2024 Oral History Association Annual Meeting

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood was settled in the mid to late nineteenth-century and home to Cincinnati’s German immigrant population. Its large collection of Italianate architecture has recently brought wealthy residents to this formerly low-income urban enclave. As change moves through the neighborhood, the Over-the-Rhine Museum is using oral history to preserve and celebrate lesser-known stories of this now-trendy urban hotspot. This tour will focus on life in Over-the-Rhine’s tenements across time.

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

Living in a border city and listening to the stories told by her formerly enslaved neighbors, enabled Harriet Beecher Stowe to write the wildly popular antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Through this tour experience, you will visit the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and learn about its unique two time-period interpretation. You will also embark on a walking tour of the surrounding neighborhood to expand on a discussion of its Abolitionist and African American heritage. You will learn about recent exhibits that feature an oral history component, and discover ways that the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the Walnut Hills Historical Society are working towards preserving and enhancing those stories.

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

Thea Tjepkema, Music Hall Historian, Historic Preservationist
Experience the awe-inspiring architecture of Cincinnati Music Hall, its surrounding cityscape, and the stories behind this iconic National Historic Landmark. Thea Tjepkema, Music Hall’s Historian and Historic Preservationist, leads an engaging narrative celebrating this extraordinary example of the High Victorian Gothic style and its significance to the cultural life of the city and the Great Midwest. This 1-hour outdoor walking tour will present a captivating storyline within its design and extraordinary events, celebrities, artists, and agents of change that define the ethos of our region.

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

Thea Tjepkema, Music Hall Historian, Historic Preservationist
Experience the awe-inspiring architecture of Cincinnati Music Hall, its surrounding cityscape, and the stories behind this iconic National Historic Landmark. Thea Tjepkema, Music Hall’s Historian and Historic Preservationist, leads an engaging narrative celebrating this extraordinary example of the High Victorian Gothic style and its significance to the cultural life of the city and the Great Midwest. This 1-hour outdoor walking tour will present a captivating storyline within its design and extraordinary events, celebrities, artists, and agents of change that define the ethos of our region.

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

Hundreds of Holocaust survivors rebuilt their lives in Cincinnati in the years during and after World War II. Many first arrived by train at historic Union Terminal, and today this train station is home to the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center. Join us for a tour of the museum as staff share stories of local survivors and how the lessons of the Holocaust can inspire us to become upstanders today. Staff will also give a behind the scenes view of designing a museum that is deeply rooted in the personal experiences of Holocaust survivors and draws upon decades of regional oral history collection. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with interactive exhibits, including Dimensions in Testimony, a gallery where you can ask a two-dimensional display of a Holocaust survivor questions and receive responses in real time. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to see iconic Union Terminal and engage with the powerful stories of Cincinnati’s Holocaust survivors and the upstanders that are making an impact in Cincinnati today.

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

Brewing high quality beer was an art form to many Cincinnati breweries and the buildings that housed their operations needed to be an extension of this passion. Come and witness the evolution of the brewing industry through the size, complexity, and architectural grandeur of the city’s historic breweries. Tour will meet at hotel, and then group will trolley to the Brewing Heritage Trail “Hop On” sign at Findlay Market. From there, we walk along the western portion of the Brewery District and marvel at the many remaining 19th and early 20th century structures, while sharing stories of those who built or doomed these brewing empires during beer’s industrial revolution. Tours include a visit into the vast subterranean lager cellars of the historic (non-operating) Jackson Brewery, as well as outdoor visitation to the Sohn/Mohawk Brewery, several Christian Moerlein sites, and the location of the Bellevue Incline. The Jackson Brewery cellars were excavated from the hillside under the brewery, so we enter from street level and there are no stairs to climb going in or out, making these cellars very accessible and the total walking distance for this tour is less than half a mile.

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

This tour will explore women’s lives and work in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine from German-American women in the mid-1800s up through African American women who moved in to the neighborhood in the 1960s. The focus is on topics important in women’s history including work for women, motherhood and childbirth, education, and social activism, but the tour also includes visits to Cincinnati landmarks including Music Hall and Findlay Market.

Meet at the registration desk 15 minutes prior to tour time.

OHA members who sign up for this tour will get their own guide to walk us through the main sections of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Tour fee includes admission to the Freedom Center. Due to water damage, this tour will only be offered on the 1st and 3rd floors.