Queen City Underground

            The Queen City Underground tour was very interesting.  There were eight different places that we visited on our tour.  Some of the sights were very eye opening for me.  The tour was spread out over the town.  Many of the sights were hidden by modern buildings that were built on top of or in front of the sights.

            The first sight we visited was the “Entertainment District”   This district had various buildings.  Some of these buildings were part of the entertainment system in the area.  If you lived back in the year 1890, you didn't have all of the entertainment we have today, with all the technology.  So you would go to the entertainment district and go see a show, play, etc. 

            The next sight we visited was the “Heinrich Wielert’s Biergarten”.  One of the major things the people from “Over the Rhine” were proud of was their beer.  Our next stop was St. Paul Lutheran. 

Pretty much the all of Cincinnati was run by a man named George Barnsdale Cox.  If you needed a job, you had to consult him.  Most matters of business were overseen by “Boss Cox”.

            Next we visited the tenement houses.  Imagine living in two rooms with ten other people.  There was a small courtyard, and the building surrounded it.  People usually didn’t have enough money to pay for any personal plumbing, and you had to pay to use public bathroom for bathing.  So people usually just went to the bathroom in buckets, and dumped them out if their windows.

Our next stop was “Liberty Street”.  This was my favorite part of our tour.  This was the street that historically, if you were a slave, and you were running away, as soon as you crossed this street, you were free, and no bounty hunters could get you. 

            The seventh stop was St Francis Seraph/Crypt. Originally, this had been a grave area.  But when they decided to building a church, they sent out a message that said “come and claim the bodies”.  Strangely enough, many bodies were never claimed.  When the church was being built, people asked if they could have bodies buried directly beneath the alter.  So there was a crypt built for the dead.  Many people did not have enough money to pay for writing on the stones, so only a few numbers written on those stones.

            The final stop was the “Kauffman Lagering Tunnels”.  This was where beer was stored.  Since they didn’t have refrigerators back then, they had to store the beer underground where it was colder.  The tunnels were six floors beneath the street, and they were built so that beer barrels could roll directly into certain areas.  The tunnels were dark.  Eventually, people piled up trash in the middle of them. 

            The Queen City Underground tour was very eye opening to what it was like to live back then.