Fall Forum
Save the Date for the 30th Annual Fall Forum
Friday, October 24, 2025 at Noon
Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel
Tickets sales will start August 11th, 2025
This year’s speaker is Dr. David Stradling, Zane L. Miller Professor of Urban History and Interim Head of the Department of History.
David is the author of several books, including Cincinnati: From River City to Highway Metropolis (Arcadia Publishing, 2003), The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State (Cornell University Press, 2010), Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills (University of Washington Press, 2007), Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), and, with Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland (Cornell University Press, 2015).
Dr. Stradling will present a talk titled “On Living in Cincinnati or Someplace Like That.”
Cincinnati’s typicality makes it a wonderful laboratory for studying urbanization, for here we find the physical residues of national and even international trends in city building and urban culture. We point to them and glorify them. Ironically, this typical-case approach to understanding Cincinnati can hide what makes this city distinctive. This talk will use three buildings to press one argument: There has never been a city like Cincinnati in the history of the world. Together these three buildings will also make the case for understanding cities first and foremost as human creations in and of a particular physical place.
Questions?
Contact Susan Casey 513.246.2043
Susan@cincinnatipreservation.org
30th Annual Fall Forum Ticket Form
Student Round Table
Every year at Fall Forum, the speaker provides a round table discussion with History, Historic Preservation, and Anthropology students at the University of Cincinnati and other area schools.
About Fall Forum
“Fall Forum brings together preservationists, architects, designers and fans of Cincinnati’s built fabric for an interesting luncheon that inspires and educates us all.”
-Beth Johnson
CPA Executive Director
Every fall since 1995, Cincinnati Preservation hosts a nationally renowned speaker who gives a lecture on a topic of local interest. The Fall Forum has historically taken place in the Hilton Netherland Plaza’s Hall of Mirrors, one of the grandest ballrooms in the Midwest.
Recent Lectures Include
- Fall Forum 2024: Julie Olds, Cultural Resource Officer and citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma on Cultural Preservation in the homeland of the Miami
- Fall Forum 2023: Dr. Bruce Stephenson of Living New Urbanism “Why John Nolen’s Mariemont Plan Still Informs Sustainability” presented in partnership with Mariemont Preservation Foundation’s Millard F. Rogers Jr. Lecture Series.
Fall Forum 2022: Carl Elefante, Principal Emeritus with Quinn Evan, “The greenest building is…one that is already built”
- Fall Forum 2021: Brent Leggs, National Trust for Historic Preservation African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, “Preservation as Social Justice.”
- Fall Forum 2020: Thea Tjepkema, preservationist and historian, “Muses: The Women of Music Hall.”
- Fall Forum 2019: Gabrielle Esperdy, author and architectural historian, “Women, Architecture and the Most Modern Hotel in America”
- Fall Forum 2018: Terry Stewart, former President and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “King Records”
- Fall Forum 2017: James Crawford, author, “Fallen Glory, The Lives and Deaths of 20 Great Buildings”
- Fall Forum 2016: Jamie Bennett, President of Art Place America, “Art, Culture and Historic Buildings”
- Fall Forum 2015: Donovan Rypkema, Place Economics, “The Economics of Historic Neighborhoods”
- Fall Forum 2014: John Stubbs, “A Global View of Architectural Conservation”