City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2019 Development, Expertise, and Infrastructure between the Ohio River and Cincinnati Riverfront, 1895-Present Raymond W. Pettit The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3020 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] DEVELOPMENT, EXPERTISE, AND INFRASTRUCTURE BETWEEN THE OHIO RIVER AND CINCINNATI RIVERFRONT, 1895-PRESENT by RAYMOND PETTIT A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the reQuirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2019 i © 2019 RAYMOND PETTIT All Rights Reserved ii Development, Expertise, and Infrastructure between the Ohio River and Cincinnati Riverfront, 1895-Present by Raymond Pettit This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in satisfaction of the dissertation reQuirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. __________________________ __________________________ Date Jeff Maskovsky Chair of EXamining Committee __________________________ __________________________ Date Jeff Maskovsky Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Jacqueline Nassy Brown Dana-Ain Davis Uwe Lübken THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Development, Expertise, and Infrastructure between the Ohio River and Cincinnati Riverfront, 1895-Present by Raymond Pettit Advisor: Jeff Maskovsky As the first major U.S. urban center located west of the Appalachian Mountains, Cincinnati’s early growth depended on the Ohio River, a vital route for the westward drive of U.S. settler colonialism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Over time, with the eXpansion of railroads and shifting trade routes, the river became less relevant to the success of the city. In this dissertation study, I pick up the history of Cincinnati’s relationship with the Ohio River after it had apparently declined in importance. Through a focus on how Cincinnati elites have advocated for different infrastructural projects along the Ohio River, I track the ways that they have hoped to again make the river productive for the city. In particular, I focus on the creation of infrastructure concerning 1) navigation, 2) flooding, and 3) pollution. By developing infrastructure related to these three areas, local elites hoped to reshape how the Ohio River behaved, making it more amenable to Cincinnati’s overall needs, as well as to spur development in the region. In doing so, I connect these proposals designed to transform the entire Ohio River with plans to redevelop specific stretches of the riverfront around Cincinnati. To explore these two interests simultaneously, I examine the activities of Cincinnati-based groups that have sought to unite the skills of technical eXperts with those of local developers in order to promote infrastructural solutions to the issues of navigation, flooding, and pollution – groups like the Ohio Valley Improvement Association, the Cincinnati Stream Pollution Committee, the Cincinnatus Association, the Riverfront Advisory Council, and others. In doing so, this study uncovers the entanglement of technocratic expertise and development knowledge in shaping how local elites have maintained their authority in the city and reshaped the urban environment to suit their needs. Through a century of collaboration on infrastructural projects, technical experts and iv development elites in Cincinnati have been able to transform the riverfront – which had once been a zone of mobility, racial intermiXing, and economic opportunity for the city’s poorer residents – into a tightly- controlled area that is increasingly inaccessible to Cincinnati’s low-income residents or small businesses. At the same time, this historical and ethnographic study also places particular emphasis on understanding the role the Ohio River itself has had in enabling these processes to unfold. Far from being an inert bystander, the Ohio River has actively shaped these infrastructural projects along the Cincinnati riverfront, many times being a major contributor to the successful realization of elite objectives around white supremacy, imperialism, urban growth, and public health, among others. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Hot damn! First, thanks to the Acknowledgements section for letting me write some neat, twisty prose for once. Christ writing a dissertation is hard. Then trying to make everything sound elegant and effortless turns it into skating on lava. To those people who made it a little easier on the way: To my ugly, eternally-jealous siblings, my way-too-kind parents – you always make my time in Cincinnati comfort-filled and amusing. Forever plotting ways to come back. For my Mom and Aunt Monica, thank you for editing and providing style guidance on the first two chapters. To everybody at the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center – thanks for creating a community for me in returning home. On many levels, it was eXtremely