14 January 2009

Chicagoan Searches for Ed Hopper in Cincy

 
A Chicago writer visited Cincinnati (among 46 other cities) and asked people, "Do you feel Americans are isolated as Hopper portrayed us?" Some of what he reported from Cincy:

Hopper's painting here, Prospect Street, Gloucester, is a simple, wholesome street scene, quaint as Cincinnati. A row of sunlit houses stand on a street deserted except for a dark green car hunkered along the curb. Two church tops are visible on the horizon. A flesh-toned sidewalk runs before the houses beside the gray road along the bottom of the painting on which you seem to be standing to view the scene. A museum curator called the painting, "a distillation of the essential American residence street anywhere."

....Over-the-Rhine claimed to be the largest national historic district in the nation and to have a "turn-of-the-century" aura. It also retained that era's squalor...

..Nearby Findlay Market was advertised as an "authentic, European-styled open-air grocery" but felt more like a flea market...

(Patron at Kaldis:) "It's this whole idea about making a family-friendly city, and it's not, you know. It's a city. And that's sort of an oxymoron: a family-oriented city."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Someone who'd know told me it's a myth that OTR is the largest historic district in the nation. It's not even close.

ekalb said...

I also do not believe that OTR is the largest historic district in the nation. But it is the largest collection of historic Italianate architecture in the nation.

Quimbob said...

pretty superficial
his description of Findlay Market sounds like he didn't go inside
Randy and Hugo sound like Beaconites

Anonymous said...

^just some grumpy barflys

Randy Simes said...

Yeah...never heard someone describe Findlay Market as a "flea market." The whole thing did have a very Beacon-esq feel to it (good call Quim).