Spencer House was a historic hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Opened in 1853, it was condemned in 1933. [1] Spencer House was located on the southwest corner of Broadway and Front in an area known as the Bottoms, adjacent to the Public Landing, which was the city's major Ohio River dock. [2]
Prior to the construction of Spencer House, the Cincinnati Hotel stood in the same location. [3] Spencer House opened with a grand ball in December 1853. [3] The actress Charlotte Cushman was an owner. [3] According to a history published in 1923, in the 1850s, the Spencer was considered a summer resort for Southern families. [3] In 1860 a guest from Louisville, Kentucky wrote:
To those who are called to Cincinnati by business or pleasure, I would commend the Spencer House. Its location on the banks of the beautiful river renders it airy and free from dust, while the varied panorama of the opposite scenery in Kentucky, the Licking river, Covington, Newport, the forests of chimney stacks from a fleet of steamboats, and all the life, bustle, and business animation of the Queen City of the West, furnish plenty of employment for the eye and cause the time to pass away pleasantly." [4]
During the American Civil War, the Spencer was considered the city's Copperhead hotel, while the Burnet House was known as the Federal hotel. [5] The Spencer reportedly had a soundproof room originally intended for gamblers that was used during the American Civil War for strategy meetings. [5] It is possibly apocryphal but Copperhead politician Clement L. Vallandingham was supposedly arrested at the Spencer at the height of the war. [3] Spencer House was one of the stops on Andrew Johnson's 1866 Swing Around the Circle electioneering tour. [2] He visited again after his impeachment trial. [3]
As steamboat traffic declined in economic significance during the second half of the 19th century the hotel struggled and it was eventually converted to a tenement house. [3] By the 1930s it was in such poor condition that only people without children in their households were allowed to live there. [1] It was condemned in 1933. [1]
The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge that spans the Ohio River between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky. When opened on December 1, 1866, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world at 1,057 feet (322 m) main span, which was later overtaken by John A. Roebling's most famous design of the 1883 Brooklyn Bridge at 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m). Pedestrians use the bridge to get between the hotels, bars, restaurants, and parking lots in Northern Kentucky. The bar and restaurant district at the foot of the bridge on the Kentucky side is known as Roebling Point.
James Guthrie was an American lawyer, plantation owner, railroad president and Democratic Party politician in Kentucky. He served as the 21st United States Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, and then became president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. After serving, part-time, in both houses of the Kentucky legislature as well as Louisville's City Council before the American Civil War, Guthrie became one of Kentucky's United States senators in 1865. Guthrie strongly opposed proposals for Kentucky to secede from the United States and attended the Peace Conference of 1861. Although he sided with the Union during the Civil War, he declined President Abraham Lincoln's offer to become the Secretary of War. As one of Kentucky's senators after the war, Guthrie supported President Andrew Johnson and opposed Congressional Reconstruction.
Portland is a neighborhood and former independent town northwest of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It is situated along a bend of the Ohio River just below the Falls of the Ohio, where the river curves to the north and then to the south, thus placing Portland at the northern tip of urban Louisville. In its early days it was the largest of the six major settlements at the falls, the others being Shippingport and Louisville in Kentucky and New Albany, Clarksville, and Jeffersonville on the Indiana side. Its modern boundaries are the Ohio River along the northwest, north, and northeast, 10th Street at the far east, Market Street on the south, and the Shawnee Golf Course at the far west.
Morgan's Raid was a diversionary incursion by Confederate cavalry into the Union states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia during the American Civil War. The raid took place from June 11 to July 26, 1863. It is named for the commander of the Confederate troops, Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan. Although it caused temporary alarm in the North, the raid failed.
The history of Louisville, Kentucky spans nearly two-and-a-half centuries since its founding in the late 18th century. The geology of the Ohio River, with but a single series of rapids midway in its length from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to its union with the Mississippi, made it inevitable that a town would grow on the site. The town of Louisville, Kentucky was chartered there in 1780. From its early days on the frontier, it quickly grew to be a major trading and distribution center in the mid-19th century and an important industrial city in the early 20th. The city declined in the mid-20th century, but by the late 20th, it was revitalized as a culturally-focused mid-sized American city.
Belle of Louisville is a steamboat owned and operated by the city of Louisville, Kentucky, and moored at its downtown wharf next to the Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere during its annual operational period. The steamboat claims itself the "most widely traveled river steamboat in American history." Belle of Louisville's offices are aboard Mayor Andrew Broaddus, and also appears on the list of National Historic Landmarks.
The Kentucky Railway Museum, now located in New Haven, Kentucky, United States, is a non-profit railroad museum dedicated to educating the public regarding the history and heritage of Kentucky's railroads and the people who built them. Originally created in 1954 in Louisville, Kentucky, the museum is at its third location, in extreme southern Nelson County. It is one of the oldest railroad stations in the United States.
Cincinnati began with the settlement of Columbia, Losantiville, and North Bend in the Northwest Territory of the United States beginning in late December 1788. The following year Fort Washington, named for George Washington, was established to protect the settlers.
