Sothis Medias

On Memorial day, Audrey, my Dad, Step Mom and I took a tour with Queen City Underground in the historic Over-The-Rhine district of Cincinnati. On it the illustrious past of my hometown took on new layers of depth and significance. It was quite amazing. Especially when we went down fifty feet below street level into a network of beer vaults that extended around us for 40,000 square feet.

First however, we visited a beer hall that sat on the second floor of a building I used to go to on ”Industrial Night”: the beloved and much missed Warehouse (remember the hearse that was almost always parked out front?). Upstairs from where I would go cavorting and dancing was a long hall with small stage. Paint peeled off the walls. This was the place where a strong man would lift a weight purportedly upwards of 1000 pounds. One night the crowd decided to play a trick on him. They had bolted the weight to the stage. When he tried to lift, it wouldn’t budge. The audience snickered. ”Let me get a few more beers in me and I’ll try again.” After the steins were quaffed he was at the weight. When he lifted it, he tore out some of the stages floorboards as well, sealing his reputation.

Another stop was in front of another old beer hall on Vine that was established in 1873.  This was where the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra had its start, playing music for the patrons, soon establishing a reputation that extended as far as London and Paris.  They are now known and respected internationally.  It was also the hangout place of a Republican politician who led the push to get Democrats out of office at that time, eventually getting his own people into as many official City positions as possible.   We were shown another venue where we were told Annie Oakley performed with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.  (Annie -a Cincinnati native- supposedly took her last name from the East side neighborhood of Oakley.)  A story was also told about a man and wife time who frequently performed a William Tell routine with bow and arrow.  She used a plate on her head -hidden somehow- to protect from the shot in case he missed the apple on her head.  One time he did miss, killing his wife in front of an audience that quickly turned vengeful.  The noose was slung and they were prepared to hang him on the spot when the authorities intervened.  They said he had the right to a fair trial and his aquitted of the accidental murder -his wife had known the risk.  Still, when he was freed, he had to move to the south and assume a new identity.  Cincinnati was no longer a safe place for him.

The highlight of the tour was undoubtedly descending fifty feet underneath the Guildhaus, home of the old Kaufmann brewery near the corner of Liberty and Vine.  The beer vaults below extend for 40,000 square feet.

It was simply amazing to be that deep underground in the city. Visualizing the life of the city at the height of its beer production -during a time when the German and Irish immigrants drank upwards of 40 gallons a year.  The style of beer brewed by the Germans was the famous Lager that has become an American standard.  To get its taste it has to be kept cool, and at 52 degrees the vast underground vaults were perfect.  Even more awe inspiring than the vaults were the tunnels connecting different buildings underneath the city.  One of the reason the tunnels were built was so that the beer could be taken to a bottling facility.  Before prohibition -which really did a number on the breweries in this city-  lawmakers had tried to curb alcohol consumption by passing a bill that made it illegal to bottle beer in the same facility as it was made.  So tunnels were built to take the kegs from the underground storage to the place where they could be bottled.  It is uncertain how many vaults and tunnels are underneath Over-the-Rhine, the West End, and Brighton -but it has surely been underestimated.  Thus begins a new era of Urban Spelunking for Cincinnatians.  There are also many tunnels and hiding places that were built when the Underground Railroad was active, Cincinnati being a crucial stop as the fugitives made it across the Ohio river into the North.

Coming back up the tour guides led us across the street to St. Francis of Seraph church where we were shown a crypt that housed the bones and tombstones of many Irish immigrants, most whom were buried there in the early 1820′s.  When the original church had been moved, family’s were asked to come  get their dead.  Understandably not many of them dug them up and hauled them out.  The graveyard remained.  When again the spot was used to build a new church the bodies and tombstones were moved into the crypt.  The flood of 1937 however caused damage to some of the tombstones and they are not sure if they correlate exactly to where the person was buried. One of the interesting things about the headpieces were how they listed the county in Ireland where the person had been born along with the date of birth, like County Clare or Dublin for example.  All in all it was a fascinating walk into the Underworld and past of Cincinnati.   

The tour is led by a few teachers from Northern Kentucky who are great speakers and give a great history lesson in a lot more detail than my abbreviated cliff notes.  What’s more is that all the money generated from the tour goes to a program the teachers are involved in where they take local students to Jamaica to help build schools, supplying the new schools with computers, video projectors, and other technology along the way.

Tags: beer, community, Psychogeography, urban spelunking
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