This dissertation provides the first treatment of the origins and development of the roofed arena in the United States and Canada. Supported by archival resources of graphics and text, and informed by direct contact with arena architects, design and operations staff, this study examines the arena as a place for spectacle within the larger environments of city and campus. The arena's site, massing, and design revealed the expectations of its sponsorship. The arena's internal configuration of roofed seating bowl, floor, portals, and passages was a purposeful arrangement intended to accommodate attendees and manage their movement through architectural space. The first chapter focuses on the transmission to the nineteenth century, via the architecture of theater, circus, and other spaces of public assembly, of the Greek and Roman hippodrome oval for accommodation of multiple kinds of revenue-generating activities situated within a circular, elliptical, or rectilinear seating bowl. The significance of the Royal Albert Hall, London, as the conceptual model for the presentation of modern indoor spectacle is recognized. But within the context of the growth or urban centers and the expansion of commercial leisure, Stanford White's Madison Square Garden, New York, is documented as the principal formal model. White's facility, a hippodrome within a rectangular industrial shed, whose impact was amplified by the communications media that disseminated its image and the reports of its spectacle, generated successors on a continental scale. The research method identified buildings, sought to find relevant information, and fixed the buildings along a time line. Populated with enough examples, the time sequence yields affinities and clarifies differences, making possible useful generalizations about site and design in context. Across the time period considered, enclosure evolved from arched and pitched forms, and thin-shell experiments, toward the anti-industrial dome and drum. The emergence of tensile solutions allowed roof support to act as a design element as well as engineering. But by the end of the 1960s, circular and ovoid buildings receded in favor of the operationally more efficient rectilinear footprint covered by a flat truss or space frame. Exteriors of brick and stone became complex fields of concrete, glass, and multiple forms of metal. Over the long term, internal treatment of attendee space emphasized presentation of finished surface. This dissertation identifies those formal architectural attributes that carried the arena's programmatic objectives. It examines the emergence of the commercial, mercantile arena; higher education's recognition of the capacity of the architectural fabric of arenas to support institutional growth; and municipalities' use of the form to project government-defined civic values. The chronological narrative recognizes the intensity of concurrent strands of development between the World Wars and concludes by noting arena managements' increasing interest in building commercial destinations for attendees outside the seating bowl. Finally, the work establishes the role of the arena in large-scale repurposing of urban land in the 1960s. The Appendix is an extensive census of the large roofed arenas built in North America between 1853 and 1968. It provides the name of the facility, dates of design and opening, architect, type of siting, and configuration of building envelope. The Appendix introduces distinctions useful for analysis. Component siting, in contrast to independent siting, indicates placement of the arena within a system of buildings of associated purpose. Centroidal positioning indicates a building's occupation at the functional center of mass. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/88 Building envelope--with pitched or arched roof or other kind of enclosure--operates with siting as another indicator of sponsors' Intent. By assembling and reading the evidence of site, design, and operation, this paper ventures an approach to understanding the place of the roofed arena in the North American urban landscape. It is hoped that this work will invite and assist investigation into related issues, e.g., the architectural profession's approach to arena projects and, particularly, the commercial archaeology and human geography of the arena's interior zones.

/pdf/architecture-for-community-and-spectacle-the-roofed-arena-in-9wyn3vkwlu.pdf

The Bicentennial guide to greater Cincinnati: A portrait of two hundred years

Architecture for community and spectacle: The roofed arena in North America, 1853--1968

An asset-based approach to policymaking: revisiting the history of urban planning and neighborhood change in Cincinnati’s West End

