The Rentish Podcast

Preserving Modern America: Storytelling, Architecture & Legacy with Expert Alyssa McClanahan

• Zach and Patrick • Season 1 • Episode 23

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In episode 23, Zach and Pat welcome a special guest: Alyssa McClanahan, historian, preservationist, and author, whose work brings buildings and the people behind them back into the spotlight. Alyssa’s nationally recognized storytelling-based preservation projects explore how architecture intersects with memory, justice, and identity.

Together, they unpack what historic preservation really means in today’s fast-changing real estate and urban development landscape. From adaptive reuse and sustainability to community-led preservation efforts, Alyssa shares powerful insights and real-life stories—like saving the Taft Theatre, Cincinnati Music Hall, and more. You’ll also hear about the challenges facing preservation today, and why forgotten spaces and found objects can hold deep meaning in our collective history. If you’ve ever wondered what makes a place worth preserving or who decides, this episode will leave you thinking differently about the buildings around you.

Check out her books here:

As we build toward Episode 25 and the next season of The Rent-ish Pod, make sure to follow and subscribe so you never miss the latest real estate trends, tips, and insights. Got a question you want answered on air? Email us at questions@therentishpod.com.

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SPEAKER_00:

What's going on, everybody? My name is Zach, and I'm here with my co-host, Patrick. What up? You told me to go, and then you started drinking your soda. So that was bad timing on your part, Mr. Producer. We're your hosts for the Rentish Podcast. Welcome in the podcast that's all about rental properties, hosted by two guys that work in the real estate industry and kind of know what they're talking about. but

SPEAKER_01:

mostly don't

SPEAKER_00:

sip. Great job, Patrick. You nailed the second one. I'll give you a two out of 10 on the first one, but a nine out of 10 on the second. Okay. So you did a great job. So yeah, mostly we don't, you're right. Which is why I think you're all gonna have fun listening to us talk to experts, learning along with us, or just laughing about how little we know. But we're gonna learn something today, Patrick. How about that? I'm excited. You're excited?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Because we're joined by a very special guest. We've had a few episodes in the past where it's just a lot of me and Patrick just kind of shooting the breeze and kind of guessing about properties and about buildings, but now it's real. Now it's official. We've got someone here that's gonna be able to educate us, I think, on some really awesome historic preservation of modern America And some cool stuff about the place that we're recording too, Cincinnati. So we're joined today by Alyssa McClanahan, who is a historian, preservationist, and author whose work explores the intersection of architecture, memory, and justice. She's written over 100 place-based building histories, developed interpretive content for museums, led inclusive walking tours, and designed storytelling-based preservation projects across the country. What a resume. Quite the resume. Quite the resume. Alyssa, thank you for coming on to The Rentish Pod. Thank

SPEAKER_02:

you so much for having me. That makes me sound far more impressive than I am. That was a very kind intro.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I'm so glad that you're here and that you've decided to take some time to talk to Patrick and I about some cool buildings and some cool facts. And I'm sure we're going to have a cool little discussion here. But I don't know. Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us what's your story. What brought you to this place here

SPEAKER_02:

today? Yes, that's a great question. I have always loved old places, I think, ever since I was a little kid and just stories they tell. So I think with that as the background, I was in grad school for history, like with a capital H, you know, like to be a professor or something. And I kind of realized I didn't want to do that. I wanted to work more on the ground, work with the public, work with people that were like dealing with history in a more messy, visceral way. So when I was in grad school, I met my husband and we got involved in historic preservation, like activism, volunteering, uh, publicity campaigns to save an old building from just being torn down for a parking lot, something that felt like it didn't make a lot of sense. He bought his first old building. We worked on it together. I then kind of tumbled into a beautiful career, beautiful not because of my own work, but because of the opportunities I've gotten to have in historic preservation consulting. So particularly historic preservation tax credit consulting. And then from there, spending a lot of time dealing with singular places. What can we do with them? What's the story that they tell? How to retell that in an adaptive, reused way? I think I made some connections with community organizations that were interested in, we have an old building, we have an old neighborhood. How can you help us storytell this in an inclusive, creative way that would make ordinary folks like you and me care about it and want to go explore that place? And so I have a toe inside of a university. I I teach at UC Blue Ash. I'm very grateful for that. I love the students. I teach urban and environmental history, place-based history, trying to get like kiddos to care about places. But I mostly like to, again, be kind of on the ground of a community, like dealing with everyday people and what are the stories that surround us? What are the different ways that people remember the past? Kind of deal with all those messy questions.

