Cincinnati Parks 2 - Alms Park

Monday
This morning I was at church for bible study, then went to work out at the gym. After that, it was such a beautiful sunny, blue sky day, I decided I would head to one of the Cincinnati parks, to continue my series. Alms Memorial Park lies on Mt. Tusculum in an area of the city known as Columbia Tusculum, which claims to be Cincinnati's oldest neighborhood, and has some of its oldest homes. I certainly passed some fine older homes as I was driving up to the park, some painted in quite bright colors, some with bay windows, others with long, gracious porches with gingerbread trim. The area on which the park now sits was originally called "Bald" Hill, because the Indians had cleared the trees from its summit to have an unobstructed view of the early settlers of "Columbia.". This hilltop park was given to the Park Board in 1916 as a memorial to Frederick H. Alms by his wife. The land was once owned by Nicholas Longworth. Nicholas Longworth was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1783, but in 1804 he moved to Cincinnati, where he became a banker and a successful winemaker as well as founder of the Longworth family in Ohio. Longworth was an influential figure in the early history of American wine, producing sparkling Catawba wine from grapes grown in his Ohio River Valley vineyard.

The park's centerpiece is this pavilion, one of three Cincinnati park pavilions, stylistically inspired by the Italian Renaissance. Completed in 1929, it was designed by architects Stanley Matthews and Charles Wilkins Short Jr. The front terrace and walks were designed by Albert D. Taylor, who also designed landscape plans for the pavilions in Ault and Mount Echo parks. Besides its viewpoint over the Ohio River, where you can sit and watch the barges going by below, the park also overlooks Lunken airport. Lunken was a commercial airport in the 1920s through 1940s, but no major commercial airlines use it anymore, having been supplanted by the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1937 following catastrophic flooding from the Ohio River. The airport now serves private aircraft and many large Cincinnati-area companies now base their corporate aircraft there.

Cincinnati Parks: Eden Park