Cincinnati transportation officials recently unveiled four potential plans for reimagining Central Parkway as a greener, more pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare. And as they did, they recalled an almost century-old vision for one of the city's most important and historic arteries running through Downtown, Over-the-Rhine and the West End.
"Ninety-five years ago was when the parkway was opened," Cincinnati Department of Transportation and Engineering Project Manager Jeff Stine said last week at an open house discussing design proposals for the section of Central Parkway between Liberty and Plum streets. "Now we're taking another look at it to see if it still meets our needs and aspirations."
To understand the significance of changes to the parkway, it helps to consider how the route helped shape Cincinnati. University of Cincinnati Center for the City Director Anne Delano Steinert says the canal gave us not only Over-the-Rhine's name, but also its boundaries with the West End and the future central transportation corridor Downtown between the two. The canal connected the Ohio River to Lake Erie and helped solidify Cincinnati's industrial strength.
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But railways soon overtook water travel as the nation's main method of shipping, and Steinert says by the 1920s the canal was mostly a stagnant and underutilized ditch.
At the same time the canal's usefulness was fading, Cincinnati was in the thralls of the progressive movement and looking to modernize. Plus, more and more people were buying cars. The city was also considering a holistic and ambitious parks plan by famed landscape architect George Kessler. That plan called for parkways with huge green medians for recreation running between the city's parks, including one where the canal was. City leaders compared the vision to the grand boulevards of European cities like Paris.
"So, we're going to close the canal, and we're going to use the trench there and dig it much deeper to create a subway system, and we're going to top that subway system with a beautiful way to drive," Steinert says. "It's sort of this meeting for all of these needs and desires for all the ways that Cincinnati is going to grow and develop and change."
Not all of those dreams came to fruition. The city did replace the canal with a sweep of street bisected by a green median one could walk down, but you probably already know what happened to the subway system (spoiler: it was never finished). Only small parts of Kessler's plan were put into place. People did buy a lot more cars, however.
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Over time, the city winnowed down the central median to make more room for traffic, and some of that European boulevard flavor was lost.
City leaders say they're hoping to return some of that charm and walkability with proposed changes. At least one of the city's four proposals involves a median that is 30 feet wide, with 28 feet of pedestrian space on each side of the street, along with raised, separated bike lanes.
Steinert says the final design could be a return to form for the parkway's original vision.
"I hope that when it gets redesigned, it will really be visionary, progressive, forward-thinking, but yet rooted in history and the way the basin developed — it will take all of that into account."