SPEAKER_00:

That's beautiful. It's very poetic. You can tell that you have a passion for the history of these places, which is why it would be cool to kind of like dig a little deeper into some of them but okay yeah in terms of this just a question off the bat about teaching and about like getting other people to really care about the buildings that you care about do you find that it's pretty easy to get someone to really feel that same sort of excitement that you might feel about a building like being able to share that story is that something do you feel like that connection is easily made for you

SPEAKER_02:

I think so it's different in the classroom versus like out in the quote unquote real world but I feel like the same maybe tactics kind of be employed where it's like, what, what's the creative like outlet that we're going to get people to just like be able to go back in time and imagine like, Oh, being here in the sixties or the 1860s, you know, you just got to like kind of care a little bit, uh, just give a shit to use the phrase, you know, um, employ our empathy. Um, you know, for students, it's like, let me show you an awesome, large format, old, old photo of this place. Right. And I find that for a public audience, like, um, That, over words, any day is going to get somebody to care a little bit more about a place. There's another awesome local historian here, Ann Steinert, who had this awesome project a couple years ago where she would take a scene from the city and find an old photograph from that same vantage. And she got permission from the city, like permits and everything, to temporarily install them as though they were like road signs. And so you could look like, oh, Central Parkway today, flashback 120 years. It's the canal, but it's the exact same perspective And you would just see people, maybe like to be a bit stereotypical, someone that you would think, maybe they're not that interested in history, right? They're down here to see the Reds ball game or whatever. And they're stopping and they're looking at it. And they're like talking to their 12-year-old about it. And that is like beautiful, accessible public history right there, right? And I always love that project of hers. So I find stuff like that invigorates imaginations.

SPEAKER_01:

I was going to ask, because that sign example that you mentioned is really interesting to me. What are some other ways besides obviously teaching, maybe besides like putting up the signs? What are some other ways that you get those stories out there for folks who might not be seeking them to learn about?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I have found like anything to do with like a walking tour, anything to get the body moving a little bit and get them physically into an old space really does the trick. I also like to be a little bit odd or creative with like collaborations. Like who could I pair up with in the city that has nothing to do with history but they have a skill set that I totally lack where they could help me come up with like, not even just like, here's my idea, please help me execute it. But they'll help me come up with the idea because they like think about things totally different than a historian. So I've worked with a lot of like local artists to come up with weird ways to produce art or other ways to story tell. John and I were involved in a magazine years ago that was just all about like, how do we tell under the radar developer's stories and the buildings they're working on the stories that are there that no one else is reading and then by working on the magazine you're working with like all sorts of new characters that I would never normally work about and then that gets them to care about the stories and you learn from them one of the things I was involved at with Finley Market was some public art Cincinnati has such a beautiful rich tradition with artworks of these public murals everywhere I feel like that's another great example like let's paint a scene let's imagine a scene right and then yeah just weird things I did a Pendleton art show years ago where we got a group of folks together that had been in old buildings and collected various found objects over the years and we did an art show of like this is an old bottle I found and like what stories can it tell like whose hands possibly held this right and that it was just weird stuff like that

SPEAKER_01:

yeah

SPEAKER_02:

I'm always up for the weird thing because it usually means somebody is going to care and I'm going to get to meet fascinating people that are way smarter than me, that know how to do all sorts of things

SPEAKER_00:

I don't.

SPEAKER_02:

That's what I'm after in life.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, stuff all over the spectrum there. But in terms of like, you are an author. Yes. We talked about that in your intro. You got a couple things here that I did want to help plug. Oh, thank you. Zimmer, The Movement That Defeated a Nuclear Power Plant. That's the whole title. Is that your first published work? That's the second book. That's your second one. Is the first one Finley Market of Cincinnati History? Good guess. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. Tell us about the process of like actually like it must be so much time and effort and research poured into making these books and publishing them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it is, because I think that's the way it should be. Right. If you're going to undergo a historical research project like that's what people should trust historians to do well, like it's going to be rigorously research as objective as possible. So I like that. Like this is going to be a couple of years of your life type of mentality because it's like, well, that's what you were trained to do. You need to do that. Um, and I am a very un impatient person with everything else in my life, but that I can get down to look in some sources for many years. Um, but yeah, so I was hired in 2018 by the corporation for Finley market to do those place-based histories of all the buildings that surround the market and up and down Elman race streets. They were interested in more and a more inclusive understanding of the market areas past, um, including like immigrants and African Americans that had spent time there. And they were going to use that to kind of drum up for their business, for the market in a good way, just like better storytelling. Let's tell everybody's version of Finley Market. I finished that, which resulted in some cool stuff for the market. And I was like, I have all this research. And so I decided to turn it into a book using this method I learned in school. It's called micro history. And the idea behind it is like, let me take a singular thing or place and like blow, use it as a lens into a larger history. So I could use your shoe to largely explore the shoe industry or the history of the garment industry or the history of labor or something like that, you know? And so it's like, I'm going to take a singular object that's really relatable to people and do that. So Finley market is interesting because I feel like a lot of people in the city love it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

They don't, Exactly know why they love it. Maybe they like to go there. Maybe they like the old buildings around it. It feels like Europe. I've heard all these things, but they don't know exactly why. And so I wanted to investigate, like I wanted to offer the history of the market to them and sneakily tell them the larger history of cities, of urban core neighborhoods through a beloved place to them. And that was a sneaky way for me to get at larger things that I think some people have a hard time with, like the importance of of immigration and race in cities and racism in cities and white flight and how governments helped build cities and then stopped and now they're reinvesting in them and all these things that urban historians know a lot about but the everyday public doesn't know why over their own experienced population growth and not growth and now regrowth and so it's my sneaky way to do that that's the goal I'm not sure if it did that but that's the goal that's cool I

