Downtown Cincinnati – Then and Now: 1968-2015 Mashups

Perhaps “Then and Now” photos have been overdone among the historical photography crowd. But the chance to take such documentary images and look at them side-by-side with images from today is irresistible.

Last year we set out on a journey to match the 1968 Hamilton County Auditors Office photos with the modern day Google Streetviews. With renewed interest in the photographs found three years ago resulting from a Cincinnati Magazine article, we thought we would go ahead and prematurely publish a work-in-progress labor of love.

We thought we would be struck by how much changed and the architectural gems we had lost to the big-block/big-box development that resulted from the 1964 Plan for Downtown Cincinnati. No doubt there is much that has changed and there were some terrible decisions made. Notable individual structures were caught in the crossfire between developers and less valued buildings when entire blocks were razed. However, we actually were also encouraged by how much was preserved.

What are your thoughts? Is downtown better off? Were the super-blocks necessary?

We will continue to update this page – it’s taken a while already, as evidenced by the 2015 photos being on the left in some comparisons – but in the meantime here are the results in no particular order. If you have suggestions on how we can improve this project or a taxonomy to the comparisons, or if you spot mistakes, we’d love to hear them.

Proctor & Gamble Commons

Read more of this post