The Historic City View Tavern, Cincinnati, Ohio

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so welcome back to another episode of history in your own backyard i'm your host susie selick here today in cincinnati in the gemstone of cincinnati mount adams and we are at the city view tavern we have an alternative interview today as we are on the phone with owner deb henning deb thank you very much for having us here thank you for having me there so deb in in let's just clarify with our audience you are in florida you own this beautiful bar with this gorgeous city view and we want to know when was city view tavern established that's a long story um the building itself went up in 1875. um from that point in 1891 a man named thomas spain opened the grocery in 1901 he added a saloon in 1906 bernard reckling low purchased the building from saint and also he had an employee named george legemann and george lehmann rented the upstairs there were apartments upstairs and in 1917 bernard reckley moe retired and he sold his business to george legeman who his family was born upstairs his children okay interesting you know which is that time that's what hospitals weren't happening and in 1985 his youngest son ted lagerman sold the business to me and now it is 2021. oh wow so since 1985 you and your husband silas evans have have owned this bar then yes okay so you so are you happy that it stayed a saloon and not a grocery store oh yes well when when i bought it when we bought it it was it had a grocery store in france oh you oh the grocery store was still okay now that's good clarification i didn't realize that the grocery store was still the front part okay so then when did you go ahead there have been physical changes to the building um over the years okay as to where there was the saloon where there was the grocery um the fire that sort of thing yeah it got pushed around i was gonna say why don't we talk about that fire in 1946 and then maybe let's get in to the restructuring of the building and how it's just now a tavern all the way through so can you talk about that that fire in 1946 certainly um it was a grocery mount adams had three sections at the time of the italians the germans and the irish and city view was part of the german neighborhood and like all small businesses groceries at the time at christmas time they sold christmas trees and they'd be out front for display and then in the evening they put them up against the side of the building and after christmas of that year um ted told a cousin who occasionally worked for them to burn the christmas trees because nobody was going to buy him and the cousin did only ted did not tell him to remove them from the side of the building and it took off the top two floors of what is now city view and it took out the building next door which there was a driveway so that's that's how the restructure came they did not rebuild the top two floors nor did they close the business to do the construction really they stayed open for business during construction and at that time they moved the saloon to the back part of the building in the grocery to the front prior to that it'd been the opposite the grocery was the large part okay and the saloon was inside all right so the saloon's up front now we got the grocery in the back and then the fire and then the grocery came to the front and the saloon went to the back and also the downstairs was turned into what ted called a party room a party room a party room and it had it was tense draperies and everything it was glamour but there were things going on down there that you know like oh little penny eddie poker games and things like that i see is now an office it is now an office okay so went from a party room to an office so so deb speaking of parties often i hear the word tequila and i think there's probably a party following that particular spirit um but i've heard that you guys do not serve tequila here at the city view tavern is that true that is true could you elaborate on well there was a young man who lived down the street which the building is now unfortunately gone and his name was charles manson charles manson sounds like a familiar name deb can you give us some context to that name really quickly before you go on with the story well um since he's no longer with us i can say things he is the charlie manson of the uh manson family fame most people don't realize he was born in cincinnati right and lived here for a while so yes he lived down the street and um at that time the deck was put on in the late 50s early 60s which is where the name city you came from yes and one night charlie was in there and ted was working and charlie had a few shots of tequila and thought he could fly off the deck now he was prevented from flying off the deck and ted took the rest of the bottle of that tequila and poured it down the drain and said never again will we have tequila wow and and it is go ahead and i was gonna say and so that has just that's just been a thing ever since huh it's been a thing and a lot of people say oh it's just urban legend but after being in business as long as i have and knowing ted and hearing from people who were living in the area at that time it is not a made-up story uh the bar business can be very unique oh yes okay yes well that i am agreeing with you and that's a former at 21 i was a cuervo girl so i know i know what you're talking about deb yes so to be honest i think there was probably a little more involvement to heal than that hammond before he came in the door yeah probably yeah probably so so deb i know that this place i mean just mount adams in general is loaded with history but this but this tavern in particular i think might have a couple more stories for us so can you um could you could you think back or could you dig down deep and give us a couple stories that you absolutely love about this place and why it