SPEAKER_00:

would imagine that I would love to read the book I mean, I'm very interested in Cincinnati history. Huge Cincinnati. I've lived here my entire life. So it's a very passionate thing for me. It's part of the reason I still stay here is that the culture, the history and all that stuff. So definitely want to check that out. That's very cool. And you have an upcoming book too, Insignificant. You want to tell us a little bit about that as well?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. So spending a lot of my last, I don't know, 15 years and very long abandoned, very dusty buildings with my husband and friends. I have collected... As much as I could, anything I could get my hands on, something that I physically found in the building or I found digitized by researching the building. And I particularly wanted to collect stories of women because women do not get their due when it comes to the history of places, buildings, real estate today. And most of the women that lived in these buildings I've spent time on were immigrants or migrants from the South. They were poor. They were anonymous. And so they were considered just kind of like anonymous in insignificant in their time, but they matter to me. And so I collected stuff and stories and did all this local history research on them and genealogy. A couple of years ago, John and I were involved in trying to prevent an old hotel from being torn down for an empty parking lot. And the people, the folks that were trying to do that told me when researching this building, nobody significant ever lived there. Nothing significant ever happened. The hotel had been an active hotel for years. More recently, it was a boarding house full of lower income people. And that phrase peeved me deeply and intrigued me because. In my little world of historians, we don't think that about anybody now. We realize that every human has stories to tell and is significant. But I started thinking about the larger public that I want to engage with, and I still think that's kind of a common idea, that if you didn't leave behind a bunch of stories, or maybe you didn't have any money, or you didn't leave behind this interesting story that's easily found, you could be cast off as insignificant. Like, how am I going to tell your life? So it was my mission to use these women's lives that I found to... prove that guy wrong. Basically. It's a passion project, you know? So it's a creative way to tell women's history in the country, but it's through these local stories. Each chapter starts with an object I found, which is hopefully interesting, and then explores their life. And I try to make it as interesting as possible. And spending significant times away from academia, I've gotten better at being a little weird in my writing. There's a lot of questions in it, like, what does she feel here? What does she do here? And I think you just got to ask those questions because then that gets you like in your like seven year old mindset, right? Where you're just like playing pretend and you're being creative. And that's, I think a huge goal in my life is to continue to do that and get other people to do that. Yeah. And honor these women's lives.

SPEAKER_00:

That's awesome. Anything else? I don't know if you have any questions to jump in, Patrick. Before you do, we mentioned the name John a few times. Just to give the listeners some context. I was just thinking about that right now in my head. I was like, I should probably say something about. So, John, you're referring to John Blatchford. Yes, I am. Who we've had as a guest on the podcast. And you guys can go back and listen to one of those episodes. He is part of Cohorts.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

And you guys are just like a building team of the super friends, which we're going to talk about in a

SPEAKER_02:

minute. Yes. Yeah, so he runs cohorts and then renovates historic, we joke, like long abandoned buildings. The first one he renovated had been vacant since 1977. We met in an old building and fell in love in an old building and live in an old building now. There's like a theme here. Our poor kid is probably like, oh my God.

SPEAKER_00:

This kid grew up loving buildings. I

SPEAKER_02:

hope so. We always joke he's going to like the opposite. Like everything new, you know, that's how kids are, right?

SPEAKER_01:

But yes, that's That's who I'm referring to. OK, cool. So wait, so in this book, each chapter is like a different story, like a different woman. Just from Cincinnati or from that one building? From

SPEAKER_02:

Cincinnati. Yep. So an example was I found an old plate from a Irish famine survivor. She brought it over with her, remarkably, how the heck this thing survived. And she lived in various parts of downtown Cincinnati and further out. And so I kind of traced this plate throughout. And that tells you a lot about early Cincinnati history that early 1800s stuff mid 1800s it tells you about women in that time period it tells you about immigrants and I'm always down to talk about these themes a later chapter looks at a working class seamstress little stuff she left and you might think like what does that lady have to share right but she if you dig a little and you get creative these people had all the emotions we have they lived their full lives you know just because she didn't marry or have money right she was you know a badass in her own right and so I'm trying to honor these people and one thing we did too is we tried to find each of their graves and that was really meaningful to go find them I found all of them but I think one

SPEAKER_00:

wow that's very impressive very cool well that kind of transitions basically very well talking about like the stories of these people and everything that you've gone through for digging through all this information and putting it all together the case for preservation right so why does it matter obviously I mean I feel like there's a lot of like you've talked a lot about stories and everything but is that your basic case for why historic preservation matters is like to carry on that legacy of these people

SPEAKER_02:

yeah I think that's a great question I feel like depending on which hat I have on there are a lot of answers and that is a I think that bodes well for historic preservation so when I have my historian hat on or my I feel like visiting Europe hat on it's like yes because place gets embedded with meaning over time and there's something about the human soul that craves that whether or not every one of us can articulate that that is what we like to go to Paris and places like that, right? And so I think it's honoring something deeply cultural and artistic and deeply human about us. But there are so many other reasons. I think it is an excellent community development tool. It's an excellent economic development tool. It is much better for the environment than building something new. It is a very flexible art program these days. I teach my students about the history of historic preservation and where it's at now is it's a really exciting moment there are very creative ways that we can employ it it's not this must be a house museum you know like thank goodness we have evolved from that that adaptive reuse is really at an all-time high I think it's yeah financially environmentally culturally in many ways really good