helpful to fight with you all to change our city while also working on this project. To the Fall 2017 Writing Group – due to trick of fate, we spent a lot of time reading my chapters, and it helped me so enormously, taught me to focus on writing what I assumed everyone already knew. Many thanks to Julie Skurski for organizing the group and for her thoughtful feedback. To my dissertation committee – you have all heard and read way more about Cincinnati than you probably ever anticipated. Jeff, thank you for taking me on as an advisee early in my doctoral studies, and then providing useful advice (sometimes ignored) as I fitfully groped for a project, got distracted, and moved through the process in my own way. You taught me what urban anthropology could accomplish and I hope this work reflects the excitement I feel about the field. Jackie, you were the professor for literally the very first college course I ever walked into. You helped me slowly embrace anthropology as a way that I could critically explore my own passion for the city I call home. Dana, you have been fundamental to shaping what I hope to accomplish through scholarship and for teaching me to root theories of power in the particular U.S. histories of race, gender, and class that surround them. Uwe, thank you for taking a random Skype call. Since then I have greatly appreciated your generosity in sharing your deep knowledge of the region to improve my project. Neil Smith, Don Robotham, Kate Crehan, Michael Blim, and all of the CUNY Department of Anthropology faculty jumped me into so many of these ideas. To all my friends – I am looking forward to rediscovering why we are friends soon. Megan, Nazia, Yesenia, and Ryan, you all oh-so-necessarily kept me fun-distracted at Graduate Center. vi To everyone at the University of Cincinnati Archives & Rare Books, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Inland Rivers Library, and Cincinnati History Library and Archives – you all went above and beyond as I came in to scan stuff during my lunch break, asked to review materials during renovations, or made other weird requests. The Cincinnati History Library and Archives even shut down indefinitely a few months into research, but we got it done. To all the people who wrote and did this stuff that I somewhat surreally lego-landed into a dissertation – compiling and writing about you all has been a very strange process. While I disagreed with the actions of some of the individuals or groups described here, I hope I accurately captured the original intentions and beliefs of everyone captured in these pages. To all the people I’m forgetting who helped me along the way or even just nodded supportively as I described my project – thank you for listening and being there. And to Geo, you have been insanely supportive. Putting in shifts at the archive one hot summer, helping me talk through ideas. I’ve read so many “Thanks for putting up with me” platitudes in acknowledgement sections, but it is very very very real life. Thank you all. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction …1 A. The Ohio River and the Cincinnati Riverfront …15 2. Ohio Valley Navigation and the City, 1895-1929 …29 A. Ohio River in Decline …31 B. Ohio Valley Boosters and Army Engineers …34 C. Water as a Natural Resource …42 D. Assembling “Modern Water” …49 E. Navigation and Nation …54 F. Remaking the River …62 G. Navigation and the Cincinnati Riverfront …70 H. Conclusion …81 3. The Cincinnati Central Bottoms and “Being Flooded,” 1925-1970 …84 A. Flood Prevention in the US …85 B. A Flood Crisis …91 C. Disasters and Assemblage …102 D. Flooding and Urban Blight …110 E. The Ohio River and Urban Renewal …120 F. Conclusion …127 4. Stream Pollution and Riverfront Recreation, 1934-1988 …131 A. Cincinnati and the Sanitary City …134 B. Beyond the Sanitary City …138 C. Pollution Publicity in the Ohio Valley …152 D. Bringing Industry into the Polluted Public …159 E. Clean Water and Redevelopment on the Cincinnati Riverfront …167 F. Conclusion …176 viii 5. Reassembling Infrastructure on the Cincinnati Riverfront, 1988-Present …180 A. The Banks and The Ports …184 B. Claiming the Riverfront …191 C. New Approaches to Infrastructure on the Riverfront …202 D. Infrastructural Remedies …209 E. Conclusion …214 6. Conclusion …219 Bibliography …228 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 - Detail from cover of the OVIA Official Program …69 Figure 2.2 – "What a Nine-Foot Stage in the Ohio River Means" …74 Figure 2.3 - "The Old Way" & "The New Way" …76 Figure 2.4 - "Vast Terminals in Tentative Plan" …76 Figure 3.1 - "Council Receives Two Flood Protection Plans" …99 Figure 4.1 - "Big Manufacturing Plant will not Locate Here" …164 Figure 4.2 – ORSANCO "Clean Waters" station …167 Figure 5.1 - Detail from Smale Riverfront Park …197 Figure 5.2 - Detail from The Banks staircase …200 Figure 6.1 - Detail from Cincinnati Gateway …220 X Chapter 1.