Description: Dated September 1937, this photograph shows Arch Street in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, in Hamilton County. Arch Street resides in the central business district of downtown Cincinnati. The area that was to become Cincinnati was established in 1788 by settlers Israel Ludlow, Matthias Denman, and Robert Patterson, who named the town Losantiville. The eight hundred acres that made up the town were part of the Symmes Purchase. The population of Losantiville grew when Fort Washington, located west of the town, was constructed in 1789 to offer protection to the area’s settlers. The name of the town was changed to Cincinnati in 1790 by Northwest Territory governor Arthur St. Clair, who made the town the county seat of the newly established Hamilton County. Cincinnati was named after Roman citizen soldier Cincinnatus, as well as the Society of Cincinnati, an association of former officers of the Revolutionary War. This photograph is one of the many visual materials collected for use in the Ohio Guide. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration by executive order to create jobs for the large numbers of unemployed laborers, as well as artists, musicians, actors, and writers. The Federal Arts Program, a sector of the Works Progress Administration, included the Federal Writers’ Project, one of the primary goals of which was to complete the America Guide series, a series of guidebooks for each state which included state history, art, architecture, music, literature, and points of interest to the major cities and tours throughout the state. Work on the Ohio Guide began in 1935 with the publication of several pamphlets and brochures. The Reorganization Act of 1939 consolidated the Works Progress Administration and other agencies into the Federal Works Administration, and the Federal Writers’ Project became the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio. The final product was published in 1940 and went through several editions. The Ohio Guide Collection consists of 4,769 photographs collected for use in Ohio Guide and other publications of the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio from 1935-1939. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B02F13_009
Subjects: Cincinnati (Ohio)--Buildings, structures, etc.; Central Business Districts; Streets; Ohio--History--Pictorial works; Federal Writers' Project
Places: Cincinnati (Ohio); Hamilton County (Ohio)