SPEAKER_00:

for some people that might not might not have an understanding like it might be obvious for some but yeah the environmental impact yeah can you touch on that a little bit like what you specifically mean by having an environmental impact with preservation

SPEAKER_02:

yes years ago I asked my friend Brad Cooper who would be a great person to ever interview he's a local architect to come in he's a lead architect in particular to come into my students my class and lecture to my students the history of like lead and how architecture has been influenced by environmental perspectives over time and he had this thing he said that always stuck with me it is always is better for the environment to fix something up than to build new. And so I've always thought that captures that well. But in my own experience and from my understanding, it is often financially, but definitely like more sustainable, it's better in terms of conservation, to take something that's existing in terms of the waste that you produce and new construction versus old, that's going to be less. In terms of your carbon footprint, that is going to be less. There's also just something like it's already physically there. So you're not bringing in a lot of new equipment, new materials. I also love how, depends on what time period you're talking about. I think this building is a great example. Most of Over the Rhine's architecture is a great example. These buildings were built by folks that were really smart and they are almost like sustainable little capsules in and of themselves, right? In ways that a lot of newer buildings like have to work a little bit harder with things like heating and air and ventilation. I think that's beautiful. You know, the high ceilings in old buildings, the use of transoms and large double hung windows, casements to make them really, really airtight, plaster, brick, all these things that breathe well, right? Those are very, very sustainable materials that I think speak to an earlier conservation ethic. that we strayed from in the 1950s and so new buildings are great too but I think like if there is absolutely an environmental argument to renovate what's there amongst many other arguments yeah

SPEAKER_00:

you teased it earlier when we were talking about different buildings about Cincinnati but could you you said that you knew a little bit about the history of this the place that we're literally sitting in right now

SPEAKER_02:

I love this building

SPEAKER_00:

would you care to share a little bit

SPEAKER_02:

yes okay so I am obsessed with immigration history because I think that's just such a beauty. Like, what a crazy story. You get on a boat or a plane now or whatever, and you come to a new country, wherever that is. Like, what gumption. And it breeds fascinating stories. So one of the things that people that had been here a little bit longer did around the turn of the 20th century was they built these things called settlement houses to try to help immigrants assimilate. So around 1900 was this high point for people coming into the U.S. from Europe and Asia and particularly parts of Europe Europe that English would not be their first language, Italy and Russia and places like that. And so this was a really common tactic in Chicago and New York, but also here that we're going to build these houses and they're going to offer like English language classes. They're going to offer like billiards for men. They're going to offer kindergarten for kids and daycare for kids. So it's like a one stop shop for like learn English, get a job, have a like fun, healthy place to hang out at night, bring your kids. And this was one of them. And the other thing that they were, a lot of them were, this is a movement largely run by women. They really cared particularly about helping young women. They were very concerned that young women that were single would come here and be easily led astray, that the cities were, you know, kind of terrifying for them, right? And so they particularly wanted to offer classes and like fun activities for young single women and occasionally boarding for them. And as I understand it, that young women also lived here that were working in a place like over the Rhine or downtown. And they wanted to make sure that they were living in kind of like a, a safe, um, wholesome place surrounded by other young women and run by kind of like matrons, you know, that could kind of take care of them.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. Cool. Does this building have like a name? Like you said, you love this building. Is that, is there a nickname for it or is it just the address that.

SPEAKER_02:

So I've always heard it referred to as the Emanuel community center, even back then.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, which I think is still what people refer to it today in my Would you all call

SPEAKER_01:

it? I just call it the office.

SPEAKER_00:

I feel like an idiot. Stole the words right out of my mouth. Say the name again one more

SPEAKER_02:

time. Emanuel Community Center or Emanuel Settlement House.

SPEAKER_00:

Emanuel Community Center. I wonder if that's written or printed or etched somewhere on the building. Yeah, that would be

SPEAKER_02:

cool

SPEAKER_00:

to see. Yeah, I would love to check that out. Emanuel, I forgot it

SPEAKER_02:

again. Yeah, Emanuel Community Center or Settlement House. I think there's a matching outside that says something. the effect of like four young women. You can see that. And then I think I'm getting this correct. As the building aged and we went like further into like the 1950s and 60s and Over the Rhine became more like Appalachian and African-American, it continued to act as like a community center and offered services for those families. It just has a really beautiful history. And I think it's just like in a seamless row of buildings. It's the park. I mean, it's a great office.

SPEAKER_00:

It is a beautiful place to have an office. and now we know that we're a part of a historically significant... I didn't appreciate it until now. We're going to put that on the podcast art for every episode. It's recorded in a very historic location. Is it fair to say that you think... You might be biased. I feel like we're all maybe a little bit biased about Cincinnati, but it's got to be up there in terms of United States cities that have a lot of deep culture and a lot of really awesome historical buildings. Where is it on the list for

SPEAKER_02:

you? John and I talked about this All the time. We've lived in New York for a spell. He's from New York. So he always brings this outsider's perspective. And I feel like maybe if you live on the coast, you haven't heard of it or some or you've heard of it maybe, but you haven't been here. But we

SPEAKER_00:

went to the Super Bowl once or twice, technically. But I think

SPEAKER_02:

like, wow. Yeah. I mean, A, it was an incredibly huge city back in the day. Right. Like very, very significant.

