A must read for local history buffs.
And for anyone who grew up on Mount Adams, lived there, or just visited and fell in love with the place.
About the book
Mount Adams: A History
Mount Adams is Cincinnati's oldest suburb.
She was known as Mount Ida in the early 1800s but had a name change in 1843 after a visit from John Quincy Adams. She was home to the Cincinnati Observatory, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Holy Cross Church and Monastery, the Rookwood Pottery, the Mount Adams Inclined Plane Rail Road, Pilgrim Chapel, two Catholic schools, one public school and at her peak population in 1910 housed 11,000 people, mostly Catholic families with lots of children.
This book, the first comprehensive history of Mount Adams, traces her history from the late 1700s to the present and introduces the reader to interesting places and people.
Jim Steiner spent eight years writing this book. It was a labor of love for him. The end result is 370 pages chronicling the growth and development of the Hill supplemented by over 320 images in a hard cover format. This book is a must read for local history buffs, people who grew up on Mount Adams, lived there or just visited and fell in love with the place. All proceeds were donated to the Mount Adams Civic Association.
You’ll also meet people who made their mark in the neighborhood running businesses. Charles Gilb, a huckster who sold fresh fruits and vegetables for over thirty years, Henry Fromme who ran a popular saloon, grocery and bowling alley, Bill Crowley who founded Crowley’s Highland House Café, Pia Battaglia who made the best soup and sandwiches ever and many more.
Immigrant Germans, Irish and later Italians made up a large portion of Mount Adams’s population from the 1850s to the 1940s but that began to change after WW II. Accelerating migration from Mount Adams put the neighborhood in an unstable situation due to absentee landlords and deteriorating buildings. Developers moved in and purchased properties, remodeled them and marketed them to a higher income demographic, beginning the gentrification of Mount Adams. Today, the Hill is considered one of Cincinnati’s preferred residential neighborhoods.