Tall Stacks, formally known as the Tall Stacks Music, Arts, and Heritage Festival, was a festival held every three or four years in the Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, area, which celebrated the city's heritage of the riverboat. The sixth edition was held on October 4 to 8, 2006. The festival typically featured a number of vintage and replica steamboats from across the eastern United States, which docked along the Ohio River shoreline in Cincinnati and across the river in Covington and Newport, Kentucky.
Cincinnati Municipal Airport – Lunken Field is a public airport in Cincinnati, Ohio, three miles (5 km) east of Downtown Cincinnati. It is owned by the city of Cincinnati and serves private aircraft, including the fleets of local corporations. It serves a few commercial flights and is the second-largest airport serving Cincinnati after Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, which is the area’s primary airport. It is known as Lunken Airport or Lunken Field, after Eshelby Lunken. It is bounded by US Route 50 to the west, US Route 52 and the Ohio River to the south, the Little Miami River to the east, and Ohio Route 125 to the north. The airport is headquarters and hub for Cincinnati-based public charter airline Ultimate Air Shuttle, serving 5 destinations in the eastern United States with 16 peak daily flights. Lunken is also home to small charter airline Flamingo Air and its aviation school.
Louisville in the American Civil War was a major stronghold of Union forces, which kept Kentucky firmly in the Union. It was the center of planning, supplies, recruiting and transportation for numerous campaigns, especially in the Western Theater. By the end of the war, Louisville had not been attacked once, although skirmishes and battles, including the battles of Perryville and Corydon, Indiana, took place nearby.
The Ohio River flood of 1937 took place in late January and February 1937. With damage stretching from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, 385 people died, one million people were left homeless and property losses reached $500 million. Federal and state resources were strained to aid recovery as the disaster occurred during the depths of the Great Depression and a few years after the beginning of the Dust Bowl.
During the American Civil War, the Ohio River port city of Cincinnati, Ohio, played a key role as a major source of supplies and troops for the Union Army. It also served as the headquarters for much of the war for the Department of the Ohio, which was charged with the defense of the region, as well as directing the army's offensives into Kentucky and Tennessee.
The United States Marine Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, in the Portland neighborhood was built in 1845, and is considered by the National Park Service to be the best remaining antebellum hospital in the United States.
The Louisville and Portland Canal was a 2-mile (3.2 km) canal bypassing the Falls of the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky. The Falls form the only barrier to navigation between the origin of the Ohio at Pittsburgh and the port of New Orleans near the Gulf of Mexico; circumventing them was long a goal for Pennsylvanian and Cincinnatian merchants. The canal opened in 1830 as the private Louisville and Portland Canal Company but was gradually bought out during the 19th century by the federal government, which had invested heavily in its construction, maintenance, and improvement.
John Means was a mayor of Ashland, Kentucky and a leader in the banking and iron industries. He helped organize the Cincinnati and Big Sandy Packet Company, laid out Ashland Cemetery, built furnaces, served as vice-president of the Ashland National Bank, and served then led the growing iron business of the Means family. The Kentucky Encyclopedia of 2015 described the Means-owned iron empire as having "created massive enterprises out of the disorganized and weakened industry that emerged from the Civil War."
The Jacob Strader was a side wheel packet steamboat built in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1853. She was owned by the U.S. Mail Line of Cincinnati. She provided the ultimate in luxurious travel between Cincinnati and Louisville up to the time of the Civil War. She was described by Thomas Nichols, a writer and traveler of that time, as "the finest boat, all things considered, that I ever saw on the American waters."
The Dirty River Derby, also known as the River Cities Cup, is a rivalry between American soccer clubs representing Cincinnati, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky. From 2016 to 2018, the cities were respectively represented in the second-tier league now known as the USL Championship by FC Cincinnati and Louisville City FC. Both teams played in the Eastern Conference of what was then known as the United Soccer League, and the River Cities Cup was contested solely in regular-season matches between the two sides, with the winner of the regular-season series claiming the cup. After the 2018 season, FC Cincinnati ceased USL operations, with the ownership group having been awarded a Major League Soccer franchise that began play under the FC Cincinnati name in 2019. From that point forward, the rivalry only takes place if the two teams are drawn together in the U.S. Open Cup, with the first such meeting after FC Cincinnati's arrival in MLS taking place in 2019.
Two buildings in Cincinnati were known as the United States Marine Hospital. They were part of the U.S. Marine Hospital system, which was run by the Marine Hospital Service and its successor the Public Health Service, primarily for the benefit of the civilian merchant marine. The first was completed in 1860, but never used as a Marine Hospital as it was operated as a military hospital during the American Civil War, and was later sold to become Good Samaritan Hospital. The second was a former mansion that operated as a Marine Hospital during 1882–1905; it was later used as a water pollution field station that grew into the U.S. Public Health Service's primary environmental health research program, and the predecessor to the current Andrew W. Breidenbach Environmental Research Center.
Burnet House was a grand hotel that stood at the corner of Third and Vine in Cincinnati, Ohio in the United States from 1850 to 1926. In its day the Burnet hosted a multitude of dignitaries, including Abraham Lincoln (twice), Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and Jenny Lind.