SPEAKER_01:

Like in the 1800s. In

SPEAKER_02:

the 1800s, preceded Chicago and prominence was like the city Thank you. West of the Appalachians. And I think that that importance lingers, you know, like you could feel that you're right in the old buildings, the culture here, the freaking CSO is one of the oldest in the nation. It's still so great, you know, and I feel like it's a city that has had its struggles like so many American cities. It's not unique in that, but you're right. Like it's old importance lingers, I think. And it it also like has new importance, like with Blink and artworks, all the murals everywhere. I mean, the expanding bike lanes, all of the parks. There are many aspects of Cincinnati that I think are really important and prominent in the old school sense of that word.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Yeah. So what are some of the big historic buildings that Cincinnati would most be well known for that have done a really good job with the whole preservation?

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like the two that you mentioned, Music Hall is a great example and the Cincinnati Museum Center, I feel like are probably... two of the most famous and those are so interesting because they're from very different time periods. They look so different too. They're in two different neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's talk about Music Hall first. Then we're going to talk about the second one after that. Give us a little bit. What's your coolest fun fact about Music Hall? Not to make you go off the top of your head there.

SPEAKER_02:

I love Music Hall. I feel a little bit like I'm in a European city when I stand in front of it. It has that like old world feeling my understanding it's built in the 1870s it's kind of that you know grand exhibition hall and what's i think is so cool about it is it's largely retained that purpose like which echoes your earlier point about cincinnati's importance like right we still need this magical palace to house all these art um arts and cultural institutions and events i have always found it interesting as someone that john always jokes that i like like depressing history but, you know, historians like people that are not here anymore. We're not too bothered by dead people. So this area, when the riverfront was kind of the early, you know, old development, and then we slowly moved north, it was giant old forest up here that was slowly being cleared, and then really early settlers came up this way. Parts of what's underneath Music Hall and then Washington Park was an old graveyard. and particularly poorer folks that couldn't afford maybe more institutional burials so when they were doing the renovations on music hall and in washington park over the last you know roughly 10 to 15 years they were still exhuming bodies from that and removing them and honoring them so i think that's like it just speaks to the layers in a place and the different uses of it and for those that are interested in that music hall is allegedly haunted by those those folks for those people that believe in that wow but i think that more objectively, that the burial history there is really beautiful. I'm always just so interested in going back in time, thinking beyond that. Then it was a dense forest used by indigenous people. That's a story we don't see in Over the Rhine told anywhere. And that environmental history. What were the old growth trees that were here before they were cleared? I'm always interested in that. Go back a little bit further and investigate those layers.

SPEAKER_00:

Music Hall is one of the places where it's like when i have friends or family visiting from out of town that's one of the places that's always like a checkbox like you got to go walk through washington park you got to just stand in front of it admire the beauty if you're here during one of those times like blink i do think they do a great job of highlighting the building it's really it's a really really cool thing that they do there anything else anything on music hall anything before we switch gears for just a

SPEAKER_01:

smidge i saw the nutcracker there this past christmas what'd you think what'd you think of the nutcracker dude i like i so i know the music from it i've always wanted to see like a like a ballet like Like either that or Swan Lake, basically. And the music's great. I was falling asleep the whole time. It was just like, hey, the chair was comfy and the music was relaxing. And it was so boring. But I'm

SPEAKER_00:

glad that I experienced it. Yeah, you got to sit in a historic building and witness something that someone else probably witnessed. Yeah. You know, in that same place, like channel that energy.

SPEAKER_01:

It was really cool. Just to me, I wasn't super engaged by it, even though I appreciated literally everything about it. It's just like, I would go again, like if they were going to show another, you know, ballet or whatever there. I would see another, because it genuinely was relaxing. But I can't, I'm not even going to like pretend. I was just on the edge of my seat.

SPEAKER_00:

The gumdrops and all the beautiful Christmassy stories, that doesn't fill you with energetic excitement.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a good vibe. I really appreciate what the people are doing. I love the music. That really scratched the itch. I was like, what is the song from the Nutcracker? There's a bunch. There's a couple others. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, that was a bunch. Yeah. Anyways, that was cool. It was cool to see it there too. Like this, you know, 150 year old building.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We do segments on the show. Sometimes we talk about the history of buildings and I think we got to make music call a priority. Yeah. Make that one, make that one an in-depth conversation. That'd be very cool. But I want to ask you about another building. Yes. And this is very important right now. Very important. So we're recording this episode on July 10th, 2020. Patrick, I know that you know why this day is significant. Alyssa, do you know why this day is significant?

SPEAKER_02:

July 10th, no.

