Fall Forum 2025

This year’s speaker was Dr. David Stradling, Zane L. Miller Professor of Urban History and Interim Head of the Department of History.

He explored how Cincinnati’s typicality made it an exceptional laboratory for understanding the forces that shaped American cities. While many features of Cincinnati reflected national and even international trends, he reminded us that these same qualities could obscure what made the city truly singular. To demonstrate this, he used three buildings that represented the sweep of Cincinnati’s physical and cultural identity.

• The Comet in Northside, long home to a famed bluegrass band and a hub for arts culture, illustrated Cincinnati’s place at the edge of Appalachia while still carrying a metropolitan rhythm.
• St. Rose of Lima on Riverside Drive, marked by the high-water lines of the great floods, reflected Cincinnati’s story as an Ohio River city shaped by the ebb and flow of its waters. 
• Highland Towers in Mount Adams, perched high on the hillside, captured the dramatic topography that has defined how Cincinnatians have lived, built, and imagined their city.

Together these places made the case that there has never been a city quite like Cincinnati in the history of the world, and that cities must be understood first and foremost as human creations rooted in a particular physical place.