kind of builds into the history of city view tavern well as i said the deck was put on the late 50s early 60s and unlike things are done today it was it was constructed over the weekend with several of ted's friends and a few cases of beer that's how you get things done uh several cases of beer and a few friends yeah that's right um you know now you just move out and move in and you have somebody with a pickup truck but back then you can build entire buildings probably but that's how they built the deck and i came to find out later when we went to replace the deck with something a little more substantial that there weren't even any footings or piers under the uprights they just stuck them in the ground and built up from there and people thought that that was going to fall off because it had a slant to it but now we know why because it was attached to the building on one side and then on the other it just sort of was there okay so that that that was interesting to find out and then we used to have some occasional visitors come by eric hunsell lived down on bomb street and it was always fun to see him come in after work because he would be dressed in his formal wear of tails which added a certain amount of class oh yeah yeah um and who else you oh bob huggins nice customer uh bob huggins is was again i went to university of cincinnati when he was coaching and if he brought the same amount of energy in here as he brought to to uc i can see why he would have been a hoot to hang out with in here yes yes and then i found out some years ago unfortunately i wasn't there at the time probably because i have a different husband but george clooney used to come in and this is back when he went to northern kentucky university and mount adams was one of his haunts and as well as city view so if if i've been of that age down and known it i i would have been there without a doubt you and me both deb you and me both oh i think that would have been a fun night for both of us yeah but okay so george clooney has made um some appearances here um i don't know is does it get cooler after george clooney i don't think so i don't think so oh well depending on how you look at it on the sports end of it um gosh i wish i could remember his name there was a sports broadcaster from cincinnati who moved out to uh california and um he had always come to city view and was was you know very much a fan of ours and he he sent in uh part of the oakland raiders when they were bound to play the bengals oh so actually yes i actually got to see a super bowl ring oh awesome and they're huge i don't remember who the players were but i do remember it was oakland it was like yes i said mark and look at the size of that ring wow oh that's really cool yeah we get you know just normal people yeah i mean there's there's a nice crowd in here right now as we are as we're recording this interview deb so absolutely um well i don't know is there anything else that i that i didn't ask you about that you would want to share i mean this is just truly a unique piece of real estate it's clearly an awesome business in mount adams is there anything that i that i didn't ask you about yet that you would want to share with us now in the 90s of course this is this is not that uh exciting but there is uh the gentleman had done a drawing of the of the city view that came from of the 50s 60s and basically it had been boarded up and uh you know had a few little windows in the door and it was it was pretty uh kind of an intimidating looking place right and so in the 80s and this had been my dream for city view was to take it back to what it had looked like other than the top two floors right um and so a customer who had also lived next door dave ross was an architect and i said david here's a picture of the original city view can we take it back to what it looked like so he came up with the drawings and you know the blueprints and everything to make it look like the original city view the difference being that we didn't painted white oh but so the massage that is there now is what the original building looked like with the the entrance um and the the transom windows and that sort of thing very cool you know the big windows in the front yes which are beautiful which are beautiful and they just they let in all this natural light that just kind of just disperses out through the barn and it's still it's still perfectly lit like a bar should be but um yeah no and and then obviously this view is is unbelievable we've been able to enjoy this for a while now and you were talking about the lights in this pad the window when we redid the deck yeah we replaced the back window and that singular single piece of glass weighs 500 pounds one single piece of glass weighs 500 pounds yes yes we had to reinforce underneath you know where the window was because it was just like you know some sort of plexiglass something it wasn't very nice five minutes and these guys come in and that was the largest they could make one single piece that was you know insulated or whatever they call it thermal paint yep and you know the big suction cups they have yeah okay three guys would that come in with this and she picked it up there and i was like holy crap wow 500 pound window but i just you know thank you for watching another episode of history in your own backyard here today in mount adams ohio at the city view tavern deb henning thank you so much for being able to be with us for this beautiful interview oh you're more than welcome thank you and remember travel slowly and stop often bye for now [Music] you

Channel: History in Your Own Backyard

Views: 1,818

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Ohio, Hamilton County, Cincinnati, Mt. Adams, City View Tavern, Fire, Tequila, Charlie Manson, George Clooney, Erich Kanzel, History, Historic

Id: -TF5_FJqFJE

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021