SPEAKER_00:

July 10th, 2025. The reason today is significant is because today there is a new Superman movie in theaters. I'm a huge... I heard the producers laugh from two walls. I'm a huge comic book nerd. I'm a huge Superman fan. Love all the movies. And I don't know if you knew this. I think you know this because we've talked about it before on the show. The Cincinnati Museum Center, the Union Terminal, was used as the illustrative example for the Hall of Justice in the Super Friends cartoon in the 70s. So if you go back and look at the 1970s Super Friends comic, whenever it's like, Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice, they'll pan over, and it's literally, it's the exact same design. The rotunda, you can see the... cascading water that comes down and like all the terminal pass and it's a very art deco style series much like like Batman the animated series and the Superman animated series from back in the day so I grew up loving the CMC and loving the museum because it was like every time I went I was like I was going to the Hall of Justice today is a very big day for me because I'm seeing Superman tonight and I'm taking the day off work tomorrow and I'm gonna see it again this weekend probably maybe one or two more times and yeah so with the Cincinnati Museum Center Union Terminal tons of history there in my opinion it's the best building on earth I think it's my favorite building it fills me with such nostalgia there but I would love to hear your they

SPEAKER_01:

supposedly filmed this new Superman

SPEAKER_00:

movie oh yeah thank you that's a great point so they filmed for they filmed for three days I actually went to the set of the production they walled it off at the very end before you get to the parking lot but you could drive by and see the camera rigs and everything so it's gonna be in the movie in the live action yep exactly and shout out to Cincinnati County the animal shelter, they ran a fundraiser this weekend for the 4th of July where if you donated or adopted a dog or a pet, you were entered into a contest to win tickets to see Superman at the Union Terminal in the OmniMax. I did not win, but I donated, so shout out to Cincinnati Care. I hope whoever went to that had a great time.

SPEAKER_02:

That's amazing,

SPEAKER_00:

all that. When I see the Union Terminal tonight at the theater, I'm going to stand up and clap.

SPEAKER_01:

Wait, just... I know this is like the final day before you see it. How many times have you seen the trailer so far?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, my God. Immeasurable amounts of times. I'll put it on when I just feel a little bit sad and I need to get cheered up or whatever. So I'll put that on. I'm excited about the movie. I like the Superman shirt, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, rocking the Superman shirt, the red chucks. Yeah, it's a whole vibe. But yeah, tell us about the Union Terminal. That's what I think. There's just so much interesting to say about that building.

SPEAKER_02:

Agreed, yeah. My mind first went to, I love how many films are... filmed in Cincinnati there's like so I do a lot of tax historic tax credit consulting and the same folks that run that in Columbus do the movie tax credits and Cincinnati is often the spot for places to film and I I love that about Cincinnati that is just so cool

SPEAKER_00:

yeah shout out to film Cincinnati I know a lot of people in films and a lot of people that are involved in like production around the area and it's very very very very cool to see Cincy getting attention

SPEAKER_02:

agree yeah and that's like a world I'm always interested in learning more about. I love Cincinnati Museum Center. I feel like I have those nostalgic memories as a kid too where you go there and you can stand at one end and your friend can stand at the other end. It's a giant dome for those of you that haven't been in there. I wrote about Cincinnati Museum Center in the Insignificant book I was telling you guys where it's looking at the women. I think it's a beautiful example of places that change over So I didn't know this, but what was there before was this really old park called Lincoln Park. It was one of the first in the city and it serviced the West End neighborhood, which was then in that era in the mid 1800s, like growing, very immigrant, increasingly Russian and Jewish. And they needed a park because everyone needs a park. Right. And then in the 1920s, they demolished that and they widened what was called Laurel Avenue, which is now Ezra Charles, to make this big promenade to lead to Lincoln Park. to a huge new railroad center. But in doing that, producing this beautiful historic building that I love, that you love, we demolished a lot. And so it's so interesting that the 1920s and 30s is the beginning of that urban renewal time period where we demolish a lot of urban core infrastructure because we think new is better. And so Union Terminal is a great example of we demolished it and for sure displaced people, which we need to account for, but also you produce something that has an intention and a good a giant train station that was used that way for years right and now is a state of the art museum multiple museums Omnimax one of the best archives in the city so it's

SPEAKER_00:

and still trains technically

SPEAKER_02:

yeah

SPEAKER_00:

take the Amtrak absolutely

SPEAKER_02:

John did that once

SPEAKER_00:

it took him forever the Amtrak oh you can take a train from the Union Terminal still I did not know that straight up yeah it's still a cool experience if you ever get the chance to take a train from the Union Terminal I had no idea

SPEAKER_01:

that that still was a thing

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, that's cool. Cool, yeah. It's a beautiful building. It's awesome. That's in which one of your books you said?

SPEAKER_02:

The insignificant one, yeah. I just think it gets you to think about, you know, nothing is just black and white, right? Everything is nuanced. And so even when you're talking about something like historic preservation and you're arguing, well, this should be preserved, but this shouldn't, you know, you realize the subjectivity is involved in it, right? So if you're building this grand new train station that we all love, and for very valid reasons, you know, you can still acknowledge... the stuff that preceded it, right? The beginning of the demolition of the West End, which is a huge part of Cincinnati history that a lot of folks, particularly of color in this neighborhood in the West End, feel very viscerally. And I think it's a good example of like the messiness of it. And I think a lot about that stuff just because I'm employed on and fixing up a lot of buildings in Over the Rhine, which is a neighborhood undergoing a lot of change right now. And it's race-based change, it's class change. And so I think about like weight of that a lot I guess and the messiness of it it's not it's not wholly good it's not wholly bad it's that uncomfortable gray area that you kind of like work

SPEAKER_00:

through yeah so what are some common challenges that preservationists face like obviously there must be a lot of there's some barriers to entry but then there's also it's got to be things that you deal with on a daily weekly basis about all this kind of stuff so I mean

