At the end of a very long week, I’m having a bit of trouble pulling my thoughts together. I realized that I haven’t shared much from the recent trip to Cincinnati so for the next couple of days I’ll post of some of the experiences we had and beautiful places we visited. On this trip, we decided to spend one day at the Cinci museum. We had been there a few years ago when the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit came through but on that visit we didn’t have time to see the permanent exhibits. It is a lovely museum, housed in the old Union Terminal. There are technically three museums – a natural history wing, a Cincinnati history wing, and a children’s museum – and they have a theater. So there was lots to see! We will need to go back because we were rather rushed at the end.
Today I wanted to share with you some photos from the history side of the museum. One of their main exhibits is a large railroad model of Cincinnati. It is the largest “S” gauge model in the world and it takes up an entire room! The center model is of downtown in the 1940s.
The lights are on a 5 min cycle to mimic daylight and dusk over the city. A ramp goes around this exhibit and flanking the walls of the room are models of various suburbs of the city. At each section of the model is a touch screen computer that gives you information about the key points of interest. This in itself would take an entire day to get through. There were menus for architecture, history, religion, arts, and entertainment. It was fascinating to learn about the places we had seen and admired on previous trips – and I loved the time-frame that they focused on from the 1920s-40s.
This is of Mt. Adams. The lighting made it difficult to get a good picture. You may be able to see a long railway scaling the hill in the right side of the picture. These were called inclines and there were 5 scattered about the city. Railway cars would sit on a platform which would move up or down the tracks, enabling transportation to and from the hills. These inclines made settlement in the hills possible and they became effluent neighborhoods of the wealthy citizens eager to escape the noise and pollution of the city. They functioned from the 1920s until they were dismantled in the 1950s.
Here’s the Cincinnati Zoo. My family and I have made several trips here. Though not in a good area of town, the zoo itself is a beautifully landscaped haven. It is state of the art, but manages to retain the charm of the past. It was here that the last passenger pigeon died and there is a memorial to Martha here.
And this is Spring Grove – the cemetery that we love so much in Cinci. This is the main entrance with a tourist car approaching. It was a popular destination for the residents to enjoy picnic lunches and stroll the grounds. Adolph Strauch, designed the cemetery with a “lawn plan” to mimic parks throughout the eastern US and Europe. I’ll share pictures from our visit there soon.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of the Cincinnati model. I do apologize for the quality of some of the pictures. The low lighting and glare on the glass made photography a challenge, especially when using the ipad for pictures. Have a great weekend!
Blessings to you,
Sarah
anordinarymiracleday 