{"id":25567,"date":"2014-10-02T12:38:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T16:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=25567"},"modified":"2014-10-02T12:39:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T16:39:47","slug":"shillito-hall-comes-home-to-the-uc-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2014\/10\/shillito-hall-comes-home-to-the-uc-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Shillito Hall Comes Home to the UC Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

For the past few weeks, Mr. Dennis Christine (CCM, Class of 1969), has corresponded with Sue Reller, Mark Palkovic, and me about an old bronze plaque he had.\u00a0 He wished to donate it to us as a piece of University of Cincinnati heritage that he strongly felt should be preserved, and we\u2019re very fortunate that he thought of us because the plaque that reads \u201cShillito Hall\u201d is a reminder of CCM\u2019s past and its merger with the University of Cincinnati in the 1960s.\u00a0 Yesterday I met him at the gatehouse on Clifton and hauled it in to the Archives & Rare Books Library.<\/p>\n

\"Shillito<\/a><\/p>\n

The plaque comes from the last home of CCM before it became a part of the University of Cincinnati in 1962.\u00a0 As many know, CCM represents what were originally two separate music schools.\u00a0 The Conservatory of Music was founded in 1867 by German immigrant Clara Baur, who began the institution in rented rooms and provided advanced schooling in instrument mastery and in singing.\u00a0 A little more than a decade later, in 1878, the Cincinnati College of<\/p>\n

\"Clara<\/a>

Clara Baur<\/p><\/div>\n

Music was created.\u00a0 For the next several decades, the two conservatories would remain separate entities, both establishing Cincinnati’s international reputation for musical training.\u00a0 In 1955, they merged and became the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, remaining that way until CCM was brought under the UC unbrella.<\/p>\n

At the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century as Clara Baur searched for a more appropriate home for the Conservatory, she obtained the mansion in Walnut Hills formerly the home of the Shillito family, which had founded one of Cincinnati\u2019s iconic department stores.\u00a0 The mansion had been built by the city\u2019s most notable architect, Samuel Hannaford, and the spacious grounds and beautiful rooms were perfect for Baur\u2019s purposes.\u00a0 After her death in 1912, Baur\u2019s niece, Bertha, fully took over the administration of the conservatory and it remained in its Oak and Highland Streets location until the UC era.<\/p>\n

\"Bertha<\/a>

Bertha Baur<\/p><\/div>\n

As Mr. Christine told the story, his was the last class to take their courses at the mansion before it was demolished.\u00a0 He began at CCM in 1964 and recalled that in the next couple of years, even while they were in their classrooms and studios, the students heard the sounds of jackhammers and wrecking balls all around them.\u00a0 By 1967, the CCM buildings on the main UC campus were ready for occupancy.\u00a0 As he remembers it, there was another plaque at the CCM entrance that had already disappeared as part of the demolition.\u00a0 He went to Dean Jack Watson and asked about the remaining one, \u201cShillito Hall.\u201d\u00a0 When Watson said that in a few days it would be part of the rubble as well, Christine asked if he could have it and was told that if he could get it off the wall, it was his.\u00a0 With the help of a couple of friends along with tire irons, wrenches and whatever they could use, Christine saved the plaque, and for the past fifty years, he has kept it safe.\u00a0 Now a resident of Indianapolis and close to Cincinnati, Dennis Christine has always wanted it to be in a safe and permanent home.\u00a0 After half a century, it is.<\/p>\n

Inside the CCM Library\u2019s doors on the 6th<\/sup> floor of Blegen Library and hanging on a wall is a beautiful framed photograph of a CCM class on the front lawn of their college, the old Shillito mansion.\u00a0 The plaque would be a wonderfully historical addition to that photo.\u00a0 To learn more about CCM\u2019s and UC\u2019s history, please email us at archives@ucmail.uc.edu<\/a>, call us at 513.55.1959, or visit us on the web at http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/arb.html<\/a>.\u00a0 And to see some early views of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music when it was located on the Shillito estate, please see our scanned book of views at http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/content\/dam\/libraries\/arb\/docs\/university-archives\/cincinnati-conservatory-book-of-views.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace For the past few weeks, Mr. Dennis Christine (CCM, Class of 1969), has corresponded with Sue Reller, Mark Palkovic, and me about an old bronze plaque he had.\u00a0 He wished to donate it to us as a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[53,52,66],"class_list":["post-25567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-uc-history","tag-university-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}