SPEAKER_02:

yes I think it kind of runs the gamut I mean it can be something as simple as like finding good craftspeople that can restore or restore replicate a particular section of a building or a feature that you want. Finding a good company that can restore old wood double hung windows has been a challenge for John and I, for all my historic tax credit clients, things like that. Just because some of that craft has been lost over time. There's still plenty of companies that do it. You just have to dig a little and find them. Yeah, I think financing challenges is a really big part of I'm sure John can talk at length much more about that. I know a bit about that world. You know, preservation is interesting because it is, on the one hand, there are so many things about it that make it more sustainable and in some ways more affordable than I'm going to demolish this and build something new. Because that involves so much more versus an existing shell. Right. And so there are things about it, if you take aspects of the building and you're reusing them, that will ultimately save you money, which I think is a huge misconception about preservation, that it's always going to cost you gobs of money. That said, to contradict myself, this is the messiness of it. It's a lot to invest in a building that sat there vacant for five decades, particularly in a climate where you don't know the interest rate. You don't know about inflation. You don't know where the supplies are going to come in. If you're talking about tariffs right now, regardless of how you feel about them, there's just the messy reality of like, oh, I don't know if I can get that wood or those refrigerator And so that all those things slowly start to snowball and dissuade a lot of people from wanting to get involved in an old building and renovate it. Yeah. So the part that I kind of come in is filling those financing gaps and easing that burden a little bit. There's the federal and then Ohio State Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program, which is a really wonderful program that takes a lot, some of the risk out of it for the men and women doing those projects. Most of my clients are just kind of smaller bootstrap teams. There are definitely large companies that renovate old buildings, of course, and utilize these things, but they make it possible for smaller teams teams that maybe don't come from a lot of financial resources to embark on that with less risk, I would say.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. I would imagine that education also plays a huge role. And I'm sure that, I mean... you know, I'm sure you feel that in what you've put out in terms of your, your books, your research, these events that you've done, but like educating the people, you know, maybe catching someone's spark of creativity and then they go on to, to be involved in the, in the process as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I think it's like a beautiful community of like-minded people, which you are all, you both like history, right? You care about old spaces, like that in and of itself, it's all you need. Like, it's just, it's like a bug you catch, I guess. But yes, I... I think once you just kind of explain it a little bit, people start to care from my students who are largely 17 and 18 years old, you know? And like, so we're just this idea of like, do you have a connection to an old place? That's a harder question to ask a 17 year old, you know? But I think when you explain what preservation actually is and in all of its messiness and then explain, get them to think about some place, it can be as old or as not old as they want. And just like, what does this mean to you? then that lights the fire. And I think the challenge then is to do that with like a public audience at a museum or at a public gathering, a bar or whatever.

SPEAKER_00:

Walking tours.

SPEAKER_02:

A walking tour, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you still host any, do you still do those on a regular basis?

SPEAKER_02:

So I wrote them, but I don't tend to give

SPEAKER_00:

them. Oh,

SPEAKER_02:

okay, gotcha. So I wrote them for, I worked on them for Friendly Market, but I especially wrote the Over the Rhine Museum walking tours. If you're familiar with the Over the Rhine Museum, it's a

UNKNOWN:

you

SPEAKER_02:

If you've been to the New York Tenement Museum, it's in New York in the Lower East Side. And maybe the 90s or so, these women got this idea that they wanted to design a new kind of museum where if you go into it, each of the rooms in this old tenement building were like you were going back in time into a different era.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's

SPEAKER_02:

like Little Italy in like 1903 or 1960 New York or whatever, et cetera. And so that gets you to think about different immigrant groups that came through. Yeah. Vietnamese, Italians, etc. So Ann Steinert, who I mentioned earlier, and some partners in Cincinnati thought that was a cool idea to do for Over the Rhine. So this is a great example to kind of answer your question of just people that like care about education and got that bug of storytelling. So they bought a building near Findlay Market and they're doing this. They researched the heck out of it. And it has this reflective history of Over the Rhine. It was like Germans at one point and then Czechs, some Eastern Europeans, maybe some Jewish immigrants later on. Appalachians and African Americans it totally reflects the history of the neighborhood and they're designing it so that you go into like this bedroom and it's like over the Rhine in 1960 and this is what their kitchen would have looked like and then over the Rhine in 1952 etc and so I designed walking tours for them is kind of how I'm looping back to that but the walking tours reflect that mission and just reflect something I share with Anne and those people of How do you bring alive all the different eras of a neighborhood and of a place? How do you pay attention to all kinds of people that live there? Not just like maybe the groups that we tend to pay attention to the most or men. Pay attention to all the different stories. And people like it, right? Like the New York Tenement Museum is one of the most popular museums in New York City, which is saying something, you know? Yeah, I'm always so fascinated by it. Like we like old places. We like the meaning that's embedded. We just don't always like... have the words to articulate it. And I have too many words, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

It's awesome. No, it's a cool concept. I'm definitely adding that to the list of Cincinnati things that I've not done that I need to check out. So it's a good list. So looking ahead. at the future of preservation we got a couple more questions to ask you thank you so much for hanging out with us it's been truly i think really fascinating discussion so how is preservation changing and modernizing as we as we move into the this new era this new age the world's constantly changing obviously so within cincinnati or just the the way that preservation is going in general i mean like tech design storytelling like i mean like what's the next decade of preservation look like in your opinion

