Home soot home

The first classes of the University of Cincinnati proper were held in Woodward High School in 1873. It was not until 1875 that the original University Building was constructed on the Vine Street hill as it climbs out and above downtown on what was once the McMicken estate. (What became Clifton Avenue was located at the rear of this University Building.) 

This location was a matter of controversy. Set at the mid-point of a steep grade, it lacked both the advantage of view and of distance from the city’s industrial heart. It also lacked easy accessibility via foot or streetcar that it would have enjoyed had it been located at the bottom of the hill. One newspaper described the university location as “an almost inaccessible bluff, reachable with fatigue by nothing except Rocky Mountain goats.”

Not only did this steep hill make for difficult access, especially in wet and wintry weather, it was situated on a rather narrow strip of land in a noisy industrial neighborhood. The factories that surrounded the University Building sported tall chimneystacks constantly belching black smoke, and the resulting dirt and grime ruined lab equipment, books and even rare biological collections. One faculty member of the time noted that the polluting smog so darkened the sky that it was “frequently necessary to light the gas in the morning to carry on our work….”

And then there was the stench. Just below the University Building stretched Cincinnati’s beating manufacturing heartland set against the backdrop of the mighty Ohio River, the commercial lifeline of the city. Here, the air was rank thanks to the basin’s massive brick breweries, soap and glue factories and more.