By: Kevin Grace
With the first major storm of the winter about to hit us in the next couple of days, it seems appropriate for a campus trip down memory lane. And, it should be a quintessential Cincinnati weather experience of warm temperatures, rain, driving rain, gale-force winds, sleet, and snow all in the same 24-hour period. If any ghosts of ancient Mayans visit the Queen City tomorrow or Friday, in all likelihood they will say, “See! Told you so!”
By: Molly Gullet
Work on The South West Ohio Folklore Collection has been underway for a little over two months now, and the organization of the collection is developing well. 
What began as five somewhat disheveled boxes filled with folkloric writings, pictures, cartoons and cassette tapes has finally been organized by genre.
The first step in the process of organizing the collection was sifting through what we now know to be over six hundred folklore papers and almost ninety audio materials. The papers were sorted according to the following 15 categories: Miscellaneous Proverbs, Miscellaneous Stories, Urban Legends, Ethnic, Specific Topic, Literary Analysis, Humor, Children’s Lore, Graffiti, Local Festivals and Events, Songs and Ballads, Uncanny, Food Lore and Remedies, Female and Gaming lore. The collected pieces were written as assignments given by professor emeritus Edgar Slotkin who is also the donor of the collection and because of this, common themes are found throughout. Continue reading
By: Angela Vanderbilt
In the spring of 1916, the citizens of Cincinnati voted in favor of the $6 million bond issue approved by City Council for construction of the “Pearl Street Belt Line,” a rapid transit loop that was to provide a solution to the congested traffic patterns in-and-out of downtown Cincinnati at the turn of the 20th century.
March 1, 1921 – Photograph of a map of Cincinnati showing rapid transit loop & interurbans
By: Lauren Fink, ARB Student Assistant
The Archives and Rare Books Library has recently processed a collection from the Cincinnati Ballet spanning the years 1970-2008. This collection, full of photographs, contact sheets, sketches, and notes, makes an excellent addition to our already extensive Cincinnati Ballet Records.
The new collection mainly includes visual materials related to The Nutcracker. Professional photographs, advertising campaigns, and community outreach programs are all documented. Above is a billboard advertisement, “One Size Fits All: This Year Give The Nutcracker.” Below is “Nut Man” who was very active in the Cincinnati community circa 1988. Contact sheets and action prints, as seen below, comprise an entire box of the collection. Continue reading
By Angela Vanderbilt
Sometimes, in order to build up you must tear down. Sometimes, progress comes with a price. In the case of the Cincinnati subway construction project, that price was the removal of several homes and businesses located along the proposed subway route. The razing of these buildings was due in part to their location, some lay in the direct path of the subway route, but also due to structural damage caused by the construction process.
All buildings were photographed as part of the subway project, including those which sustained damage due to construction of the subway. In some locations, vibration from blasting and digging resulted in cracked walls and ceilings. Below are images from 1921, the beginning of construction, that show cracks in foundations of structures located along the old canal bed, the new Central Parkway. Such photographs would be used to support property owner damage claims made to the city. It is reported that the city paid out over a quarter-million dollars in property damage reparations. Continue reading
By Suzanne Maggard
Music at an Appalachian Festival
After World War II and through the 1960s and 1970s, millions of people fled Appalachia in search of jobs and a better life. Cincinnati’s proximity to Appalachian counties in Kentucky and Ohio and its industries encouraged many migrants to settle in this area. The migrants brought unique music, cultural traditions, and stories. The experiences of Cincinnati’s Appalachian migrants varied. Continue reading
By: Angela Vanderbilt
The Cincinnati (Ohio) City Engineer – Rapid Transit Records collection includes both negatives and prints of subway construction and street improvement projects conducted by the City of Cincinnati between 1917 and 1957. While we are fortunate to have over 2000 printed copies from negatives included in the collection, not every negative has a matching print, and the digitization project does not extend to producing archival prints of the negatives. Because the prints and negatives have been separated into folders, with the negative folders organized by date and the print folders organized by street name, it is quite a task to match a print with a negative.
Like a game of Concentration, I compare prints to scanned images, hoping to match a print with its negative, spurred on by the challenge of turning over the right combination of cards! Fortunately, having gone through each folder to prepare the materials for scanning has made me familiar enough with the contents to have a general idea of where I might locate an image of Elm Street or Ludlow Avenue. Most helpful is the information being transcribed from the negatives and prints as they are scanned, which provides dates and street names in a spreadsheet that I compare and also match to the finding aid. As the project moves into the online collection building phase, each print will be matched with its negative in a database, so that ultimately researchers viewing the images on screen may quickly determine if a physical print is available. Continue reading
By Suzanne Maggard
Mary Louise Eich
College students are notoriously adventurous and University of Cincinnati students are not immune to the exploratory spirit. In the Archives and Rare Books Library, we are in the unique situation to learn about and discover student adventures that may have otherwise been forgotten. An example is the story of Mary Louise Eich and her friend and Delta Zeta sorority sister, Mary Nichols. Last week, we received a donation of a book entitled, An Odyssey in the Life of Mary Louise Eichwritten by William Neal, the son of Mary Louise Eich.
Mary Nichols
The book tells the story of Mary Louise’s life and the trip she made with Nichols in the summer of 1936 to Nazi Germany. Both Eich and Nichols spent a month working in Women’s Labor Service camps. Upon their return they both wrote articles for the Cincinnati Post about their experiences. Neal’s book provides transcriptions of the articles Eich and Nichols wrote for the Cincinnati Post and is a great addition to our library’s holdings on German-Americana and University of Cincinnati history. Continue reading
By: Angela Vanderbilt
Reviewing the images of the subway construction has provided me with a great opportunity to learn the names of the streets and the different intersections around downtown Cincinnati that were major points along the subway route. As I learn to navigate my way around the city, driving from one location to another, I’m finding this very useful as I’m constantly recalling images and the navigational captions written on the negatives. By providing the street names and directional information for each image, the photographer gave us a map of 1920s Cincinnati. I thought it would be fun to show a “then and now” perspective of some of those streets and intersections, courtesy of Google maps, providing a snapshot of how much the city has grown and changed, starting with the removal of the canal in the 1920s.
The images shown here begin at Race Street and head west along Central Parkway, then make a turn at Plum Street to head north on Central Parkway past Mohawk Place (The building on the corner of Central and Mohawk Robin Imaging, the company digitizing the collection.), and north on McMicken Ave.
Northbound Race at Canal, 1921
Northbound Race Street at Central Pkwy, 2012
Northbound Elm St. at Canal St., 1921
Northbound Elm at Central Pkwy, 2012
By: Molly Gullett
Many of us are preparing this week for Thanksgiving, one of America’s oldest traditional holidays. Food rituals are key in most cultures, and they are certainly featured in the contents of the Southwest Ohio Folklore Collection. 
Providing a common link and shared experience, Thanksgiving dinner, and the holiday itself are prime examples of traditional American culture.
There are many Thanksgiving traditions which mark the holiday as an example of folkloric tradition. We may take for granted how commonly held practices such as preparing a turkey or breaking the wishbone might be considered folklore given their ubiquity, but folklore can be just that: a ritual so regularized that it begins to be practiced without thought. Continue reading