Big Architecture in a Small City

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My first item for today was another Midwestern art museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Like the other Cs, Columbus (see The History of a Misguided Intention) and Cleveland (see I Want to Rock Right Now), it’s a midsize comprehensive museum.

Just like the other two, most of the museum is a little bit of lots of things, leaving me wanting more.

Art of Cincinnati

The museum does have one incredible exhibit, called the Art of Cincinnati.

Like most newly rich areas (see Adventures in Banktown) wealthy Cincinnati residents supported the arts to gain cultural cache.

Unlike many cities in this area, they were doing so as early as the 1830s, when Cincinnati was still practically a frontier output.

The exhibit explores this legacy, and how it benefited the city.





Early artists in Cincinnati fell in two broad categories.

The first is the iterant painters who worked throughout the early frontier, such as Aaron Corwine.

They painted whatever they could get commissions for, mostly portraits and landscapes.

The other category was wood carvers.

Cincinnati was home to some impressive early sculptors who worked in wood, who gave the city a reputation for fine craft.

They built quite a bit of furniture, such as a huge bookcase by William Hawkins.





After the Civil War, both activities became more formally organized.

An Art League was founded in 1880, which helped create the museum a year later.

Women were not allowed to join, so they formed a rival organization, the Women’s Art Club.

The museum has a holiday picture the League created one year, where every artist is represented by a one inch square piece of work.

Most of the work is academic, but other trends like Impressionism show up.

Craft exploded in a huge way during the era.

Houses in the Victorian era were noted for their incredibly detailed wooden interiors.

A father and son team from Cincinnati, Henry and William Fry, gained a national reputation for carving them.

The museum has four separate rooms they created for industrialist Joseph Longworth, which are used to display other sculpture.

The signs warn not to touch the walls!





The next legacy of Cincinnati art is pottery.

Two different women started designing art pottery in the late 1890s, Maria Storer and M. Louise McLaughlin.

They became very successful, and rivals.

Both won medals at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

They attracted other pottery artists to the city, which became known as a center for the craft.

One local manufacturer, Rookwod Pottery, was highly successful until the Depression forced them to dramatically scale back production, and they closed for the next thirty years.

The museum has an entire room of their work, including a fountain of a Greek nymph that lived for decades at a local bowling alley!





The next to last room covers the years from 1900 to 1950.

Many painters trained at the Art League.

Most left afterwards, but a number stayed.

Their paintings cover the gauntlet of art trends of the time, although the city as a whole was conservative.

Landscapes and American Regionalism dominate, with some American Impressionism thrown in.





The last room covers something I have seen nowhere else, the Beautiful Schools movement.

In the early 1900s, the Cincinnati school department decided to fight the ills of modern industrialization by creating beautiful school buildings, following the philosophy of Englishman John Ruskin.

(In a bit of irony, this is the same John Ruskin that James McNeil Whistler sued for libel in 1878, see Put Your Hands Up For Detroit).

Many buildings of this time started incorporating pottery statues in their walls, Victorian architectural elements, and other items.

Most still exist in older buildings.

School kids (and I suspect their parents) were encouraged to donate money to buy paintings for schools.

When enough money was collected, the students got to vote on the painting they wanted.

Most were by local artists.

The collection of paintings is now on long term loan to the museum (contrast this with Philadelphia schools, which built a similar collection and then stored it school basements for fifty years starting in the 1950s).

The work reflects the same trends as the previous room, with a higher percentage of American Impressionism.





I really enjoyed this section of the museum and consider it a highlight.

I wish all regional museums that do not specialize on particular art movements had a section like this.





After the museum, I drove to southern Indiana.

The first part of the drive resembled southern Ohio, with rolling hills.

I was really wondering which state I was in.

Soon enough, the land converted to how people picture Indiana, all flat farmland.

The roads tended to be straight and very fast.

While passing through towns locals slowed down to a crawl, and in the country they resumed high speeds.

The scenery never appeared to change.

No wonder this state has produced so many good racecar drivers.

Columbus Indiana Architecture

Eventually, I reached Columbus Indiana.

Columbus, believe it or not, is a nirvana of modern architecture.

It’s primarily due to the Cummins Engine Company, which is headquartered in town.

In the 1950s, a visionary president, J. Irwin Miller, set up a foundation to pay the fees of any modern architect from a curated list who agreed to design a municipal building.

Several dozen have taken up the offer.

As intended, this inspired other organizations to join the trend.

The end result is that Columbus now contains the highest concentration of modern buildings for any city of its size.





Seeing Columbus requires a certain frame of mind.

These buildings are not the showcases often seen in architecture books.

They are (relatively) small scale buildings like fire stations, schools, and churches.

They are also surrounded by acres and acres of the downright ugly tract housing and big box stores found in any sprawling city.

This is architecture for everyday living.

With that adjustment made, however, the city is fantastic.





Since the buildings are spread over a wide area, a good map is essential.

Thankfully, the city visitor’s center sells one (along with an incredibly detailed book).

With the map, the delights come fast.

The county library is a red brick designed by I.M. Pei in 1969.

Across the street is the First Christian Church designed by Eliel Saarinen in 1942.

His son Eero Saarinen did both a downtown bank, Irwin Union Bank, in 1954 and the North Christian Church in another part of town a decade later.

Roger A.M. Stern designed the city hospital in 1992, and both Richard Meier and Norman Fletcher did schools (in 1982 and 1962 respectively).

Skidmore Owings and Merrill designed both city hall in 1981 and the headquarters for the Columbus Republic newspaper in 1970.

Of course, the Cummins Engine Company got into the act, hiring Kevin Roche, one of Eero Saarinen’s former assistants, to design their downtown headquarters in 1983.

There are many others, and I needed several hours to see them all.





For lunch in a place like this, I wanted another example of notable design.

I found it at Zaharakos Ice Cream.

This deli and ice cream parlor opened in 1900, and apparently hasn’t changed a bit since.

The building was straight out of the Victorian era.

Of course, it helps that the ice cream is pretty good too.

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Photos

Cincinnati Art League
Holiday greeting from the Cincinnati Art League, with samples of members' work

Rockwood fountain
Made by the most famous pottery studio in Cincinnati, this fountain once graced a local bowling alley!

County Library by I.M. Pei
County Library designed by I.M. Pei, in Columbus Indiana

Cincinnati pottery
Samples of pottery made in Cincinnati over the years

Columbus bike rack
In this city, even the bike racks are works of art