OKI Wanna Know seeks answers for your offbeat questions — like the things you notice on the way to work, or that legend your weird uncle once told you was absolutely true. This week, we dive into an architectural feature on one of the area's favorite buildings, with WVXU's Bill Rinehart.
Chuck Crimmel of Milford noticed something while he was waiting for the symphony to start at Music Hall.
"When I look at the ceiling, there's a repeated pattern and I can't figure it out," he says. "It's some kind of floral — or maybe it's a cabbage — but it's duplicated all over the ceiling, and on the side molding. What is it?"
It's not cabbages. Although, if they were, there'd be a good reason for it. But more on that later.
Thea Tjepkema is a historic preservationist for the Friends of Music Hall, and says it was built to replace Saenger Hall, which hosted the choral SaengerFest and May Festivals.
"And then they also had these annual industrial expositions. Those started in Cincinnati in 1838, by the Ohio Mechanics Institute."
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She says Sanger Hall was made of wood with a tin roof and a dirt floor, and it was falling apart. Reuben Springer contributed $125,000 for a permanent replacement, with the condition other people match that gift.
Cincinnati responded and by 1878, the central portion was built. Springer offered another $50,000 for expansion if citizens could raise $100,000. It worked, and by 1879, the northern and southern wings were finished.
Tjepkema says in addition to musical festivals, the new building could still host expositions. Kind of like a modern day convention center.
"The north hall was Machinery Hall, and the south hall was Horticultural Hall," she says. "So in the north hall they had all these steam-age machines. And the south hall had an arched glass roof. There were plants, there was produce, there were flower shows. Springer Auditorium was the households department."
Still today, on the outside of Music Hall, there are symbols on the building reflecting the different uses.
Tjepkema says attendance at the expositions started falling off.
"The last really big one was 1888, and they were a little in the red after that expo," she says. "So that's why they said 'Let's look to traveling opera to bring in and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra."
The Springer Auditorium we see today is the result of renovations in 1895.
"They decided that they needed to have a proscenium arch on the stage," she says. "They had to have that proscenium arch so they could have backdrops for scenery, and close the curtains. They didn't have that before. The stage was just a platform stage. So they had to have a whole renovation done of Springer Auditorium."
That renovation included making some changes to the ceiling. Tjepkema says Springer Auditorium's original ceiling was pretty plain, just wood.
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"What they did was they lowered the ceiling five feet to help with acoustics," she says. "And they put in those plaster rosettes."
The flowery features Chuck Crimmel originally asked about are rosettes, kind of like roses.
"But technically, they're not rose petals," she says. "They're acanthus leaves."
Tjepkema says there's a reason the renovation designers, the sons of Samuel Hannaford, chose acanthus leaves.
"The Columbia World's Fair, the Great White City, had just happened in Chicago; that great exposition. And everything at the Great White City was classical, so everything had acanthus leaves. That was the style," Tjepkema says.
That style can still be seen today, Tjepkema says, in a lot of buildings constructed in the late 19th century.
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