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    Cincinnati's Golden Age
    Cincinnati's Golden Age
    Cincinnati's Golden Age
    Ebook159 pages1 hour

    Cincinnati's Golden Age

    By Betty Ann Smiddy

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    About this ebook

    In its golden age, Cincinnati was a leader in industry and culture. Europeans immigrated into the city to fill jobs, and the rural landscape was developing into suburbs. Incline railways provided access to hilltop neighborhoods, and for
    the first time, the middle class could afford to move to outlying areas, commuting to work in the city. Breweries, soap manufacturers, meat packing plants, and other industries flourished, as supplies and products were distributed throughout Cincinnati along the Miami-Erie
    Canal steamboats crowded the Ohio River wharves. The city thrived during the decades surrounding the turn of the 19th century.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 3, 2005
    ISBN9781439615454
    Cincinnati's Golden Age
    Author

    Betty Ann Smiddy

    Betty Ann Smiddy has received outstanding achievement awards in local history from the Ohio Historical Society and the Hamilton County Recorder�s Office. Smiddy is a Cincinnati Enquirer Woman of the Year and was given a key to the city of Cincinnati for her volunteer activities. She is also the author of Cincinnati�s Golden Age. Smiddy has donated her royalties from this book to the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Foundation.

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      Book preview

      Cincinnati's Golden Age - Betty Ann Smiddy

      Collection.)

      INTRODUCTION

      While Cincinnati today is an office center rather than a retail destination, a century ago it was filled with stores and manufacturing, its sidewalks crowded with people. Many lived within walking distance of their job. Voices in Italian, German, Hungarian, Irish, and other languages filled the air where people gathered. Some neighborhoods were distinctly ethnic, such as the Irish on Mt. Adams and the Germans in Over-the-Rhine. The city’s most renowned buildings were being erected. It was a time of optimism, hard work, and prosperity for many. Cincinnatians were happy—we consumed 46 gallons of beer per every man, woman, and child for the year of 1899.

      Frank Wilmes (1856–1946), landscape artist, jewelry designer, and amateur photographer, lived at 1560 Elm Street. He studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy under Frank Duveneck (1848–1919). At the end of his prolific career, Duveneck returned to Covington, Kentucky, from Europe to accept the position of instructor, and later the director, of the Cincinnati Art Academy. There, Wilmes was a promising student and exhibited in the academy’s shows in 1895, 1897, 1910, 1914, and 1918. For many years, he was the secretary of the Cincinnati Art Club. Wilmes photographed a series of Duveneck demonstrating portrait painting and relaxing in the company of friends. The Cincinnati Art Museum has the nation’s largest collection of Duveneck paintings.

      Wilmes was the son of Thomas Wilmes, a fire insurance agent. Thomas and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, were both born in Westphalia, Prussia. Their sons William and Frank started as jewelers, while another brother, August, was a paperhanger. Joseph, Andrew, John, and a sister were the other siblings. Successful as a jewelry designer, Frank was also well known as a landscape painter and painting retoucher. He married, divorced, and had a daughter, Elizabeth. He worked in his later years for Huber Art Co., 123 West Seventh Street, and the Dorst Jewelry Co., Walsh Building, Third and Vine Streets. In 1929, he worked for Archbishop John T. McNicholas retouching his paintings. During this time, he lived there in Norwood as McNicholas’s guest.

      His photographs were used for postcards and some were published in Playmates of the Towpath (1929). Several of his canal photos have been published in other books, but without his name for credit. Up to now, Frank Wilmes has been forgotten as a photographer, while his local pictures are historically significant.

      William H. Deak was a man of many talents and numerous hobbies. Rose Ann, his wife of 56 years, had often told him that he had been blessed with such a gift in his hands and his brain to bring forth these talents and skills to create, invent, remodel, build, or repair just about anything. Two of his special interests were photography and his many tools.

      He started in photography as a young man of 17 or 18 years old with a small Kodak Brownie camera. He took it upon himself to empty his clothes closet in the bedroom of his parents’ home to create his first darkroom—with a paper sack over the light bulb to develop film. From there, he graduated to an unused pantry and, many years later, to a large room that he transformed into the darkroom he had always yearned for. By that time, he had much better cameras and a professional safelight to work with the over 100-year-old negatives.

      How he came into possession of Wilmes’s negatives is a story in itself. In 1947, an old family friend revealed to Bill that one of his tenants had recently passed away—a Frank Wilmes, who possessed old books, another of Bill’s interests. Wilmes—an artist as well as photographer—also owned glass negatives, and his sister was preparing to dispose of his effects. Bill purchased not only books that day, but also a huge collection of glass negatives; he used some of the rent money to do so.

      It was not until the 1980s that the opportunity to do something with the negatives came about. Working with these old glass negatives was quite a challenge and not as simple as working with modern-day films. It took a lot of skill to bring forth an acceptable black and white print. It took many test strips and hours of work to get the correct shading

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