for the Salvation Army.
Proceed to Main Street. In the ground along Main Street is track for the reborn Cincinnati Streetcar, which opened in September 2016. Across Main Street (on the left behind the fabric awning with a large “A”) is
Turn right on Sixth Street and enter Cincinnati’s reemerging restaurant row. Most notable are Sotto, Boca, and Nada—all three the product of the Boca Restaurant Group. At Sixth and Walnut Streets is the Zaha Hadid–designed
Turn left on Walnut Street and left again on Fifth Street. Walk through Government Square, Metro’s downtown transit hub. Dominating the left side of the square is Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse (100 E. Fifth St.), built in 1939. The next three blocks east of Main Street are where corporate Cincinnati functions. It’s a quiet place after office hours, with the exception of the
Around the corner is Lytle Park Historic District, one of the oldest areas in the city. The 2.31-acre park, updated in 2018, is known for its seasonal floral displays and an 11-foot-tall bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln. East of the park is the
Turn right on Fourth Street, which is Cincinnati’s version of Chicago’s North Michigan Avenue and New York’s Fifth Avenue. One mile long, it starts with the ease of Lytle Park behind you and then gradually becomes the city’s main financial thoroughfare before terminating at its increasingly residential western edge. Cross Broadway Street and continue west on Fourth Street. Christ Church Cathedral, 318 E. Fourth St., was completed in 1835 and rebuilt in 1957; it remains the street’s only church. Cross Sycamore Street and continue west past Atrium I and II office buildings. Garber & Woodward designed the Classical Revival–style Duke Energy building, completed in 1929, at the southwest corner of Fourth and Main Streets. Next door on Fourth Street is a tiny row of three buildings dating to 1870.
Walk to Walnut Street for a view of downtown’s most towering historic corner. Significant buildings include (from the southeast corner, clockwise) Fourth & Walnut Centre, designed by Daniel H. Burnham (1903); Dixie Terminal (1921), with a grandiose barrel-vaulted lobby offering a view of Roebling Suspension Bridge; Bartlett Building, also designed by Daniel H. Burnham (1901) and reborn as a Renaissance Hotel in 2014; Formica Building (1971); and Mercantile Library Building (1905). North of the library at the southeast corner of Fifth and Walnut Streets is Tri-State Building (1902), another Burnham building. Cross Fourth Street and walk to Fourth National Bank Building (1905), on the north side of the street. It was the last one built of four early 20th-century downtown skyscrapers designed by the Chicago firm headed by Burnham.
On the northeast corner of Fourth and Vine Streets is the 15-story Ingalls Building, the world’s first reinforced concrete skyscraper, built in 1903. On the southwest corner is the 34-story PNC Tower, designed by the same architect (Cass Gilbert) behind Manhattan’s Woolworth Building. Finished in 1913, it was once the tallest building west of the Hudson River. Cross Vine Street and walk to Race Street. This block was historically department store territory and a hive of activity up through the late 1990s. Today, it’s a mix of other commercial and residential uses. Continuing west is West Fourth Street Historic District, the finest intact remnant of Cincinnati’s turn-of-the-19th-century downtown streetscape. Turn right on Race Street and walk to the entrance of
Points of Interest
