Tag Archives: Cincinnati History

New University Archives Exhibit Highlights Fraternity and Sorority Life

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By: Janice Schulz

In a continuing effort to showcase student life at the University of Cincinnati, the Archives and Rare Books Library has created an exhibit documenting the history of fraternities and sororities from 1882 to today. Going Greek: Fraternity and Sorority Life at the University of Cincinnati offers a historical view into the development of the Greek system at UC and its growth (and growing pains) as it became a social vehicle at the University and then settled into the comfortable position it enjoys today.

Started in 1882 with the establishment of the Sigma Chi fraternity, the Greek system grew steadily in the following decades to become the primary social force at UC in the 1940s, 1950s, and into the 1960s. Political and social unrest in the 1960s forced the Greeks to redefine themselves and their values, creating a system more like what we know now. Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: Desegregating Cincinnati Pools or How Little Girls Made a Big Difference

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By Laura Laugle

Is there anything better on a hot summer’s day than splashing around in the pool with friends? Maybe adding ice cream and a beach ball or two to the mix would improve the day but the pool would still be the main event. In the summer of 1950 Faith and Gail Berry, aged eleven and seven respectively, considered themselves to be extremely fortunate – they lived on Fairfax Avenue in Walnut Hills just a block away from Owl’s Nest pool. I can see the girls now – their summertime plans probably closely mirroring my own and those of my classmates forty-some-odd years later. Chores would be done as quickly as possible so that the cool, dewy mornings could be spent playing kickball in the backyard and roller skating in the street with other neighborhood children. After lunch there would be the mad dash to change into swimming gear followed by what should be a short walk to the municipal pool made longer by those inexorable needs to find and drag sticks along sidewalks and fences and to inspect the various creepy crawlies found along the way.  Finally, the heat of the afternoon sun would be softened by diving, dunking, swimming and splashing in the cool water. So it should be for all children.  But for the Berry girls there was a problem. Continue reading →

50 Minutes-1 Book

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By Kevin Grace

The final 50 Minutes – 1 Book lunchtime talk for the academic year will be held Thursday, May 26, in the Archives & Rare Books Library, in the Schott Seminar Room, 814 Blegen Library at 12:00 noon.

April’s presentation was by conservator and bookbinding designer Gabrielle Fox, who spoke about the artist’s binding she did for an edition of Bobbie Ann Mason’s With Jazz. For May, we will turn to a bit of local history about Cincinnati’s ill-fated subway project of the 1920s.  Engineering snafus, property damage, political finagling, low financing, and a changing transportation culture in the United States all led to the project’s demise.  This topic of special public transportation is particularly timely, given Cincinnati’s current controversial issue of a publically-funded streetcar network for the Over-the-Rhine historic district.   So from the Miami-Erie Canal to subway tunnels to Central Parkway, May’s talk will focus on one way Cincinnatians considered moving about from street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood. Continue reading →

ARB's Historical Textbook Collection

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By Jameson Tyler, Archives & Rare Books Intern

One of the most recent collecting areas in the Archives & Rare Books Library is the Historical Textbook Collection, transferred from the Curriculum Resources Center (now the CECH Library).  Created by former CRC librarian Gary Lare, the Historical Textbook Collection is comprised of American textbooks from the 19th century to the end of the 20th.  As part of the 2010-2011 ARB intern project, the collection will be organized and fully inventoried, and a collection development policy will be developed.   An online exhibit has been initiated (http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/exhibits/historic-textbooks/index.html) to showcase select volumes as well as to provide a “textbook timeline” in the United States and to give a brief history of textbook publishing in Cincinnati.  There are, of course, McGuffey readers, along with spellers, science books, history texts, social studies volumes, and the entire range of K-12 education textbooks.  It is the aim of this project to position the collection for full cataloging and formal naming. Continue reading →

Anniversary of the Sander Hall Demolition

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By Kevin Grace

It will be 20 years in June that UC’s high rise dormitory was imploded, an event noted by news media from around the world.  UC Magazine marks this two-decade anniversary with a video clip, photos, and eyewitness accounts of a Sunday morning filled with drama and dust: http://magazine.uc.edu/favorites/web-only/sander.html and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5wCl8SrHUI&feature=player_embedded.

