The Elsinore Arch, Mt Adams, Cincinnati, Ohio
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2021
- www.HistoryInYourOwnBackyard.com
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The Elsinore Arch, also known as the Elsinore Tower was constructed in 1883 for the Cincinnati Water Works. It's reported to be inspired by the Elsinore Castle featured in Hamlet.
In 1883, the Cincinnati Water Works wanted to extend its efficient water supply main tunnel 185 feet to the line at Gilbert Avenue. This efficient main started at the reservoir in Eden Park. To control the flow of water at the base of the steep hill, a valve house was needed. Because the Water Works wanted to enhance the landscape of the park, plus they wanted a structure that would also serve as a new entrance to the park, they felt that the valve house needed to have a special design.
That spring, Cincinnati was host to the Shakespearean Dramatic Festival at Music Hall. The highlight of the festival was the performance of "Hamlet" on Friday evening, May 4. Many in the crowd that night were highly impressed with the stage sets, especially the opening scene. This particular stage set was a 65-by-65 foot painting of Elsinore Castle (also known as Kronberg Castle), where the moody Denmark prince walked at night and spoke with the ghost of his father. In the audience that night was Water Works Superintendent A.G. Moore. He was so impressed with the painting of Elsinore Castle that that next Monday morning he appeared at the offices of Samuel Hannaford and Sons architectural firm with a newspaper illustration of the Elsinore stage set. What resulted was that Charles E. Hannaford, the son of Samuel, was commissioned to design the valve house in the form of Elsinore Castle. The Elsinore Tower was built later that year for a cost of $15,000.
The Norman Romanesque Revival mini-castle consists of a cylindrical tower joined to a smaller square tower by an archway. Since the Cincinnati Art Museum officially opened in 1886, a flight of steps were placed behind the Elsinore Tower as a short cut to the museum in Eden Park. It is reported that the reservoir valves were housed in a vault underneath the tower and that the Cincinnati Water Works uses the Elsinore Tower for equipment storage.
GPS Location: 39º06'46.9"N 84º29'58.9"W
For several years, the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History stood next to it and included a wonderful planetarium. Went on many field trips there over the years...
Same here, I remember it well! :)
Those were the good old days before WCPO and them.
Aside from being an attractive entrance to the park I never realized that the arch had a function. Thank you for an informative video.
You're welcome!
I always wanted to see the inside of that building
Neat! Thanks! Today, I doubt you could get just the front steps of that built for $15,000!
To look at the buildings of the late 1800's and early 1900's, one can see such attention to making the structure a beautiful work, almost like art. The older places having touches like gargoyle like carvings and trim work. No slam on today's work, but now, cookie cutter places rule. I always hate seeing these old places razed to make way for new buildings.
You're exactly right. What was built in the 1800s and early 1900s is now a lost skillset.
I always wondered what that was. Thank you!
Keep up the great work!!
Fascinating! Thank you!
What a beautiful young lady and does a great job too.
This is super cool, love this kind of content
Wow, great. Big 👍 my friend. Greetings from Poland
Thanks!
Surely the Cincinnati Historical Society has an image - perhaps the newspaper photo - of the set painting? Because Kronberg Castle in Denmark, however much it may have inspired Shakespeare, looks nothing like that.
Very interesting and I really like the older photos which seem to show wiring for trolley cars. It’s so sad that ugly building to the left in the pictures has to be there.
When I was bad as a Kid my Mom would tell me that she was gonna leave me their 😂
It was rumored a short time ago that someone was going to turn the Elsinore Arch into a brewpub.
Just what everyone needs......another bar.
It would have been nice to mention the Natural History museum use to be beside it or at the very least let us see inside of it.
HISTORY IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD, your name is quite literal in some cases. Being older and not into too much technology, I have fallen in love with Google Earth, it's my new toy. I love Cincinnati history and the significant part canals and railroad have in our past. One of my favorite things to do on Google Earth is follow ghost train tracks! Some literally go through residential BACKYARDS, or are defined by the unique architecture of an old building. I was wondering, DO YOU HAVE or CAN YOU MAKE a video of vintage aerial photos next to Google Earth images of the same location, an aerial THEN & NOW?
Hi Floyd. I enjoy doing the same thing with Google, tracing the old roads and railroad tracks. Yes I could do vintage aerial against Google Earth but it would be an expensive video due to the fact that I would need to pay for all of the old aerial photos. I would have to have someone or some business fund the project.
@@historyinyourownbackyard2363 Oh, I see. I love the THEN & NOW pictures from around the world. Many are beautifully sad.. With the passing of time, places change bit by bit more and more unrecognizable, leaving just enough as evidence this is the same place. When I see the house I lived in the first 5 years of my life, it has changed so much, it feels like I lived there 500 years ago, not just 50.
I discovered something on Google Earth that has peaked my curiosity! I had seen both sides from the ground, but never realized I was seeing opposite ends of the same thing. In St.Bernard, there is a, now sealed, pedestrian tunnel under Interstate 75. To small for vehicles, but obviously built during or after construction of 75. I feel like it was built so P&G workers in St.Bernard could continue to walk to work after 75 was built, but I have not been able to find any information about this tunnel. Do you have or can find any information on this tunnel?
Another Google Earth discovery: The long gone LONGVIEW STATE ASYLUM off Paddock Rd had its own cemetery in the eastern edge of the property. The cemetery is STILL THERE, accessible by a gate in a fence dividing it from an apartment complex street between the old LONGVIEW property and Woodward High School on Reading Road. I found some history online stating the people buried there were patients. But I wonder if families of the people buried there visit the cemetery, and who or if the cemetery is cared for. From Google Earth, it looks like it can very easily be overgrown by the wooded area around it, and it appears completely cut off by woods on the west side, now an industrial area where LONGVIEW once stood. I can't help but wonder of the lives of the people buried there. Without LONGVIEW history, it seems it would just be a forgotten small potter's field. Is there any organization that at least documents the history and location of forgotten cemeteries? ErvTV, a Cincinnati History youtuber did one on the little park at Madison Road & Irie across from WITHROW High School, finding evidence it was once a cemetery. I have always loved history, but thanks to you, Erv, and others, Cincinnati History is vividly accessible to us disabled. THANK YOU!!!
Hey!! What happened to the elephant figures?
Someone should be living in there and there should be ghosts available to frighten them out of their wits every evening after sunset.
I'm quite disappointed. I wanted to be able to drive right on through it. Cincinnati must be eliminated from all maps and disassembled until a through road can be constructed through the tower's base. And Oh yeah..the ivy darnit!
Back when people cared how buildings looked, because they believed it was a moral duty to create beautiful architecture for the public. Now it's all about the lowest bidder.
Overkill
Must be scared to go anywhere else besides Ohio and Southern Indiana. Maybe switch it up and go to NW Indiana and other states in the midwest. Just a suggestion, tons of history elsewhere, too!
Actually we have videos produced in 10 states and 78 counties throughout the midwest. I have over 70 videos still needing to be edited with 13 of those in NW Indiana. those should be out sometime next summer.