Front Street
Cincinnati’s Forgotten Waterfront
Front Street is a connection to Cincinnati’s historic and ever-changing waterfront. Front Street was one of the many streets south of Second Street. It cut through the waterfront and wrapped around the foot of the hillsides.
Front street connects to the city’s industrial age, when the river was a source of power. Before the waterfront was transformed into the entertainment hub it is today, it was known as Public Landing.
This is the place where the original settlers of the city landed. Eventually, with the invention of the steamboat, the landing saw its highest utilization, and the wharf was covered with boats trying to load and unload their goods up and down the river. Cincinnati became the center of commerce and industry for the West in the mid-19th century. The city owed that respect to this two-block area.
As quickly as the steamboats came in, they were out. Post Civil War, Public Landing became a seedy neighborhood with decrepit warehouses and forlorn tenements. Surrounding areas like Eastern, Sausage, and Rat Row fell to a similar fate. A look at the waterfront panorama, it is easy to tell what came next for the city. The Purple People Bridge used to carry the L.&N. RR., and the C.&O. Bridge (alongside the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge). To the west is the Cincinnati Southern Bridge, which was recently sold with the railroad to Norfolk Southern.
Cincinnati tried to continue to be the gateway to the West with the widespread implementation of rail, but due to the city's geography (surrounding hills and dense urban population), it was challenging to have an expansive railyard. This ultimately led to the city giving up its title to St. Louis. This and the creation of the automobile left the city with much defunct rail infrastructure, including the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR).
The Pennsylvania Railroad moved its passenger service to Union Terminal in 1933 from its surrounding stations and the grand Pennsylvania Station located on Front Street. It continued to run freight through the eastern corridor until the 1960s. Now the railway is used occasionally by the local industry and the Cincinnati Dinner Train.
The Railroads expanded the city's industrial waterfront. Although they ended the steamboat era and left the wharf a shell of its former glory. Trains wound their way up from the river from both directions and crossed it by multiple bridges. Creating a complex environment of steel girdered bridges and huge industrial complexes.
Front St. was the city’s busiest thoroughfare for nearly half a century. The street is almost all but forgotten today, as the sections that remain have been renamed and stadiums have covered the rest. A drive down Front St. would tell the story of the city as it meandered along the river bank. As it dodged around railroad tracks, and sneaked under iron giants of railroad bridges. The hulks of rotten buildings that lined the street gave a hint of the time Front Street’s hotels and taverns played host to royalty and commoner, adventurer and banker, artist and soldier, roustabout and farmer, laborer and gambler.
The waterfront still has remnants of its historic past but they are quickly disappearing as it is being developed to be condos and million dollar homes. Driving through Eastern Ave, Riverside Drive, and Mehring Way you can imagine what it would have been like to commute through this historic street.
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