SPEAKER_02:

yeah lots of things to think about there i think it's in a really in some ways a really healthy place so ever since the 60s and 70s we have gotten to this place where we should save this old building but creatively reuse it as maybe it was an old warehouse but we're going to turn into apartments or it's going to be a new market you know and that was a major feat for Americans to wrap their minds around that. And so I feel like we've had, we've seen a maturation of that and we're like, okay, let's continue with that energy. Like this is an old building we're going to save. Like, Oh, what are the cool things we could do with it? Yeah. We're also at that continuing into an era where we're, more and diverse people are interested in living in urban core neighborhoods again where we're preserving things we are taking vacant buildings putting bodies and businesses back into them preservation is key to all of that we have strong preservation incentive programs in this country that I'm very proud of at a federal level. But the teethiest stuff is at the state and local level. And Cincinnati has a really good stuff here. Ohio has one of the best historic tax credit programs in the country. And I never thought I would care about taxes in my life. But these are programs that for those of you that don't know you, you apply for them. You can win them. They're very competitive, but they essentially for qualifying expenses, things that most work you do to an old building, you get so many cents back on the dollar up to a certain percentage. So it's 25% in Ohio. Sounds technical and kind of boring, but it's huge because it's essentially like you could get 25% of your costs back as a direct tax cash refund. So it is huge. That actually matters for the state of preservation because the state program has been around since the early aughts. The federal legislation that backs that up has been around since the 70s and 80s. That has more than anything helped preservation in this country and so the continuance of those programs is very key they are often threatened by folks that are interested in cutting back programs which is unfortunate because it's a program that has tons and tons and tons of evidence that it works yeah and it's all about proving economic and community development impact to win these things so it's a jobs growth thing it's an income tax income thing it's It's a tool that pretty much wherever you are on the political spectrum, you can get behind. So it's frustrating when they get attacked because it's usually by folks that don't understand how they work. But in terms of thinking ahead to the next decade with preservation, supporting and making sure those programs live on is absolutely key. I think in terms of like tech, I don't think too much about that. You know, as a historian, I tend to be a little bit of a Luddite with stuff like that. But John thinks the construction development guy thinks a lot about that and I think there is room for technological innovation with construction take maybe some of the risk out of it maybe that said I think I don't know I also just think like you know spending a ton of time in my 20s with like contractors and subcontractors like plumbers those are jobs that I would argue are supposed to be done by humans right and like I think that's kind of beautiful

SPEAKER_00:

yeah it's gonna be ever evolving ever changing I

SPEAKER_02:

think that would be good I think if it's ever evolving That means it's healthy. are also very, very vitally important. And I could talk at length about that, but that's super important.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. Patrick, any last questions before we start wrapping it up?

SPEAKER_01:

Is there a building... in Cincinnati or anywhere in the US that you want to preserve at all costs? Like if you had to pick one building?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I saw that question on your script and I thought about it and I was like, hmm, because it changes all the time. What

SPEAKER_00:

do you mean? Patrick totally just came up with that. Sorry,

SPEAKER_02:

sorry. I think it's a good question. If you could tell from my books, my research interests kind of go ping pong-y all over the place. So I think my answer to that question changes all the time. This This is not in Cincinnati, but I think this is cool. I read a bit about this recently. In the South, there are old cabins that sharecroppers lived in. So folks that were African-Americans recently freed from slavery built and lived in these very simple wood cabins, sometimes lean-tos. They had, you know, gotten freedom or like won that and then were stuck farming plots of land that were not their own. They were in these kind of cyclical... They were in cycles of poverty. But all of that's to say, some of these old sharecroppers' cabins that are from the 1870s, 1880s are still there. And they speak to this history that is so like literally disappearing, right? Most of those people migrated north to places like Cincinnati to the West End to make a better go of life. And that impressive feat, they left behind these old cabins where they had tried to eck out a living and in the most impressive way. And there's this effort right now by the national park system pairing up with African-American preservationists in the South to save them, which I think is so cool and badass, especially because these are like very simple and wood structures and wood does not tend to last, you know? And, and there, it just kind of speaks to my interest in like a place that you think is like insignificant is actually deeply significant. Like somebody spent their whole life here and like tried to make a go of things and their life speaks to like slavery and the civil war and reconstruction. And like, we should definitely give a shit about that and I think that's so cool that they're they're trying to save them I was reading about that so that's my answer for today

SPEAKER_00:

I'll probably change tomorrow yeah that's beautiful all right Alyssa thank you so much for joining us this has been an awesome discussion we'll definitely love to have you back if you ever want to come back and hang out and talk buildings with us or our nutcracker review apparently when we go see that in the theater at the music hall but yeah thank you guys for listening to another episode of the Rentish podcast we can be found everywhere you get your podcasts Spotify Apple give us a review give us a rate Follow us. Give us a comment. Tell us how much you love the show. Email questions at therentishpod.com. If you have any questions or topic suggestions or anything you want to hear us talk about, stay and subscribe for new episodes. And again, shout out to Alyssa. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It was awesome to talk with you. And yeah, I've been Zach. That's been Patrick. And we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you.