UC Public History Student Brings Past into Present with Local Projects

Anne Delano Steinert is driven to make the past public. The doctoral student in the University of Cincinnati’s urban America and public history program in the College of Arts & Sciences is trying to rediscover the city she grew up in with projects that breathe new life into history. 

Her newest project, an exhibition centered around public schools in Cincinnati, opens in July. “By tracing the way we build public schools, we can learn a lot about the history of the city,” said Steinert. 

The exhibit, named “Schools For The City,” will, appropriately, be displayed at two of the city’s former elementary schools: first at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center (once the Clifton Public School) from July 8 until Aug. 12, and then to the Irish Heritage Center (once the McKinley School). Events connected to the exhibition will include a panel discussion featuring elementary school workers with decades-spanning careers who have seen firsthand how the buildings have changed. 

Funded in part by both a Third Century grant from UC and an Ohio Humanities grant, the project focuses specifically on prewar elementary schools. It offers a chronological look at how education-related architecture has changed, starting with downtown Cincinnati in 1834. Steinert said she was astounded when she first learned how many elementary schools populated the city’s dense center in the 1800s — around 20. Back then, elementary schools all looked alike: two stories with two rooms on each floor, without much light or interest in sanitation. 

Steinert, who has earned graduate degrees from both UC and Columbia University, is fascinated by the vestiges of history, and how buildings represent a city’s culture as well as its past. “I love the remnants in the landscape,” she says. “You might drive your car past a wall and briefly wonder what used to be there. I need to know what that wall was.” 

Today, someone walking only a short distance in Over-the-Rhine might pass the remains of multiple public schools that were occupied during different times in history. While some of these schools could now be considered urban ruins, many have been repurposed for different uses, like the Peaslee Neighborhood Center, which was an elementary school until 1982. 

Steinert’s research for the exhibit, which began in an independent study public history course at UC last fall, found that Cincinnati introduced a variety of components in elementary education now seen as essential. For example, in 1855, Cincinnati became the first U.S. city to require physical education, a byproduct of the city’s German heritage, specifically the presence of the Turners, a German-American gymnastic movement. About five decades later, a school in the city’s poverty-stricken West End was the first of its kind to offer some sort of cafeteria with its “penny lunches,” designed in 1908 to bolster attention and keep students from going home hungry. 

While students today might be hesitant to thank Cincinnati for being early adopters of P.E. and school lunches, these developments marked significant advancements in public schools, changes that reimagined the spaces students occupied. 

Eventually, new schools blossomed across the area as Cincinnatians annexed neighborhoods like Clifton and Mt. Adams. Schools got bigger, cleaner and brighter. Architects and planners reconsidered speedy and shoddy construction and decided that school design needed to be more deliberate. Perhaps the negligence of elementary school construction reached its catastrophic nadir in 1904, when Pleasant Ridge School experienced the “Cincinnati Privy Disaster” in which nine students died after a cave-in at the school’s outhouse. As Steinert points out, the first indoor bathroom in a public school had been installed only one year before. 

“As our values changed, those got embodied in the physical structures of our buildings,” Steinert said. “Around the turn of the century, elementary schools started housing gyms, auditoriums, libraries, cafeterias and kindergarten classrooms.” What emerged is now seen as the modern school building. 

The project is the latest in a series of inspiring history adventures Steinert has undertaken. She said she is challenged and inspired to find unique ways to portray history. She’s currently working on creating an Over-the-Rhine tenement museum with a board of experts in architecture, preservation and history. The museum would be modeled after New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which has become widely recognized as one of America’s most innovative historic museums. 

This spring, she used a People’s Liberty grant to fund Look Here!, an outdoor exhibition that affixed historic photographs in front of the scenes they once represented in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati’s — and America’s — oldest historic district, and one that is rapidly changing as urban development hastens. The project used 70 photos, dating from the late 19th century to the 1940s. Being able to see what was versus what is offered those who cared to look an objective and surprising way to measure what has vanished in a neighborhood over time. 

“I love the flexibility of the public history program at UC,” said Steinert. “If I have a project I want to pursue, the entire faculty is extremely supportive. I’ve had great help with funding, editing, and other important resources for many of my projects.” 

She also values the program’s emphasis on real world experiences. “UC is a place that really believes in their students and wants to get us out there in the community as much as possible,” Steinert said. “Public History program Director Fritz Casey-Leininger has been especially supportive and flexible. If I ask him to edit something on short notice, he will still come through with thoughtful comments and specific changes to make every project stronger.” 

Discover more about the exciting opportunities at UC’s Department of History by visiting their webpage.