This article chronicles the history of two school districts located in the upper Mill Creek Valley of the Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan area. The creation of the Black Lincoln Heights School District and the predominately White Princeton School District is a history of segregation while the merger of these two districts, nearly 20 years later, tells a unique story of desegregation. Historical data from primary and secondary sources provide an account from various perspectives of school segregation and desegregation. These particular histories are documented in a manner that illuminates the political, social, economic, and, of course, racial factors that led to their separation and union. In 1970, the Princeton School District agreed to accept 1,900 Black students from a neighboring, economically depressed community of Lincoln Heights, Ohio. Understanding the complex and interlocking political, social, economic, and racial factors that lead to segregation, desegregation, and more recently resegregation is often difficult. Critical race theory (CRT), a paradigm originating out of the legal field, has potential for 'making sense' of the actions of the major players in these racial segregation/integration scenarios. Though this paradigm has its roots in the legal field, it is a philosophical lens that allows one to bring into focus issues of race and class dominance in the general society as well as in specific institutions such as those within the United States education system. CRT can be used to clarify not only the rules of law and the rulings of American courts, such as found in school segregation cases, but can also bring insight to the analysis of rules that govern society and communities concerning these issues. While racial segregation and desegregation of schools and educational systems are considered directly related to the presence or lack of equal opportunities for American children, their histories have not been explored from a theoretical framework. In the specific historical accounts of the desegregation and merger of the Princeton (PSD) and Lincoln Heights (LHSD) school districts, this is especially true. While there are many newspaper accounts, both current and reflective, none attempt to report the events through a particular philosophical or theoretical lens. Lucas (1971, 1976), the superintendent of PDS during the merger, wrote concerning the successful outcome with little reference to and no in-depth analysis of the factors that led to the segregation of Lincoln Heights or its merger with Princeton. The 1971 title, "Princeton's Investment in Children Provides New Opportunities for All," hints heavily of the benevolence of the Princeton district in accepting the neighboring Black children. Lucas talks about the revocation of the Lincoln Heights charter and the positive resolution of the Princeton Board of Education after the Ohio State Board of Education transferred the Lincoln Heights students. There is no mention of the Lincoln Heights Board's involvement in initiating the merger and little emphasis placed on the threatened legal action. On the other hand, Lucas credits much of the success of the merger to the Princeton school board's commitment to integration and details many of the phase-in programs and school and community activities he and the board initiated and implemented to assure a smooth transfer. Similarly, Luke (1981a, 1981b, 1982) wrote a series of historical accounts of the emergence and growth of the Princeton School district, but they too lack philosophical or theoretical analysis and also omit facts concerning the involvement of the Lincoln Heights community or school board in the LHSD/PSD merger. In fact, one may perceive from the above mentioned accounts that the decision to accept the Black students into the predominately White school system was driven by the good-hearted will of the White community members and by their commitment to equality of opportunity. Such motivation is contrary to what history reveals about the prevailing attitudes that led to the isolation of these same students and in the creation of the segregated Lincoln Heights School District of the 1950s (Leigh, 1997; Taylor, 1993). …

Interest Convergence and Desegregation in the Ohio Valley.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/B0D692C8392928D760BA408A52246622/9781108949330AR.pdf/whose-eyes-on-the-street-control-crime.pdf

Whose 'Eyes on the Street' Control Crime?: Expanding Place Management into Neighborhoods

This thesis is a case study designed to analyze the process one urban neighborhood, East Price Hill in Cincinnati, Ohio has used to revitalize a deteriorating area using the urban eco-village approach. The Price Hill/Seminary Square Eco-village is a project of the lead organization Imago and has been one of the pioneer communities of the urban eco-village movement. An eco-village is a small-scale, fullfeatured settlement where human activities are integrated into a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. As one of the first neighborhoods of Cincinnati outside of its downtown, East Price Hill possesses many civic and environmental assets to develop into a self-reliant community. This setting provides the context to fulfill the community’s vision of an ecological neighborhood. Their key objectives were to create a neighborhood that would offer an abundance of parks and greenspace, clean air and land, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, trees, and renovated energy-efficient homes. The purpose of this case study is to provide one example of how models of sustainable development can be applied at the local level and serve as an alternative approach for neighborhood revitalization.

background

Urban eco-villages as an alternative model to revitalizing urban neighborhoods: the eco-village approach of the seminary square/price hill eco-village of cincinnati, ohio