To learn more about the history of Sander Hall, as well as other buildings on UC’s campuses, contact the Archives & Rare Books Library at 513.556.1959, by email at archives@ucmail.uc.edu, or by visiting our website at www.libraries.edu/libraries/arb/index.html.

Cincinnati Artists Group Effort Records at the Archives and Rare Books Library

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By Lilia Walsh

Board Members of CAGE, early 1980s: L-R Jim Duesing, Kate Gallion, Suzanne Fisher, Jason Tannen, Tony Walsh, Maureen France, Photo by Brad Smith at Safari Cage in the parking lot by CAGE.

I grew up in Cincinnati and my parents are both photographers. My mother, Maureen France, is a fine art photographer and teaches photography to the graphic design students at DAAP. My father, Tony Walsh, is a freelance photographer who has done work for The Taft Museum, The Art Museum, The Contemporary Art Center, and Midwest Living, as well as numerous individual artists.

Before my brother and I were born, my mother and father were very involved with the art scene in Cincinnati. While the art community here has been unusually vibrant for a long time, it has always been small and highly interconnected. Just as a result of living here and making art they came to know artists, gallery owners, patrons, and curators all over the city. They were very involved with the Cincinnati Artists Group Effort (CAGE). Continue reading →

From Bremerhaven to the West End: The Papers of Arthur Herndon

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By Katherine Krueger

One of the best parts of being a College-Conservatory of Music student working in the Archives & Rare Books Library is learning about the history of UC, in particular CCM. The personal papers of tenor Arthur Herndon, one of the first African Americans to receive a bachelor’s degree from the College Conservatory of Music (1961), have now been processed and are available in the ARB library. Mr. Herndon was born in Cincinnati’s West End in 1932 and received his early musical training in school and church choirs. In 1946 at the age of 14, Mr. Herndon made his performance debut singing the role of the wren in Gabriel Pierne’s St Francis of Assisi in the Cincinnati May Festival.  Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: The 1949 Election

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By Laura Laugle

It seems that smear campaigns fueled by fictitious rumors are nothing new to politics. Of course, most have known this to be true for quite some time. In fact, politicians in ancient Greece began pulling the proverbial wool about five minutes after the words demos and cratos were combined, but here we have one more piece of evidence to add to the already mountainous pile.

Headline - "Berry Asks $100,000 for Red Tag Continue reading →

Frank Lloyd Wright on Suicide Watch!

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By Kevin Grace

Well, not really.  One of the great things about working with archives is finding a jewel now and then that casts a light on an event or situation, or illuminates more fully the character of someone famous.  The letter you see here provides one of those glimmering moments.  In the Archives & Rare Books Library, we hold the records and documents of the Contemporary Arts Center, a great institution and a prime exhibitor of modern art in the United States.  In fact, it was founded in 1939 as the Modern Art Society, and its exhibitions over the decades have featured groundbreaking and provocative art from Moholy-Nage and the Bauhaus movement to Jasper Johns and Jim Dine.  The controversial showing of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in 1990 still draws worldwide research and attention. Continue reading →

T. M. BERRY PROJECT: MYSTERY SOLVED!

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Written by Laura Laugle

Click image to see a larger version

Ever since finding the photo below I’ve been attempting to find its origin. As I stated in my previous blog post, Hmmm…, the photo was found in an envelope with other, non-related pictures from the collection. Not too long after posting the picture on the blog, I received a tip from the Berry family that the King photo and the JFK photo I posted along with it may have been taken while Berry was at the White House at the invitation of President Kennedy on June 21, 1963. Looking through Kennedy’s diaries for that time, I found that the meeting Berry attended was specifically for lawyers, so King probably wasn’t present. There was however another meeting listed in Kennedy’s diary for June 22 which Dr. King did attend. It is therefore very possible that Berry and King could have had overlapping visits to the White House and met in that context. Continue reading →