos. Cincinnati is clearly the heavyweight in this collection. And I always appreciate your eye for architecture, especially the details.

[summersm343]

Great photos! Thanks for sharing. Went to Columbus for the first time last year, but have never been to Cincy. Will have to check it out one day.

[Buckeye Native 001]

You did my hometown (Cincinnati) great for such a short amount of time there

Must've been during the Bengals' playoff run going by all the orange lighting of the skyline.

Columbus feels almost like a second hometown to me because after my family moved to Arizona in 1996, it was always cheaper to fly to Columbus from Phoenix (either via America West/US Airways or Southwest) than Cincinnati. I'd never flown in or out of CVG until my late 20s (and now do it routinely because of ultra low cost carrier service between PHX/IWA and CVG). As a result (and because of family living in Hilliard), I always spent a lot of time in Central Ohio whenever I'd go back for a visit.

The Ohio Statehouse ain't much to look at from the outside (did someone forget to finish the dome!?) but is a hell of a lot more ornate and interesting inside. It is indeed surprisingly pink, but that rotunda mural is absolutely gorgeous.

Also, is the observation deck at the Rhodes Tower open again? It was closed when I tried to get to it in October 2021 (very politely turned away [no, seriously!] by a security guard who lamented its ongoing closure). Unfortunately, the Carew Tower's has been closed since the pandemic and might not ever reopen (at least to the public) as the building gets converted to condos.

Any chance you got to go inside Union Terminal? For those of a certain age, it was the template for the Hall of Justice from the Superfriends cartoon since Hannah-Barbera was owned by Cincinnati-based Taft Communications. I went to Union Terminal a lot as a kid after the museums opened. I could (and have) spent hours inside that building and the rotunda.

[Matthew]

An interesting fact about LeVeque Tower that many may not know: Near the top of the building, you can see an area with seemingly out-of-place windows on lighter color stone. That area once had insurance-themed/protector sculptures of people, but they were removed many decades ago. I really wish the building owner would try to recreate these, but I guess it would take-away windows for those floors. The building looks great today, but it looked even better with the sculptures, in my opinion. It's still an awesome building. Thank you for taking the time to share photographs from the trip.

With the sculptures:

Source

Without the sculptures:

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[MayDay]

Fantastic set of pics, thanks for posting.

[BigDipper 80]

You managed to capture a few nice shots of my neighborhood (I live a couple of blocks from the Wright Bros museum). The residential section is nice, but restoring the commercial strip has been a long time coming. We do have a food hall now, which is helping revitalize the area.

Glad you got to make it down to Cincy. It's gorgeous, historical city and I'm hoping more people wake up to its charms. It's definitely worth a long weekend visit and should be a bigger draw than it is.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by BigDipper 80

You managed to capture a few nice shots of my neighborhood (I live a couple of blocks from the Wright Bros museum). The residential section is nice, but restoring the commercial strip has been a long time coming. We do have a food hall now, which is helping revitalize the area.

Glad you got to make it down to Cincy. It's gorgeous, historical city and I'm hoping more people wake up to its charms. It's definitely worth a long weekend visit and should be a bigger draw than it is.

ah another real deal downtown area daytonian guy. good to hear. my spouse is from five oaks.

[giantSwan]

these are some of the great cities of the world

just need to get rid of parking lots, increase density, make things more walkable, and reduce the size of these roads

[ColDayMan]

Nice shots.

[CTroyMathis]

Love it! Thank you for the exceptional and thorough tour, Sir.

I saw that unicorn.